Some New Yorkers meet in an apartment on the east side of Manhattan to watch the 2022 Super Bowl – the Tennessee Titans versus the Seattle Seahawks, if you’re curious. However, their plans are thwarted by a massive power outage. The star attraction – that utterly banal marvel of technology, the home television – stares at them blankly and blackly. And they are left staring blankly and dumbly at the set and one another for several ensuing hours …
Bio:
Jerry Varsava is a professor of comparative literature and English at the University of Alberta. He has published widely on fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His current work focuses on the depiction of socio-political issues in the contemporary global novel across a spectrum of areas including the environment, economic precarity, and globalization, among others. Recent publications have examined novels by Jonathan Franzen and Dave Eggers, as well as global speculative fiction.