Just your everyday buddy-immigrant-inter-generational meditation on the meaning of the Internet: "A Big True" by Dina Nayeri

One of the critiques I've gotten on my own fiction from time to time is that it's trying to do too much at once. It's a difficult temptation for me to resist: I love a kitchen-sink-thrown-in novel that roams all over, like Moby Dick, or, more recently, Gnomon by Nick Harkaway. A lot of people seem to dislike this kind of story, though, which is why I'd guess there might be some out there who would object to Dina Nayeri's "A Big True." This story could be read as a blend of at least three types of fiction that are familiar to most readers:

1) A "buddy" story, as much of it revolves around the friendship between the main character Rahad and Wyatt, who are tenants of the same YMCA in Wilmington.

2) An immigrant story, as Rahad and his friend Wyatt struggle to adjust to life in America, even after having been in the country a long time.

3) A meditation on the meaning of the Internet for humanity. (Side note: this story follows the custom of capitalizing "Internet" as a noun. Other stories in this anthology have not. I only point this out because I know I'm the only person on Earth who noticed this.)

You could add to this list a fourth familiar type of story, the inter-generational conflict story, although that might already be swallowed up in the other three. For example, part of the conflict between Rahad and his daughter, Yasmine, stems from her getting mad at how little her father understands the Internet. But however many sub-categories of story you find in there, it's clear there are a lot, even for a longer short story like this one.

Appropriate that there are a lot of elements

The main character isn't at all tied to his native culture in Iran, although he doesn't hate it, either. We see him enjoying cultures from Ethiopia, Jamaica, America, Kenya, India, and Vietnam in the story. He's syncretic. So is his friend Wyatt. The story has a lot of ideas coming together, and its characters also are formed from a potpourri of ideas. One might conceivably call it a melting pot of ideas.

The melting pot is, of course, an old metaphor for America, one that's out of favor now. Other ideas have been offered in its place, such as the mosaic. But Nayeri has a more original idea: America is like the Internet. It's got the good and bad and old and new of the whole human race. It's everything. It's "made up of people trying to inscribe the void, to mark the very ether with what they've lived and what they know."

America has been criticized for a long time now for being gauche, for lacking a deep culture of its own. This criticism has largely come from old Europe, which has resented America's cultural influence in the world and seen it as poisonous. "A Big True" has a gentler view of it. America isn't an immature culture, because it's made up of so many ancient cultures. It's both a melting pot and a mosaic, as it has cultures blended together as well as kept intact. It's got its problems, but at its heart it's the sum of people striving for what matters most to them.

That's about all I've got for this story. It's sweet and it's pleasant and that's about all there is to say about it. It refers to a lot of music throughout, including a number of singers I'd never heard of before. So I'll close with Vigen Derderian, the "King of Iranian Pop":

And don't forget to check out Karen Carlson's take on this story over on her blog.