I Hate the Internet: A novel - Hardcover

Kobek, Jarett

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781257612 ISBN 13: 9781781257616

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2016

Synopsis

In New York in the middle of the twentieth century, comic book companies figured out how to make millions from comics without paying their creators anything. In San Francisco at the start of the twenty-first century, tech companies figured out how to make millions from online abuse without paying its creators anything.

In the 1990s, Adeline drew a successful comic book series that ended up making her kind-of famous. In 2013, Adeline aired some unfashionable opinions that made their way onto the Internet. The reaction of the Internet, being a tool for making millions in advertising revenue from online abuse, was predictable. The reaction of the Internet, being part of a culture that hates women, was to send Adeline messages like 'Drp slut ... hope u get gang rape.'

Set in a San Francisco hollowed out by tech money, greed and rampant gentrification, I Hate the Internet is a savage indictment of the intolerable bullshit of unregulated capitalism and an uproarious, hilarious but above all furious satire of our Internet Age.

About this title

Review

Could we have an American Houellebecq? Jarett Kobek might come close, in the fervor of his assault on sacred cows of our own secretly-Victorian era, even if some of his implicit politics may be the exact reverse of the Frenchman's. I just got an early copy of his newest, I Hate The Internet, and devoured it - he's as riotous as Houellebecq, and you don't need a translator, only fireproof gloves for turning the pages (Jonathan Lethem)

This book has soul as well as nerve ... My advice? Log off Twitter for a day. Pick this up instead. (New York Times)

The best novel by a man I've ever read (Caroline Criado-Perez)

This succinct, surprising, infinitely self-knowing book is the Infinite Jest of the Twitter age ... it's vicious. It's a hoot. (The Times)

An anti-novel about why San Francisco, most beautiful of American cities, has become so awful...tremendous fun, inventive, smart (Rob Doyle Irish Times)

A quite thrillingly funny and vicious anatomy of hi-tech culture and the modern world in general ... there are so many brilliant one-liner definitions that it's hard not to keep quoting them ... when a 'bad novel' is this good, who needs a good one? (Steven Poole Guardian)

Extremely funny ... he's fast and furious but his prose also has elegance, rhythm and wit. Bill Hicks would have loved this book (Jane Graham The Big Issue)

Furiously enjoyable (Esquire UK)

Hilariously caustic ... His genius in this relentlessly quotable tirade is to hector you about the shady workings of money and power while making your laugh on every page (Anthony Cummins Metro)

Wildly entertaining ... as an act of sustained indignation, it's inspired - and has the effect of making most other writers seem coy and platitudinous ...he leaves you inspecting the carnage with a grin on your face (Spectator)

Book Description

'The Internet was a wonderful invention. It was a computer network which people used to remind other people that they were awful pieces of shit.'

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1781257612
• ISBN 13: 9781781257616
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 290