It made me feel some sort of strange way to read this in 2022. I tried reading it back in the 90s and found it boring, like I was just reading about some people doing nothing without much of a plot. 30 years later, it feels like a weird time capsule of my own experiences. Or at least, my thoughts and feelings. I didn't live in the desert, but I did feel that existential ennui that permeates the book. And I had a low-paying McJob, of course.. Funny to see my 90s disillusionment with the previous generation - of them taking all the good stuff and leaving us to struggle with scraps - blasted across the pages. Unfortunately, it feels like it has only gotten worse over the decades, turning this book into a strange nostalgia trip into another time and place.

"I felt dishonest, like I was coasting in my foriegnness. I felt I was being excommunicated from the shin jin rui - that's what the Japanese newspapers call people like these kids in their twenties at the office - new human beings. It's hard to explain. We have the same group over here and it's just as large, but it doesn't have a name - an X generation - purposefully hiding itself. There's more space over here to hide in - to get lost in - to use as camouflage. You're not allowed to disappear in Japan."

There's a strange sense of "innocence lost" I get when I read this book.

Даремно я аж так відкладав прочитання цієї книги про моє ж власне покоління.
Не повторюйте мою помилку, о народжені приблизно між 1960 і 1980 роками, або ті хто хочуть краще нас зрозуміти ;)
Я в повному захваті: наскільки дотепно, ненав'язливо, весело і мудро вона написана. При нагоді читну ще дещо пана Дуґласа. 5+ (п'ять з плюсом)

Seems so naive in hindsight. Doesn't feel accelerated at all—au contraire. Even then, this turns out to have been an 'old people's novel' by the time it was published already.
Do remember the theme of seeking an Escape: anything to avoid the treadmill of corporate junk, and forget the gloom of the eighties while also being wary of the post-yuppie continuation of glamkitsch and greed.
Also, apparent are the first signs of 'ironically disenfranchised appropriation of popular culture'—it's probably where the Ironic Age kicked off for real—look at interviews with Cobain or Beck—when by the mid-nineties many were already sick of the 'I'm just doin' my thing' vibe.
Don't think the work truly defined the age or encapsulated it after all, but it certainly is a quaint object of the age in its timid, hazy nostalgia.

Читала цей роман вперше в російському перекладі в студентські часи і оскільки цілком забула, про що він, гадаю, що читати його варто в віці максимально близькому до віку автора під час написання - 30 років. Поза тим читати в українському перекладі забутий для себе текст - це особливе задоволення (російський примірник кілька тижнів тому безповоротно відправився на макулатуру). Багато думок, фантазій і тверджень персонажів викликали в мене приступи тривоги, аж надто сильно перегукуючись з моїми ж міркуваннями і страхами. Тому хоча й сюжет, як на мене, практично відсутній, але емоційно-психологічні враження від тексту повністю це компенсовують.