“Hours later, after having searched the neighborhood alleys and bars, X returned lonely and sad to his room. He lay on his bed and thought about his life long ago in a temperate land of pretty hills and thick soil, where people lived in sturdy well-built homes and earned sufficient pay and leisure time for an occasional trip to the tropics.”
In this scene X questions everything he’s ever believed in his life. Discuss how his attitude toward work and livelihood change after this scene.
4. Cates uses satire to point out the absurdities of the Global Free Market. For instance, in one job interview X is asked to display “evidence of sacrifice’: “We want to know you’ve suffered. We don’t believe in giving jobs to people who don’t appreciate them. We believe that if you’ve sacrificed for the job, you won’t quite on us.” Pick your favorite skewering of economic truth to discuss.
5. Besides the Global Free Market, what other aspects of modern life are satirized in this novel?
6. One reviewer said the author is a “relentless smart aleck”: Are there any instances in which you think the author has gone too far in his skewering the conventional ideas of modern society?
7. What does the genre of satire enable an author to accomplish that other forms of literature do not?
8. What particular situations in the novel strike you as particularly funny or moving? Or both? And why?
9. Who, with the exception of X, is your favorite character, and why?
10. X loves C, and despite the fact that she is very different from him, he spends his life trying to find her and be with her. He also loves the woman in pink lame. Describe how X's relationships to C and the woman in pink lame complement one another.