What I found the most interesting about the readings thus far in Super Sad True Love Story was the emphasis on youth and body image. There seems to be an extreme fear of aging in this “new United States”, so much that the main social network that everyone is expected to be a part of is called “GlobalTeens”, even though its members are all ages. The ideal seems to be some sort of chemically-induced youth, so that one can float almost in a transitory non-aging state— Lenny comments on his boss, Josh, that he cannot tell what age he is. Lenny is constantly surrounded by people who are obsessed with images of youth and making their bodies last longer (even his job is trying to sell immortality to people). These people act as foils to Lenny who appears in stark contrast as truly old-fashioned person. He ages, he reads, he doesn’t know the slang of the youth. But because he is so different from the rest of characters and the society itself, he seems comfortingly familiar. He is the last vestiges of the society that predated that of Super Sad True Love Story, the one that we exist in now. Though Lenny’s desires point him increasingly towards conforming to the ideals of society— getting chemical treatment, reading less books, etc., he is still the reader’s only real grounding on the dramatic turns that this new society has taken. In a strange way, Lenny is ‘carrying the fire’— of books, of privacy, of aging, and I have a feeling that he will come to realize his importance later in the novel, as his relationship with Eunice Park is developed.