Rick Moody’s “The Albertine Notes” presents a compelling look into a post-apocalyptic world in which a core of humanity survives, but is plagued by the hopelessness and degradation of their new environment. It only makes sense for a society in which all hope has departed, but all people have NOT to look toward the past in its attempt to make the present and the immediate future more inherently bearable. Iroically, while reading this short story, the stoy of the videogame ‘Bioshock’ was brought to mind. While bioshock doesn’t deal with the post-apocalypse per se, it does deal with a utopian vision gone wrong, in which what was once a gleaming city has been reduced to drug lords and thieves, all rats scrambling in an eternal race for power and survival. The world of Rick Moody’s Albertine is no different. It paints a picture of druglords, prostitutes, and even a new generation of murderers thriving off of the mysterious precognitive powers of the drug.
It is a peculiar experiene to be able to relive one’s own memories as vividly as during their original occurance; and the novel suggests it is also a dangerous one since approximately half of all Albertine uses are likely not to go your way. In a way, the Albertine cartel which controls its supply, has become the overloard in this lawless new world. They issue mandates telling the public what to do and not do with the drug, how to use it to maximum effect, etc. This suggests that in a non-linear experience of time (which this is, if we consider that one is able to physically reside in the president, but experience the more suitable mental state of anywhere in their past), those who control the flow of time come out to be the winners. And they don’t only control the flow of time….Like any modern day mafia, they are essentially in control of everyday life, to the extent that life after the apocalypse deals with the goal of AVOIDING the new reality of everyday life. Those who want to live, but ‘not in the now’ are the perfect subject of this mafia’s reign. And in the end, isn’t that what the apocalypse is all about? That is, in a modernist perspective, changing reality to the point where it is so far removed from the original world-order, that it becomes impossible to continue living without something within you dying—in this case, not only hope, but progress and kairotic time along with it.
And what’s this about killing someone within a memory? Is this Inception all over again??
