Meet Marcus O, a man who’s feeling older but not much wiser as he sets jaded eyes on that last vigorous stretch before the dreaded sunset years. With the approach of the terminal semester of a long-winded career, he’s wondering “What next?” and closing down leftover business. First, there’s Judaea, a workplace nemesis inspiring Marcus’ visions of reprisal. And there’s L’Oréal Zhang, a style-conscious student and frequent visitor to Marcus’ university office whose shallow interests seem calculated to aggravate him alone. The co-owner of a geriatric apartment building (with brother Benjamin, another thorn in his side), Marcus occupies his nights at home with snacks and screens. There, he scours the Web for romance advice while hatching answers to profile questions generated by Venerati, a dating site for seniors he’s recently joined. Set in the metropolitan west coast in a near future where everything is pretty much the same (or maybe a notch worse), Oldness; or, the Last-Ditch Efforts of Marcus O dazzles with a satiric portrait of a vexed man in a complicated time and place whose reality could be just over the horizon.

Brett Josef Grubisic teaches contemporary literature at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. His most recent book of fiction is This Location of Unknown Possibilities (2014). He is the author of Understanding Beryl Bainbridge, co-author (with David L. Chapman) of American Hunks: The Muscular Male Body in Popular Culture, 1860—1970 and co-editor (with Andrea Cabajsky) of National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada (WLU Press, 2010).

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