Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin
Ten years ago, or so, I was leading a library tech class demonstrating various apps and new online experience. Twitter had launched their Periscope service around that time, so I decided to do a live exploration of that. Periscope you may remember allowed people to jump in and out of people’s live video feeds all over the world. You might look in on a house party, a revolution . . . you name it. With m iPhone linked to an overhead projector, I delved in and out of live Periscope feeds for an audience of about 15 baffled patrons.
I hadn’t thought about Periscope until I picked up Little Eyes, the August selection for Anthony Jeselnik’s book club. The premise here is that people are buying little animatronics called kentukis that look like cute animals, kind of a Furby crossed with a digipet. The twist is that each kentuki is operated by one dedicated human user. Like walking through a door that ends in an undetermined room, these operators (“dwellers”) have no say in whose kentuki they end up residing in. The robot could be owned by someone incredibly exciting who likes to be an exhibitionist. Or you could find yourself stuck in a store window for hours on end.
As a metaphor, it’s useful enough to cover many aspects of the human condition, from the simple desire for human connection to broad varieties of sexual kink. It also serves as a broad (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) symbol of fate.
The story is told over a series of ongoing vignettes about various characters. Some own kentukis. Others are operators. Many live in third world countries and suffer from depression, loneliness and despair. Dwelling in a kentuki gives them a chance to escape.
Besides making me remember my experience demonstrating Periscope, the novel jogged another work memory for me. There used to be a virtual world called Second Life, that attempted to provide users with an entirely unique and literal secondary existence. I believe it’s still around, though I don’t think it ever really caught on with the public all that much. But one of my teen patrons back around 2008 or so was obsessed with Second Life and said he had a job as a security guard there. He came to the library after school because it was his only means of internet access, and therefore his only means of entering his second life. Incredulous, I remember watching him move his avatar around a room and sit behind a desk. As far as I know, he sat there for a couple of hours. Maybe doing virtual paperwork? Who knows.
I’d forgotten about all of that until I was about halfway into the book and feeling equally incredulous about its portrayal of people and their willingness to spend hours moving a little animal round a room, role playing as a pet, looking out at strange environs through a camera. Remembering my teen patron’s obsession with Second Life squashed my incredulity.
The best aspects of the novel are how the owner/dweller relationship is constantly defined by rising impulses that reaffirm humanity—or a least, what must be called the human condition. Sometimes this is taken to absurd lengths, like a Norwegian man who “liberates” kentukis from their owners and tries to modify them to maximize their freedom. Other examples are touching and ultimately devastating, like a lonely old woman who becomes overly protective of the young German woman who owns her kentuki and who might be entering into a bad relationship. Lines are crossed, people are compelled to forge connections beyond the owner/dweller dynamic—often to cold reactions.
Some of the vignettes fell flat to me, or I just didn’t engage with all of the characters. The book’s premise is perhaps better suited to a novella and it felt at times like Schweblin was working very hard to push the word count with repeated information. So there were some tedious aspects, but in the end I’m very glad I read this book. Which is far more than I can say about Savages.
