{"id":964,"date":"2001-12-18T02:57:58","date_gmt":"2001-12-18T02:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=964"},"modified":"2012-04-25T02:58:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T02:58:50","slug":"zeitgeist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/?p=964","title":{"rendered":"Zeitgeist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zeitgeist<\/em> by Bruce Sterling<\/h3>\n

Twelve people attended the discussion of Bruce Sterling’s latest book. It tells the story of Leggy Starlitz, a music promoter on tour in Eastern Europe with a girl group similar to the Spice Girls. During the course of the book Leggy handles crises with his band, experiences weird political situations, and suddenly has to face the ex-wife and daughter he hasn’t seen in over a decade. Nine of the people in our group finished the book, and the others read about half of it.<\/p>\n

Most of us thought Zeitgeist<\/em> was a lot of fun. Sterling’s writing is humorous and accessible. We liked the whacked-out worldview and the characters from the fringes of society. Leggy seems to be a realistic portrait of a world-weary music producer. We loved his interactions with the band and its entourage, particularly when he tried to predict the future of one girl leaving the band for a solo career. We were struck by his acknowledgement of his band’s shallowness, particularly when he rejects a girl for being too beautiful and talented to fit in. Leggy’s daughter Zeta is a wondrously believable teenager who brings in a fresh and humorous outlook.<\/p>\n

Some in our group had problems with the book. Two of us just had no interest in reading a book about the music industry. One person wanted the book to be more strongly plotted. Several people complained that Zeitgeist<\/em> is falsely labeled by the publisher as science fiction. It’s a mainstream novel with a tiny bit of magic realism, but we could find no SF elements in the story.<\/p>\n

Overall we enjoyed Zeitgeist<\/em> a great deal, and would recommend it to readers of good fiction. After the meeting several of us went to Garcia’s, where we had a nice dinner.<\/p>\n

— A. T. Campbell, III<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling Twelve people attended the discussion of Bruce Sterling’s latest book. It tells the story of Leggy Starlitz, a music promoter on tour in Eastern Europe with a girl group similar to the Spice Girls. During the course of the book Leggy handles crises with his band, experiences weird political situations, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=964"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":966,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964\/revisions\/966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fact.org\/reading\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}