At a time when none of us are supposed to be leaving our homes, it’s especially thrilling to spend time in a fictional world where humans can teleport anyplace they’d like. That’s precisely the premise of GEN columnist Drew Magary’s latest novel, Point B.
Though it’s set in 2029, it’s a world we can all recognize, where trolling and shit-posting and white supremacy are inescapable realities — except everyone can change their crap surroundings with the push of a button.
Of course, teleportation comes with its own hazards and does little to diminish how all-consuming love, friendship, family, and school can feel to teenagers, including 17-year-old Anna, the novel’s protagonist. Point B, out today, offers a prescient look into how those coming of age in a suddenly unfamiliar world might be affected by the ongoing pandemic (though, of course, Magary had no clue the coronavirus was coming when he wrote it).
GEN spoke with Magary about his decision to self-publish Point B, where to be “very online in 2020,” and his life in quarantine.
GEN: What went into the decision to self-publish this book, after publishing your previous books with major imprints, and how much that was affected by the Covid-19 situation?
Magary: I spent the bulk of later 2019 hoping that a white knight publisher would come in and grab [Point B]. And it didn’t happen, and I was like, “Okay, well, I’m going to have to still publish it.” I’ve written enough [that] I have a fairly good sense of my own work, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, so I wasn’t just going to throw it in the fucking trash can.
I would prefer to not be under these circumstances at all. But yeah, sure — it’s nice to have something new out there that people can consume, to feel as if there’s still artists at work. And I use the term artist for myself very loosely.
Does it feel like the story is tied to the strangeness of our current situation or more like it comes from before this time, when we couldn’t imagine a situation like the one we’re in now?
Right, yeah, it’s set in the future, but because people are outside and stuff, it almost feels like it takes place in the past. Obviously, I didn’t write it with a horrific pandemic in mind. It’s reflective of the time we experienced prior to this, which caused this and had a hand in how we dealt with it so ineffectively that we are now stuck in this.
A lot of current events are at play in the story: #MeToo, men’s rights activist groups, neo-Nazis, trolling. Were you trying to work in all of those things, or was it just unavoidable to have them seep in?
It’s the latter. It’s just unavoidable. It’s the world we live in, and it’s been this world now for goddamned years. It is horrifyingly persistent in how nonsensical it’s been. Regardless of what happens in November, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to quell anytime soon.
Where did your idea for the story originate?
I had written Point B as a completely different novel years and years and years ago, and I got 30,000 words in and scrapped it. I had another book that I also abandoned, but I had characters I liked from that book, and I had a concept I liked from the original incarnation of Point B. And then I went to a reunion at my old prep school — it’s pretty clear that [the book] is based on a school I went to. And then I was like, “Okay, if I take these characters and I take this plot and I plunk it down here, and the concept is you can go anywhere in the world at the push of a button, except these people can’t, there’s instantly a hook: I really want these people to break out and be able to port around, because that’s what I would like to do.” Then it all started to make sense, and then it flowed naturally after that.
Why did you decide to make the protagonist a teenage girl? Did having a teenage daughter play a role in that choice?
It actually didn’t. I noticed in the two other novels I had written, the things I enjoyed writing the most were teenage parts… so I was like, “Why don’t I just make the whole book that?” And so that’s what I did, and I did it with a female protagonist to challenge myself because I’m 43 years old — I should know some shit about it, how the opposite sex thinks and works, and so I did what I could.
The setting of the book is “very online.” Where do you feel like the cutting edge of being “very online” is today? Twitter? Reddit?
Oh, it’s TikTok. It’s not Twitter. Twitter’s for old people now. My daughter is on TikTok for hours a day, which is probably not healthy, and that’s a reflection on me as a parent. I remember she said to me, and I tweeted this, “I don’t want politicians on TikTok. That’s our platform.”
I’m not on TikTok. If I’m using it, it’s already outdated. So the online brain that I think of is my poisoned online brain where I’m just opening Twitter and seeing the bad news and getting angry about it and yelling at people online to no good end. Younger people, I think, are a bit more adept at it and are smarter about it and were just born into this world.
Is there any particular content or medium that you’ve been engaging with a lot more since quarantine started?
I’ve been playing more Madden. That’s really it. I really can’t look at Twitter as much anymore, even though it’s literally my job to look at Twitter and see all the bad shit happening and comment on it.
And the other thing is that — frankly, this will sound arrogant — but I’ve been so into Point B, that’s been my escape. I have a Spotify soundtrack for the book that I listen to when I get high as shit, and that’s where I prefer to live at times instead of being in the real online world and being miserable.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about the Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog Dot Com, a consortium of former Deadspin writers, which returned this week. What about the lack of sports made this an ideal time for it to come back?
We’re doing it now because the sponsor offered us to do it [around the draft], the same way that a sponsor set us up during the Super Bowl. The draft is really the only major sports event that can take place right now.
The other thing is that there’s been a ton left on the table during quarantine about how the sports world has handled all of this, from baseball experimenting with playing in a fucking bio-dome in Arizona to John Daly chugging vodka and getting retweeted by the president. And how ESPN is essentially reduced to being like, “Today in sports history” and centering all of their programming around a padded Michael Jordan documentary that is essentially a rerun to anyone who is 35 and older. There’s just a lot that is not being said about how they’re handling this, and we are uniquely qualified to do it.
Well, that’s about all I had for you. Thank you for giving me the time. I appreciate it, and I really enjoyed the book.
Yay! You liked the book?
I did!
Well, good. I win.