Book Review : Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (2022)
"What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever."
I stopped playing video games in 2015. It was a conscious decision on my part and it felt like renouncing my religion. My choice was motivated by not wanting to pony up money for a Playstation 4 and wanting time in my life to do other things. But I do still platonically love video games. They’re the purest expression of two things I love: art & competition. I became interested in Gabrielle Zevin's novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, when non-gamers told me it made them want to start gaming.
Spoiler: it did NOT make me want to pick up my old habit of playing video games, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't good.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is the story of a privileged young woman named Sadie Green and a downtrodden Korean-American kid named Sam Mazur, who bond over video games in a hospital. Their powerful, undying love of gaming keeps them close all their lives and even brings them professional success with their company Unfair Games, which specializes in original, arthouse games that earned them a strong cult following. The only thing that can separate them is the soul-killing bullshit of adult life.
Video Games As A Love Language
I enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. It's a smart, original and diligent novel that never makes the easy choices. Writing a nerdy love story between video game developers was no easy task because the process of making game is so thoroughly unsexy. It mostly involves bunch of dudes coding, modeling a shitload of stressful presentations to disconnected and unsatisfied execs. But Gabrielle Zevin made it happen. It isn't video games as much as art that is used as a language here.
Video game development might be unromantic, but the passion and selflessness of indie entrepreneurship isn't. Sadie and Sam are two complex, powerful characters with rich inner lives who create games as a form of self-expression. I wasn’t overly in love with the parts of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow where they developed the games, but I loved what they meant in their respective lives. Sadie and Sam talked to one another in person, but they talked to one another through their games and that was really fun.
Sometimes, I thought Sadie's worldview went a little unchallenged by the events of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, but whenever I thought Gabrielle Zevin would make the cliché heartwarming choice and turn her protagonist into a Mary Sue, she kept throwing monkey wrenches into Sadie's life that keep her doubting about her choices. The line Zevin surfs is super thin and blurry at times, but she never upstages her character. Sadie and Sam have a life of their own, which is the hallmark of good fiction.
Not everyone does, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow’s third wheel Marx Watanabe (which self-respecting Japanese-American couple name their son MARX of all names!?!) is somewhat of a walking and talking MacGuffin. Such a strong character-driven novel would've required him to have an inner lives as Sadie and Sam, but he never does. Even when he takes a more important role in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, he can’t seem to do anything, except what's convenient to the story.
"If you're always aiming for perfection, you won't make anything at all."
Love & Imperfection
Another idea explored in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow that I really liked is how the Sadie and Sam come to terms with their own idealism after it gets challenged by the imperfections of adult life. The second game Sadie and Sam publish is a highly conceptual affair called Both Sides, which turns out to be a total failure. That failure makes a dent in their relationship and makes Sadie’s insecurities flair up. I loved seeing her in a posture where she's not the noble one. It humanized he little privileged genius.
Sam was a little more difficult to understand and empathize with than Sadies, but Gabrielle Zevin dug deep enough into the wounded psyche of a survivor in order to find his vulnerabilities. Our boy Marx is instrumental in making it happen (which relates to my earlier point), as he often pulls Sam out of his self-imposed solitude to challenge his austere and self-righteous behavior. I don't believe he's as interesting as Sadie is, but it's important to understand the hole she leaves in his life when she leaves.
*
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is a solid, character-driven novel with an original concept and a blissful disregard for overused tropes and narratives. It has been crafted with love and diligence by Gabrielle Zevin and, to be honest, this is the only kind of novel I've been interested in reading for a couple years now. I don't think it was the best novel I've ever read like John Green claimed and I was perhaps a little jaded with video game development to be the target audience. but this is 100% worth reading.
