Book 4: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (2022) - Gabrielle Zevin

Monday March 16

What is the book about?

On a bitter-cold day in the 1990s, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. They haven’t seen each other since they were children and when he calls her name and she turns, a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. Becoming creative partners in a dazzling and intricately imagined world of video game design, their success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality. It is a love story, but not one you have read before.

Fragment (to get an idea of the style)

“He was about to call her name, but then he didn’t. He felt overwhelmed by how much time had passed since he and Sadie had last been alone together. How could a person still be as young as he objectively knew himself to be and have had so much time pass? And why was it suddenly so easy to forget that he despised her? Time, Sam thought, was a mystery. But with a second’s reflection, he thought better of such sentiment. Time was mathematically explicable; it was the heart—the part of the brain represented by the heart—that was the mystery.”

First sentence

“Before Mazer invented himself as Mazer, he was Samson Mazer, and before he was Samson Mazer, he was Samson Masur-a change of two letters that transformed him from a nice, ostensibly Jewish boy to a Professional Builder of Worlds-and for most of his youth, he was Sam, S.A.M. on the hall of fame of his grandfather's Donkey Kong machine, but mainly Sam.”

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is also available at University's Library.

Looking back on Day 4 of the challenge

For Day 4 we gave you the opening sentence from Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. A long sentence full of names: Sam, Samson Masur, Samson Mazer, and finally Mazer. Quite a challenge! How do you continue after such an introduction?

Names and identity

Many of you picked up on the theme of names and identity. Is Sam still the same person once the world knows him as Mazer? Several entries reflected on how a small change in letters can shape the way the world sees someone. Others returned to the Donkey Kong machine mentioned in the sentence, imagining Sam as a boy chasing high scores long before he became a famous game designer. It was nice to see how many different directions you took with the same starting point.

Thinking like the character

In the fragment we gave you, Sam reflects on time and emotions in a calm, almost analytical way. Many of you picked up on that tone. The best entries did not rush the story forward but paused to think. That reflective voice, observing something small and then realizing it might mean something bigger, is very characteristic of Zevin’s style.

The winning continuation

The winning entry beautifully connects the idea of names with the worlds Sam creates. It reflects on identity, perception, and the power of imagination, while still sounding like a thought Sam himself might have had.

The winning start of Begin a Book, Day 4:

How interesting it was that a name, just a label, was able to change the whole perception of a thing, he thought, he was still Sam, still nice and nerdy, but the world perceived him, Mazer, as the untouchable brain behind their endless hours of escaping. A name holds too much power, he thought, his worlds contained dungeons, which are just basements that haven't been cleaned in a while, streams of fortune or terror, that are just rivers with colorpoisoning, and Mazer as god of creation, who is just Sam without the anxiety.

Hannah Maassen (Student of ReMa Modern History and International Relations)

Well done to Hannah, and thanks to everyone who participated!

Nice to know

• This book became a bestseller and was later listed among the 100 best books of the 21st century by The New York Times.