What would Scared Straight look like if it were for slacker 30-somethings? That is essentially the premise of this sarcastically dystopian novel. As the dust jacket indicates, The Transition is a six-month program for people with mounting credit card debt, etc., that promises to socially integrate them into modern society. Seems banal enough on the surface, until you realize how it’s really a eugenics program by another name. But, the discovery of that impetus behind the program doesn’t come along all at once.
Like Karl, as he begins the program with this wife, Genevieve, you might take on a stance of amused detachment as you first learn about The Transition. After all, it’s kind of like they just get to continue working their same jobs (Karl writes reviews online of products he’s never used and ghost writes essays for high school and college students; Genevieve teaches elementary school), except some of their salary is garnished to pay back their debts. Oh, and they have to live with their mentors, a couple employed by The Transition who do a lot of hands-on forming of good habits and dispelling of bad habits in the form of employment, nutrition, responsibility, relationship, finances, and self-respect. The implementation of these lessons is where the more sinister elements begin to creep in. Karl and Genevieve need to write 500 words a day in a journal, read The Guardian and The Telegraph each morning, and take charge of cooking for all members of the house at least one night a week. This all seems well and good until Karl starts missing his writing targets and gets a demerit. Two more, and, well, he won’t want to find out what the consequence is.
Even as he is punished, you may be wondering about the ecological validity of the consequence. Will punishing his missteps in the program really lead him to change in his “real” life outside of The Transition? What reason does Karl have to believe that? And, what does success look like once he has returned? Will he and Genevieve both succeed at making the Transition? What if one does and one doesn’t? Will they “fuck things up from the inside” à la that one dude’s plan in Ghost World? Kennard’s skillful exploration of the particulars of their participation in the program prompted these questions as I read.
During an English lecture in my undergrad days, the professor argued that when an author has a character in a novel engage in the act (art) of writing, that is the author telling you their opinion about writing as a craft. So, when Karl’s mentors force him to read the papers each morning and he begrudgingly learns something about the world that he can then insert into his product reviews, that’s Kennard telling us how maybe he uses nonfiction to inspire his fiction. In a related moment of art imitating life, you get a sense of Kennard’s dim view of corporate trainings early on as well when Karl mutters “The medium is the message and the medium is fucking PowerPoint” (p. 29) during the introductory group lecture on The Transition. One of the most relatable things I’ve read in a novel, and an effective bit of foreshadowing.
One of the ways the mentors in The Transition attempt to reach their charges is through a collection of parables in a mentoring handbook. Short stories meant to generate discussion with those in the program. Again, maybe this is Kennard telling us that we can learn from such stories. I found myself reflecting on those parables and the larger one of the novel as I read. Although I’ve had personal and professional setbacks, sure, they are nothing like the struggles of Karl and Genevieve. Thinking about their experience in this program gives me the space to think, hey “maybe things really aren’t so bad” with my life at this point. I appreciate that gentle moment of clarity as much as the humor and slices of life in the rest of Kennard’s novel.
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