Boomer1

June 15, 2018
After his academic job search, his journalistic career, and his marriage proposal go down in flames, an angry young man moves into his mother's basement and starts a radical movement that pits millennials against baby boomers.Cassie and Mark, both bluegrass musicians, meet at a gig in Williamsburg, where "maybe fifty bespectacled recent college grads milled around drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon from the can and Miller High Life from the bottle." Cassie reflexively rebuffs Mark's friendly overtures, fearing that her girlfriend will notice and take umbrage. (Perhaps girlfriend is not the right word. "They lived together in a kind of Heiddegarian phenomenological relationship present, in which only the present moment of drinking or playing music or fucking existed, an immediate Dasein of mutually undecided and uncommented-upon cathexis, Eros and lust.") Despite Cassie's lack of enthusiasm, the two soon find themselves in a band, a relationship, and a shared apartment. But shortly after Mark gets her a fact-checking gig at the glossy magazine where he's on staff, their lives take starkly different turns. He loses his job, spends a year writing an essay on Emma Goldman that no one reads, then makes a financial and romantic mistake so serious he is forced to move home to Baltimore. There, he puts on a David Crosby mask, sets himself up in front of an upside-down poster of Jerry Garcia, and begins to issue YouTube screeds against baby boomers. His message: Retire now, greedy pigs, and free up the jobs for us. The videos go viral. Cassie, meanwhile, is riding a wave of good luck. She's become Director of Research at a new media company called RazorWire and is having a passionate relationship with a brilliant female co-worker. The money is fantastic even if the job is something less than that, fact-checking articles like "Seventeen Great New Recipes That Use Splenda Instead of Sugar." But when Mark, now known as Boomer1, loses control of his movement, bad things start to happen, first to Bob Weir, Eddie Bauer, Jann Wenner, and the AARP. Torday's (The Last Flight of Poxl West, 2015) gifts as a writer are brilliantly displayed in the details of Cassie's and Mark's inner and outer worlds. A third main character, Mark's mother, is not as compelling, and when this ambitious social novel comes to rest with her, it loses some steam.Stylishly written, cleverly observed, and boldly imagined.

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July 30, 2018
Torday (The Last Flight of Poxl West) constructs a hilarious story about generational conflict brought to a boiling point. Mark Brumfeld—a former journalist, bluegrass guitarist, and current English literature PhD candidate—is frustrated with the slow economy and job market, which he blames the baby boomers for. To allay his frustrations, Mark creates a web video series to encourage baby boomers to vacate their jobs, and for millennials to be ready to take them—by force, if necessary. But what started as catharsis quickly morphs into a domestic terrorist organization aimed at pushing boomers out of the workforce. The story is told through the perspectives of Mark; his ex-girlfriend Cassie, a punk bassist who remakes herself in new media; and Mark’s mother, Julia, a former wild-child turned suburban wife. Following the overeducated and underemployed, Torday traces the progress of radical thought from its foothold in the passionate young minds during the 1960s to its eventual domestication and corporatization. As tensions rise, the people in Mark’s life find themselves facing difficult questions about the accessibility of success and what it means to prevail in a system where so few manage to do so. While the ending feels anticlimactic, Torday’s wry examination of those attempting to survive in postrecession America is particularly poignant.

July 1, 2018

In his provocative second novel (after The Last Flight of Poxl West), Torday takes the idea of generational warfare a step further. When 31-year-old Mark Brumfeld--overeducated, underemployed, and freshly rejected by his bandmate and would-be fianc�e Cassie--moves back to his parents' house in Baltimore to lick his wounds, he channels his frustration into a series of furious "Boomer Missives" under the moniker Boomer1, replete with meme-ready calls to action: "Boom boom." "Retire or we'll retire you." "Resist much, obey little." Soon Mark's rants spawn copycats who turn his catchphrases into tangible action, manipulating American media and threatening retaliation. As the story moves toward a violent climax, Mark's ex-girlfriend Cassie, who has begun a lucrative career in new media, and his mother, Julia, a product of the 1960s with her own history of rebellion, both struggle to reconcile their sympathies with his beliefs with the true damage his videos have wrought. VERDICT Torday's novel is smart and culturally attuned, but its satirical edge suffers from a split narrative that leaves its protagonist too often a spectator to the movement he created. For fans of Nathan Hill's The Nix and Tony Tulathimutte's Private Citizens. [See Prepub Alert, 3/26/18.]--Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2018

Torday, who took off with the Sami Rohr Choice Award-winning The Last Flight of Poxl West, returns with the story of Mark Brumfeld, a bluegrass musician and newly minted English PhD. With no prospects, he retreats to the basement of his childhood home when his punk bassist girlfriend rejects his marriage proposal. From there, he launches a series of acidulous online video monologs blasting Baby Boomers for their grip on available jobs.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.