I have good news.

In a future world in which the United States is a crumbling mess of single-party, military-obsessed paranoia, Taco Bell still exists.

Gary Shteyngart’s “Super Sad True Love Story” envisions a not-too-distant time in which China and Norway have become dominant nations while America tries fix after fix to restore its former standing in the world.  It is in that world that Lenny Abramov goes to work at a company catering to the rich who want to live forever.

How do I know Taco Bell is alive and well?  One day Lenny goes to assess his net worth and examines his holdings:

“My AmericanMorning portfolio, even though it had been pegged to the yuan, had lost 10 percent of its value because, unbeknownst to me, the idiot asset managers had stuck the failing ColgatePalmoliveYum!BrandsViacomCredit albatross into the mix…”

Yum! Brands is, of course, Taco Bell’s parent company, and while I’m sure the people of this America will still enjoy some KFC or Pizza Hut, there’s no way they survive without Taco Bell.

The story at times reads likes excerpts from the movie “Idiocracy” with a population of people who think books are ridiculous and speak in what today we see as the downside of an increasingly texting-based communication system.  In fact, everyone wears a device called an apparat, which they use constantly to view streams of information, shop and see instant data on everything and everyone around them.

Of course, we see elements of that culture all around us today.  I will also not absolve myself of that at all.  Yesterday at the grocery store I answered several emails, sent a text and checked the weather all on a device that also stored my virtual shopping list.  I was there for 10 minutes.

Lenny has a love interest — the “love story” part of the super sadness.  Her name is Eunice, and she’s a younger, hipper member of this new society that the older, dorkier Lenny has trouble fitting into.  She also has a habit that reminded me of Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin.  While walking in New York, Eunice comments on the distance between Lenny’s apartment and the available services nearby.

“‘Looks like I’ll get some exercise walking to the train,’ she said. ‘Ha ha.’  This was what her generation liked to add to the end of sentences, like a nervous tic. ‘Ha ha.'”

Ovi’s Twitter feed is a thing of absolute beauty, and frequently includes English messages that end in a hail of laughter:

For as much as this book deals with sadness and people struggling in a world that seems more and more devoid of humanity, it does feature strong messages about what it means to keep going and not give in.

Lenny at one point attends a religious gathering with Eunice’s family at Madison Square Garden, where he sees an arena full of people he thinks are feeling undue pressure to be perfect.  He imagines addressing the audience:

“‘You have nothing to be ashamed of,’ I would say. ‘You are decent people.  You are trying.  Life is very difficult.'”

Indeed.

Seeing that a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time is being made into a movie is a tremendous push for me to actually remember to read it.

This time, it’s Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” 

The book came out more than a decade ago and I’m pretty surprised it’s taken this long to become a movie.  I know several people who really connected with it — enough for one to say to me last week, “I hope they don’t f@%& it up with the movie.”

Now that I’ve read it, I have to agree.  There are lots of characters we all feel a kinship with, but sometimes a story keeps throwing at you experiences you’ve had, lines you’ve had people tell you and a narrator who might as well be reading archives from your personal thoughts.

I’m not saying my formative years mirrored those of the main character, Charlie, but we certainly had some similar experiences.

This story is about what it’s like to be a little different, to be in view of the mainstream but not inside.  Charlie wants to be like he perceives everyone else.  He wants someone to tell him “how to be different in a way that makes sense.”  But he thinks and reacts in ways that are outside of what his friends and classmates do naturally.  What’s normal and easy for them sometimes seems like a Herculean challenge.

The story begins with him starting his first day of high school, friendless and anxious about what is in store.  He’s got a popular older brother who just left for college and a sister at the same school.  They help him when they can, but they’re so busy with their own lives that those conversations are rare at the beginning.

He makes friends at a football game with step-siblings Patrick and Sam, whom he initially mistakes for a boyfriend and girlfriend.  He’s almost immediately in love with Sam, who quickly tells him not to think of her like that.   

But despite her words, his feelings for her only grow as they become close.  He knows nothing is going to happen, but he can’t help it.  “I wish I could stop being in love with Sam.  I really do.”

Is there a worse feeling?  To understand — to really know — that you shouldn’t feel that way, but you can’t help it? 

There’s so much more I want to say about this book, but that would definitely be veering into the range of things that are far too personal to post here.

Let me say that I knew before I started reading that Sam was played in the movie by Emma Watson, which I don’t think is a bad choice.  But even knowing that, I still pictured Sam differently.  More like Lily Collins.

The story itself is written entirely in letters, which is something I actually once was considering for my writing project.  Since this book came out long before that, I’m glad I went in a different direction.  That wouldn’t have seemed very creative.

My friend Brooke includes a relevant song with her book posts and I’m totally stealing that here.  Out of coincidence, I happened to be listening a lot to a Missy Higgins album with the song “Sweet Arms of a Tune” around the time I was reading.  I think it nails the tone of large parts of this book so well:

“What law says you can’t love a maniac?”

I’m becoming convinced that’s the quote that may one day appear on my wedding announcement, just below an artsy black-and-white photo of my fiancee and I staring longingly at each other over a Taco Bell dinner.  I’ll let you decide if the maniac is me or her.

Actually, it’s a line from Paul Auster’s novel “Invisible,” the latest in a string of his books that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.  One of the things I like so much about his writing is that his stories are so distinct from one another — there’s no “thing” he does that makes his books seem like interchangeable stories.

In “Invisible,” one of the defining style characteristics is a complete lack of quotation marks.  It’s amazing, as if he decided to write the whole thing and go back to put in the quote marks later, but never did.  It takes a few pages to get used to, but then becomes completely transparent.  I’d be interested to know why he made that choice.  Auster also nails a dual-narrator, changing tenses thing that is way harder to pull off than he makes it seem.

Part of the story takes place at Columbia University where the main character, Adam, is a student who aspires to be a writer.  At one point he’s discussing his potential with an older guy he met at a party and mentions that he writes for the school newspaper.

“Do you get paid for your articles?”
“Of course not, it’s a college paper.”

This exchange actually made me laugh.  When I wrote for the newspaper at my undergrad school, we also didn’t get paid.  It was an issue I explored in the documentary I made about the paper during my senior year, and the editors I spoke to then were very split on the issue.  Some thought paying writers would lead to more interested writers and better content.  Others argued that aspiring journalists should, you know, want to actually try writing for a newspaper.

Another section that has little bearing on the plot, but made me think of my college days happens later after Adam has a frightening night with the man.  He recounts the two of them walking in the city, being approached by a mugger with a gun, and then watching as the man stabs the kid.  He’s reading the paper in the student center when he finds out the kid’s body was found in a nearby park with many more stab wounds than seemed necessary.

“I chanced upon the article while drinking a cup of coffee in the Lions Den, the snack bar on the ground floor of the undergraduate student center…”

As important as this stabbing tale is to the book, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the awesomeness of the snack bar’s name.  Where I went to school, the similar-sounding establishment was called the Encore Cafe.  After a renovation, it’s now known as Benny’s Bistro. 

I would have been much more enthusiastic about going to a Lions Den.