The Hypebeast began with a phone call. I’d received one like it many times before. A robotic, recorded voice said: This is the Government of Canada calling. Your account is in error. Your visa may be in jeopardy if your taxes go unpaid. Press one to speak with a representative.
A scam, hustle, con; normally I rolled my eyes, swearing to never answer an unknown phone number ever again. I’d read about these calls in the newspaper: call-centres in India preying on confused immigrants, posing as government officials, trying to convincing them their status in the country was in jeopardy if they didn’t pay up—preferably through untraceable gift cards, bitcoin, or similar nebulous currency.
On that hot summer day, my curiosity took over. I pressed one. Music played. I waited. The music stopped. No one spoke.
“Hello?” I finally said.
“Hello,” a man said back.
“I pressed one. Am I in trouble?”
“I’m…I’m…” the man paused. “I’m so sleepy…” he said and the line clicked dead.
With that unexpected response, an entire humanity presented itself. Who was that voice, exhausted after working 14 hour shifts in Toronto or Mumbai, dialling over and over until they struck success? Where did they go after their shift? Where did they come from? Who did they love—who broke their heart?
The Hypebeast tries to understand that man, one forged in the west and east, one who knows his role but tries to ascend, one who struggles—like all of us—to find a groove in this world.
The phone call was the starter-pistol, but I needed to find the book. First, I looked at classics. In The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Killer Inside Me I heard echoes of a voice I might use. For tone, James Ellroy’s buzzsaw language was influential; as was the berserk animation of the Yakuza video game series and the jittery cuts of early Guy Ritchie films.
There was the practical matter of research: what were the facts of these lives? I began with Guantanamo Diaries by Mohamedou Ould Slami, Enhanced interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America by James Mitchell— creator of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques”—and the New York Times series “Lasting Scars.” Also important were Fernando Botero’s Abu Gharib paintings, and drawings from Guantanamo Bay detainees Abu Zubaydah and Mohammed Farik Bin Amin.
I like stories to work against, and that friction I found in three astonishing novels: Snow, by Orhan Pamuk, Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, and By Night in Chile, by Roberto Bolano. Tying this all together was the grand master — V.S. Naipaul and his sublime A Bend in the River.
These became The Hypebeast: a crime caper, tragedy, black comedy, apology.
I hope you enjoy.