Tomorrow Berlin - Oscar Coop-Phane

'I've never liked my generation. Facebook, texts, all that - it has no romanticism. And then, when I came here, and discovered techno and that whole scene, I felt like I belonged to my generation. And I think you have to be modern, absolutely modern... I want to abandon myself to modernity.’

Berlin Tomorrow, the second novel by French literary tyro Oscar Coop-Phane, follows a ‘little band of lost boys’ through the gay bars and drug dens of mainland Europe. While there is plenty of reckless hedonism on display in the weekend-long raves of Berlin, Coop-Phane also examines the vulnerability of a generation struggling to come to terms with their place in the world.

In an interview I conducted with Coop-Phane in 2014, the author spoke of ‘the particular kind of loneliness we feel when surrounded by others’; this is a theme which runs through Tomorrow Berlin. Coop-Phane analyses a generation which is caught between the isolating, individualist philosophy which dominated the late Twentieth century and the opportunities for connection offered by the technologies of the digital age. Individuals have unparalleled opportunities for reinvention, but their relationships are increasingly shallow; a series of fleeting, anonymous interactions serving as temporary bursts of relief.

The narrative follows three loosely connected characters: Tobias, a fragile young man with a voice ‘like a madwoman’s or a little boy’s, as if he never recovered from his childhood’; Armand, ‘a nice loser, with tangled hair and jeans that are too short’, who wants to be a painter; and Franz, a 'good, sincere man, maybe a little lost' who was taken in by his mother's employers after her death, and educated as a member of the bourgeoisie. Each finds themselves estranged from their natural families, and gravitates towards a subculture which will provide some sense of community for them, through drugs, music or sexuality.

Coop-Phane writes well about the attraction of these subcultures. Tobias talks about finding a place for himself in Paris’s gay scene, in clubs which 'felt like a secret’, where he can experience ‘the sense of belonging to a scene and especially the anger he got out of his system among those stripped bodies, all keyed up to satisfy his desires'. Tobias naturally fits in with a group of drug users, playing the role of an addict ‘as some people play the role of a cafe waiter: his changing appearance, the aesthetic of his pose, the cult of the formal, precise poetry of those who live for their pleasures, for unknown sensations'. These subcultures provide the young men with a ready sense of identity, which can mask their own failings.

Oscar Coop-Phane photo via The Skinny

This ability to play with character and perception is tied in to a wider generational pattern. Key indicators of identity, such as nationality are increasingly irrelevant, with all aspects of characters’ lives becoming opportunities for reinvention. One character, moving to Berlin, ‘enjoys the realisation that he’s not the same person as when he speaks French... it’s nice to be able to change your personality temporarily'. Coop-Phane’s lost boys rely on frequent reinvention as a substitute for deeper changes; one observes that 'all my habits will be reproduced but without giving me the same feeling. It's different because the places themselves are different'. Once again, there is a sense that all activities and interactions are surface deep, and that the place beneath is too frightening for the characters to truly engage with.

Ultimately, the characters understand the shallowness of their culture, and find that the only true response is to embrace this superficiality. As Armand says, ‘whoever puts his hand in the wheel of time gets his arm ripped off. I belong to my time; we have our music and our drugs'. Expanding on this, he identifies the characteristics which define his generation: ‘pride through style, contempt for idleness, experience for its own sake, shifting identities, cosmopolitan, highly individualistic, mixing futurism and aestheticism’.

Coop-Phane’s debut was a rather bleak and bilious depiction of everyday life in Paris, which showed a certain level of debt to Houellebecq. Tomorrow Berlin sees the author widening his scope somewhat, and allowing for a more nuanced outlook on the world. The prose style has developed too: whereas Zenith Hotel was a little one-paced, Tomorrow Berlin has a broader range of voices on show, and Coop-Phane allows himself the occasional wry aside (one character’s childhood is described as 'tragic in the way that an item of local news can be'). There is a sense of the author as puppetmaster as the characters’ back stories are laid out, but they are fleshed out effectively as the novel progresses. Tomorrow Berlin examines the psyche of an alienated generation in similar terms to Rob Doyle’s Here Are The Young Men, and while it may lack the sheer visceral power of that novel, there is definitely an interesting author at work here. Coop-Phane appears to be developing with each novel, and I’ll be going along for the ride.