"Perfection"

In the early 00’s (maybe 2001? 2002?) I was already living in Germany, but the company I was working at asked if I would be willing to be staffed on a project in Detroit for a few months.

Besides my mother growing up there, I had no connection to Detroit. I also had no interest in spending long, boring weekends during the fall months sitting in a Marriott hotel room three floors down from the client (GM) in the ‘Renaissance’ Center in the heart of, at the time, a mostly abandoned downtown Detroit.

This was still during the aftershocks of the 2000 web 1.0 crash. It was a small miracle that I still had a well-paying job at a digital consultancy. I also wanted the equivalent of a German Green Card (Unbefristeter Aufenthaltsurlaub). To get it, I had to be consistently employed for at least five years, and the key to keeping said well-paying job was staying billable. I couldn’t be choosy or turn down staffing requests.

My best friend, as well as my aunt and her family, were both living in Brooklyn at the time—Park Slope and Prospect Heights, respectively. So I negotiated weekend fly-backs to NYC and took the assignment.

Since I would be in NYC over Halloween, I threw my Dirndl in my suitcase. Not surprisingly, it was a big hit.

I remember being at a party in Williamsburg. A girl was commenting on how authentic my ‘German wench’ costume was. I explained that I actually lived in Germany, and that they were a dime a dozen at secondhand stores.

‘OH MY GOD! Do you live in Berlin?’ she said, eyes growing wide.
’No, I live in Munich’
Blank stare.
’You know….Octoberfest, Lederhosen, yodel-ay-Hee-HOO’

The conversation sort of drifted off after that.

This brings me to Perfection, the book by Italian author Vincenzo Latronico, which was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. The Europeans podcast (where I heard about it), captures it thusly:

The portrait of 2010s Berlin captured in Perfection is as devastatingly smart and spot-on as everyone says it is. Do yourself a favor if you haven’t read it yet (especially if you are a millennial with a lot of houseplants).

I’m an Xer, not a Millennial, and I never lived in Berlin. However, I remember this time very clearly. I was living an extended early adulthood as a newly minted global citizen, a proud member of the creative class, single, no kids, and was living, working and traveling all over Europe. There was a lot in this book I recognized.

The main characters are digital designers. Latronico absolutely nails the aesthetics of the time and the start of compulsively attempting to curate a specific (un)reality online. It reminded me of the initial rush of utopian excitement I felt at the onset of social media and its eventual curdling into something oppressive, sinister, and anti-life.

And at risk of sounding like someone who talks about ‘the good old days,’ it makes me a little melancholy about the current state of Berlin and San Francisco.

I spent my studying years living between the upper and lower Haight during peak Grunge. San Francisco was a weird, funky, affordable, and fun place to be young. In 1998 or so, it felt like overnight it was overtaken by tech. The price of everything tripled (at least). It seems something similar has happened to Berlin.

Reading the book reminded me of a sentiment expressed by the great Fran Liebowitz:

“But I am aware of the effect of the internet, which is suffocating. One of the things it does is flatten everything. It flattens geography and also time. Kids see images, and they’re always coming up to me saying, ‘Oh, this looks so great!’ But images are not life. I know this is a shock to people.”

Anyway, though a bit bleak, it's a good book, read it!