Transmission

Berglund Authority Level 3

by Jeffrey Barlow <barlowj@pacificu.edu>
Editor, Interface

Kunzru, Hari. Transmission.
New York: Dutton, 2004.

Writers of book reviews much prefer to be able to recommend books, rather than to warn their readers against them. In reviewing fiction works that show some element of the impact of the Internet, we most often find ourselves in this latter, warning, mode. It is therefore a great pleasure to encounter a book that we can enthusiastically embrace. Hari Kunzru's Transmission, A Novel, is easily the most interesting and rewarding work we have encountered in this calendar year.

Mr. Kunzru previously wrote The Impressionist, which was generally well received, but thought by several reviewers to be uneven. [1] With Transmission, Mr. Kunzru has found both a wider audience and a more positive critical reception. [2] This is in part because Transmission, while giving wonderful and usually comedic insights into the cultural confusion created by the processes of globalization, also speaks to an increasingly universal concern for the impact of computers and the Internet.

Mr. Kunzru is extremely interested in computers and computing. His very creative personal web site [3] makes excellent and imaginative use of electronic materials. The protagonist of Transmission, Arjun Mehta, is, like many of us, also fascinated with computers:

Arjun glimpsed a secret in this yes-no logic... At last laying his hands on his own machine he became a computing hermit, fleeing into a place where communication was governed by clearly laid-out rules. Logic gates. Truth Tables. The world of people could go and rot. He closed his bedroom door on it. (100-101)

This love for computers eventually brings Arjun to a programming job in Redmond, Washington. Although he has come from quite a different environment in India, the worlds he had opened in his computer prepared Arjun for this experience: "Redmond was a town with nice graphics and an intuitive user interface. His kind of town." (50)

Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for Mr. Kunzru's readers, Arjun is also fascinated with viruses. Soon he has produced a virus, in an effort to avoid being laid off, that threatens every machine in the world: "Across American citizens started to look with suspicion at the machines on their desks... By the time talk radio talk radio got hold of it, a consensus had emerged that the attack should be avenged in blood." (145)

While the plot is somewhat manic and involves the improbable meeting of computers, love, Indian movie-making, and poor puzzled Arjun, the whole serves as a pastiche for provocative insights into globalization and the cultural stew that is resulting from the impact of the Internet.

Anybody who appreciates imaginative fiction and the insights of outsiders into contemporary American culture would enjoy this book. But for those of us interested in the impact of the Internet it should be considered required reading. The next time you hear an Indian accent in the telephone responding to your plea for technical assistance with the problems of your new software, you will find it impossible not to imagine Arjun on the other end.

Footnotes:

[1] For a very positive review by Daniel Mendelsohn writing in The New York Magazine, see:
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/books/reviews/5843/;
for a much more negative one, Susannah Meadows writing in The New York Times, see:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/full-page?res=
9A06E6DF1331F931A25756C0A9649C8B63

[2] See Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times at:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=
980CE4DF143FF934A25756C0A9629C8B63

[3] Found at: http://www.harikunzru.com/index2.html Because his site, like his writings, is produced with as much intent to entertain and puzzle as to enlighten, a more straightforward summary such as that found at:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/
authors/?p=auth03B5O073112634971
might also prove helpful in understanding Mr. Kunzru and his work.