Brisk and Immersive
Rev the Engine
Feed is brisk—so brisk that reading it is kind of like zooming along in Titus's upcar. M.T. Anderson doesn't waste a lot of time in moving things along, and events often come at you with a rapid-fire pace. For example, when Titus and his friends hit The Rumble Spot, things happen very quickly with a lot of active word choice:
It was meg big big loud. There was everything there. There was about a million people it seemed, and lights, and the beat was rocking the moon. There was a band hung by their arms and their legs from the ceiling, and there was girders and floating units going up and down, and these meg youch latex ripplechicks dancing on the bar [...] Loga and Quendy and Calista were already out on the dance floor, and my feed was like going fried, going things about the dance and the pictures they were feedflinging across the dance floor of people on fire doing the moves. (5.44)
Titus's brain and his feed are going a million miles an hour, and we're right there with him. Part of this effect comes from all those "-ing" verbs ("present participle" is the fancy schmancy grammar-teacher term for them). These verbs convey immediate action, helping this passage move along at a good clip.
Are We in the Feed?
From the beginning, we're sucked into Titus's world. Part of this is because of the first-person point of view (go check out our "Narrator Point-of-View" section, if you haven't already), but the novel also replicates the experience of being within the feed—just like Titus and his friends. It's like you're part of that world and are plugged into the feed right along with them. Here's one place where we see this:
[A]nd there were all these frat guys that were wearing these, unit, they were f***in' brag, they were wearing these tachyon shorts so you couldn't barely look at them. (5.44)
Here, Titus even calls us "unit" (thanks for including us, Titus!), just like he's m-chatting us or something. And when Titus himself isn't including us, the feed is: with all the current events and latest fashions coming at us, we kind of want to spend some of our credit on tachyon shorts ourselves.