"The Maserati Years"

Maxim Biller's "The Maserati Years" was the featured fiction in the Sept. 24th edition of The New Yorker. Maxim Biller published his first novel Esra in 2003. In addition to the "Maserati Years, Biller's "The Mahogany Elephant" was also featured in The New Yorker in July of 2007.

The story follows the early morning of a young actor no longer living in the luster of the limelight. His morning revolves around his waking up, smoking a cigarette, and falling back asleep. After receiving a text message from his girlfriend informing him that she is pregnant, the protagonist chooses to ignore it, and goes back to sleep worried that he will have to sell his beloved Maserati.

"The Maserati Years" is written with an oddly distant tone. Biller successfully employs the use of a third person narrative and he detaches the reader with his listless, lethargic tone. There is also no dialogue in this story—only a text message, an impersonal, distant form of communication. Suspended in time and setting, the “Maserati Years” seems to depict a lucid dream--a surreal and illusory reality.