“I saw Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as a book about a 30-year friendship and creative collaboration. In a sense, this book is a classic Künstlerroman: it’s the coming of age of two artists that mirrors the coming of age of an industry. The first people to play video games as children are now in their forties or early fifties, and we call that the Oregon Trail Generation or Xennials, that little microgeneration. Gaming is part of our lives.” Gabrielle Zevin in Publisher’s Weekly
After hearing Zevin speak on the NY Times podcast, I knew this was a coming-of-age story for three people born in the seventies who grew up with video games. However, I did not realize until I read it how beautifully and masterfully she wrote about the characters and their relationships. The way she nailed the concept of friendship was amazing. This book was a page-turner for me. I couldn’t put it down until I finished it. When I ask myself who the story is about, I realize there are several ways to interpret the question. Each character is well developed, but beyond that, each designed video game tells a character’s story, and sometimes it isn’t even apparent to the character whose story is conveyed. This author is clever on so many levels.
Zevin introduces us to Sadie Green and Sam Masur when, as college students, they meet in a Cambridge, Massachusetts, train station. She is studying at MIT, and he is at Harvard. They are both noticing a Magic Eye poster, a random dot autostereogram popular in the 1990s. Sadie and Sam had been best friends as children. Yet, they had a falling out. Seeing this poster reunites them and foreshadows their ability to see more than meets the eye with their visionary adeptness as they use their technical skills to author a video game as partners. They are not romantic partners but a true collegial creative dynamic duo.
Marx Watanabe, Sam’s roommate, becomes their producer, and the three become a brilliant triangle of production. Marx is more interested in acting than the typical Harvard student, and from his fascination with Macbeth and Shakespeare that the Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow book title derives. In the discussion about this famous quote, the three friends debate whether the speech is bleak or hopeful. It becomes apparent during this discussion and many other intellectual arguments throughout the story that the main characters have different points of view. Each is brilliant, yet experiences from formative years inform each. Some of their backstories are traumatic, and some aspects are typical of others in what Zevin calls the Oregon Trail generation.
The first game that the threesome produced, Ichigo, was a huge success, and of course, with that success came a host of new decisions and plans. They eventually move their offices to California, hire more employees and their lives become incredibly complex. They also have to deal with some failures and disappointments. The emotions and conflicts in building their company, Unfair Games, cover many personal and professional highs and lows. The themes included in the characters’ interactions over their childhoods and young adulthoods are unique. Some such as friendship, disabilities, and mixed-race characters are part of many novels. However, other themes are not as common and provide riveting appeal. One was the parallels between the evolution of technology and the development of relationships with people who grew up with gaming. Another was the intersection of virtual and real worlds with a literary and poetic flair. Although I am not much into video games, I LOVED the game scenarios that included references to literature, history, and the developers’ lives.
