This is a coming-of-age text at the far end. Our hero goes forth…to withdraw from the fray.
Facing retirement, he reverts to being what he tried to become as a young man, a cultural journalist. Now, like an ur-novelist, he delivers his tale in installments, that is, in a daily blog.
Bildungsroman would overstate the case, but “diary” seems quotidian. Hipsters might allow that his kaleidoscopic time capsule, distilled from 1,306 posts over five years, 2006-2010, is a blognovel—or bricolage, “a technique,” says Wikipedia, “where works are constructed from various materials available or on hand. These materials may be mass-produced or junk.”
In any case, a Proustian sense of loss drives the plot. A man who relied on the imagination of others shuffles off the stage, taking snapshots, spouting shop talk, launching parodies. Rejuvenated, he hangs up his jock. The curtain falls. Motes of dust settle in the darkness.
Junker’s ramble include rants, reminisces, and reviews. He savages Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen and Richard Serra. He denounces foodieism. He directs renewed attention to Edward Bok and The Tetherballs of Bougainville. He insists Kierkegaard is Post-Avant. He details his day-to-day struggles at the litmag…and the agony of wrapping it up and searching for a successor. Plus, he includes some of his iPhone snapshots!
Maybe An Old Junker is just the predictably autobiographical nonfiction novel of an ex-litmag editor—Junker founded the journal ZYZZYVA in 1985 and retired last year.
