Leaving Idaho

Web nerds find the Windy City just a mouse-click away.

by Adam Druckman
5/17/00

"Geeks can get jobs almost anyplace."

Geeks

by Jon Katz
Random House, $22.95, 256pp.

Author Jon Katz would have us believe that Geeks is a classic American adventure story – a tale of great victory over tremendous odds. At least, that’s the message he sends in his new nonfiction book, an account of two computer nerds trying to escape the monotony of small-town existence in rural Idaho. However, despite its underdog charm, Geeks is as much about its author’s devotion as it is about the gumption of its young, bookish heroes.

According to Katz, in the merciless environs of high schools and Mini-Mart parking lots everywhere, geekdom is quite a lonely place to be. Even so, Katz – whose work has appeared in GQ and Wired – owes a great deal to the growing connectivity of today’s young and freakish. Since the rise of the Internet, Katz’s pro-geek scribblings for techie HQ slashdot.org have transformed the middle-aged journalist into a minor celebrity among hacker types. And after the Littleton, Colo., shootings, Katz’s passionate online defense of trench-coated loners elicited a mountain of e-mail praise from teenage outsiders.

But with Geeks, Katz brings the plight of what he calls a "community of social discontents" to the masses. Subtitled "How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho," our story begins when 19-year-old Jesse Dailey contacts Katz via e-mail. "I had the sense a writer sometimes gets when he’s stumbled across the very thing he’s looking for," writes Katz. The two begin exchanging messages and strike up a friendship online.

A few weeks (and a couple dozen e-mails) later, Katz jets out to Jesse’s dismal Northwest home to meet the boy face-to-face. Katz finds Jesse and roommate Eric holed up in a rundown apartment on the edge of town. Fresh out of high school, both teens are working dead-end jobs at the local computer repair shop. Notes Katz, "I couldn’t imagine a less hospitable place for a 19-year-old non-conformist."

Fancying himself as a sort of Internet-era Tom Wolfe, Katz documents Jesse and Eric’s daily routines – all-night video game tournaments, relentless Web surfing and constant tweaking of the apartment’s two homemade PCs. We discover that Eric is unquestionably smart, while Jesse is fiercely opinionated, perhaps brilliant. Both come from unstable homes. And neither has any friends.

But what starts as Discovery Channel-like analysis of the geek in his native habitat takes an unexpected turn: Katz starts to care about these misfits. Despite his pledge to remain uninvolved and "meticulously journalistic," he encourages them to move. "Geeks can get jobs almost anyplace," Katz tells Jesse. And in what becomes the first of many displays of Jesse’s deep trust in Katz, Jesse and Eric leave cowtown immediately for Chicago’s greener pastures.

What follows is your basic carp-out-of-water story, complete with Katz’s fatherly efforts to help Jesse (and to a lesser degree Eric) get ahead in the big city. When Jesse lands a job interview downtown, Katz coaches him. When the boys need cash, Katz shows up with a check. And when Jesse, an underachiever with weak grades, decides he wants to go to college, Katz meets with the dean to plead the boy’s "unique" case.

Katz pens Geeks as a story of young men and their machines pitted against an older generation that doesn’t appreciate their gifts. He calls Jesse’s eventual triumph "geek ascension," comparing it to the surging success of today’s geek-run computer companies. However, Katz seems only marginally aware of the enormous impact he’s had on his surrogate son. In fact, he’s almost apologetic – as if helping Jesse and Eric were simply a good plot device.

And that’s a shame. In the end, Geeks is really about the importance of love and parental support. Bright kids on the fringe don’t always grow up to run dotcoms. And flashy Web sites won’t turn outsiders into hipsters overnight. But if every lost boy had a full-time father even half as conscientious as Katz, things would certainly change. And then, geek might truly become chic after all.

Adam Druckman is MT’s online editor and writes Netropolis, a Web-culture column.