scribbled thoughts and messy writing
March 25, 2019
Categories:
books
(Spoiler warning.)
(cw: depression, suicide, alcoholism, death)
Version Control is one of my favourite books and this was my second reading of it. I first read it near the end of grad school and it contained many themes that I was personally interested in or related to: Rebecca’s “blackout season” (post-graduation unemployment slump), Phillip’s grad school depression, time travel, academia, and discussions about race/blackness in America.
One thing that appealed to me about Version Control’s handling of time travel was the video game aspect of going back and trying again. But, as one character points out, when you go back you don’t have the knowledge and lived experiences of your current self. If you go back and become your previous self again, what’s to say you’d do any better the second time? He discusses this in the context of living as a Black person in America, stating that history makes you who you are, and gives a visceral example of going back to times of slavery and predicting that they would lose their modern sensibilities and “revert” back to the mentality of being slaves.
I am no arbiter of “literary” “merit” but I will say that I can’t begin to articulate the affection I have for Version Control. I felt an excitement while reading this that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I’m glad I reread this, even though I was dreading reliving the memories of grad school. Next time I’m due for a reread I’ll probably finally buy a copy.