I think, though, that the novel is a mirror of our time and not of its time, as it were–that while it retains a 70s teen movie aesthetic, it is most definitely about not just lost innocence—that happens early on—it’s about learning to live with despair. As has been noted in other posts, you only behave like this if you feel like your life is empty, and the black hole of the title is not about a generation as much as it is about the loneliness that drives all of these bad decisions in here. Think of Eliza, standing half-naked at the sink and forgetting she had clothes on, or Dave, who imagines he can kill his way into Chris’ heart and life, or Chris, who suffers as the object of desire, with her fantasy of floating away until all of her problems just stop.

Despair, and it’s parents, loneliness and the inevitability of aging and death, are all here. And the AIDS metaphor is very of the early 90s/late 80s. If this were a mirror to the 70s, it wouldn’t be about disease and sex. It would just be about sex.

Think of Orwell, in other words. You are always writing about your times even when you are not writing about your times, he said. I think of it often.