“We are the beginning of a bright and shiny dark age.” — Kurt Andersen, from The Breakup

It’s 2045 and America has got divorced. That’s the premise of The Breakup, by the historian and novelist Kurt Andersen. “The future is fiction. It hasn’t happened yet,” the historian in Andersen reminds us. But his near-term fictional future, an America of civil war and national divorce, certainly isn’t inconceivable. Nor, in an increasingly divided United States between high-tech coastal elites and a medieval hinterland, does such a scenario appear quite as nightmarish as it once did.

In contrast with the bloodiness, say, of Alex Garland’s Hollywood version of an American civil war, Andersen’s literary breakup is the “scattered violence of a Middle Eastern kind.” Lebanon comes to the United States in the form of loosely confederated militias, assassinations and kidnappings. This war kills 28,000, half of them civilians. It could have been worse. Indeed, it is worse today — when compared to the 44,000 people killed by guns each year.

The novel also tells the story of the breakup of a twenty-three-year marriage between the Tennessean poet Natalie and the San Francisco tech bro Asher. Natalie doesn’t much like Silicon Valley and warns that “we are the beginning of a bright and shiny dark age.” But for Andersen this age isn’t totally dark. Marriages and countries break up, he reminds us, and that is often the beginning rather than the end of the story. Not quite darkness at noon. So get ready for the mid-21st-century break-up of the United States. Such a split might actually be brighter than America’s current dark marriage.

Five Takeaways

• The Future Is Fiction. After Fantasyland and Evil Geniuses, the trilogy’s finale is a novel — because futurism is folly and “the future is fiction. It hasn’t happened yet.”

• A Manageable Civil War. Not Gettysburg: militias, assassinations, drones — crushed in 18 months. 28,000 dead, half civilians — fewer than a year of US gun deaths. “Could have been worse. We’re not living in Mad Max time.”

• The Disunion’s Logistics. No 1860 line — the border runs between city and country, so the divorce takes seven years. Free American Republic vs the smaller United States. And Montana gets secessionist remorse.

• The Soft Breakup Papers. Climate alliances, sanctuary cities, 2A counties: “governmental apparatuses” for separate countries, assembling since 2009. Gradually — then suddenly.

• A Bright and Shiny Dark Age. A party marching toward the medieval beside Bay Area magic. AI like electricity, trillionaires plural, anxiety as premonition — and an ending not without hope.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Buy The Breakup: penguinrandomhouse.com

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: when facts fail, turn to fiction?
00:02:21 “That’s not the title I would pick”
00:02:37 Why a novel? The future is fiction
00:04:21 Dystopian satire and a loveless marriage
00:06:19 Divorce: the most fun with your clothes on
00:07:54 Militias, drones, and violence of a Middle Eastern kind
00:11:28 28,000 dead: a manageable civil war?
00:13:55 Has America already had its soft breakup?
00:14:58 “We made it up”: the invented nation
00:16:09 Gellner, nationalism, and post-industrial unraveling
00:20:32 The 2011 Vanity Fair piece that still holds
00:21:26 AI like electricity: technology in 2045
00:24:11 The age of anxiety as premonition
00:26:09 Evil Geniuses redux: the anger comes home to roost
00:27:39 Loneliness, and the president who sells hellscapes
00:29:50 Sacrilege: should the first civil war have ended the union?
00:32:22 DOGE and the state nobody thinks they need
00:33:08 Secessionist remorse: the Montana problem
00:36:00 The Thanksgiving dinner where nobody talks
00:36:53 Fintan O’Toole’s warning: the self-prophecy risk
00:38:27 Stephen Marche and the view from outside the marriage
00:39:15 Gradually and then suddenly: the soft breakup papers
00:41:34 The Cassandra pattern: don’t blame Kurt
00:42:06 Tocqueville or the Middle Ages? A bright and shiny dark age
00:47:26 No Hollywood ending — but not without hope