Do you ever feel like everything was better before? Actually, does anyone not feel this way? We’ve all got a different “before” in mind—before the pandemic, before 2016, before the internet, before the atom bomb, and on, and on—but the consensus on this front seems to be near-universal. We are all Tony Soprano, trudging to the foot of the driveway, scooping up The Star-Ledger (RIP print edition, 1832-2025) and thinking: lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.Article continues after advertisement
It was late 2021 when I started writing what would become my debut novel, Retro, and I was alternately seduced and repulsed by how inescapable nostalgia had become, from pop culture to style to politics. Every movie was a sequel, every TV show a reboot, every fashion trend a revival. While the far-right peddled this insidious fantasy of the so-called good old days—before such pesky innovations as civil rights and women’s lib—even my most progressive friends felt the future looked ominous and uninviting, an AI-saturated wildfire-scorched hellscape where our every move would be surveilled, gambled on, and monetized; where everything we could buy would be both terrible and diabolically expensive, sold to us via a subscription model, the price of which would increase with each passing month, until we all were dead.
