I've read a lot of novels in this vein this year, where the author chooses to be specific about the mundane details of everyday life and vague about tI've read a lot of novels in this vein this year, where the author chooses to be specific about the mundane details of everyday life and vague about the specific sources of pain. What are clearly great sites of emotional trauma for the narrator are encapsulated into pithy little sentences (often pre-underlined by kindle, so you know they are really deep!), and perhaps a random, but yet not so random if you really think about, scientific fact or quotation from the ancients is appended. (I'm thinking also of Pond, and the Rachel Cusk book, and something else I'm forgetting). This entire style leaves me cold. I think the recent flourishing of this style may come from the Chris Kraus boom of the past few years, from Kraus' determination to make theory from the daily life of women. But vagueness doesn't automatically lead to universality or theory. There's also the influence of Renata Adler in the 'collection of anecdotes as structure,' clearly predating Kraus, although Adler's another writer having a mini-renaissance. I feel bad that I dislike this style so much, when it's also clear that it's being utilized primarily by women writers who are working to create literature of the everyday, specifically their everyday, without totally falling into the online trope of "first-person confessional essay."
As others on goodreads have noted, this book reads as pretty thinly veiled memoir, which may explain this tone. I'm glad Offill finally wrote her second book, and that her marriage seemingly survived. I was pretty absorbed while reading (mainly trying to guess which Brooklyn neighborhoods were being discussed) and I've thought about it since I finished it, so I updated my review to three stars instead of my initially cranky two. ...more
In a more charitable moment, right after I finished reading this book, I conceded that Modern Lovers was a competently assembled novel and gave it twoIn a more charitable moment, right after I finished reading this book, I conceded that Modern Lovers was a competently assembled novel and gave it two stars. There was a plot that went from A to B to C, although clearly nothing was ever at stake for any of the characters, and the sentences were mostly fine, etc. It is set in a paper-thin and blinkered New York City, in a neighborhood called Ditmas Park, where, incidentally, I lived for four years. Ditmas Park, as it really exists, is not reflected in this book at all, though clearly Emma Straub had a little map of the neighborhood taped to her writing desk, so she could get all the street intersections correct. But she does one very clever thing, which is to make one main character a real estate agent. This real estate agent's approach to the city- what a price a piece of property can fetch, how 'desirable' (read: rich) the residents are, what 'amenities' (read: expensive restaurants, yoga studios) are nearby, is reflected neatly in this novel, where all the plot points, except for the one about two teenagers having sex, revolve around the real estate issues of people who have inherited a great deal of family wealth. What a sad, shallow, lame version of New York this is.
Now, a few days later, I think about how boring it was, how shocking that someone like Straub can live in Brooklyn and still gesture the concept of 'hipster' by its most played-out signifier- ironic facial hair, and do so more than once- in a novel where someone squanders a hundred grand with nary a consequence, and I feel less charitable, it is a one star novel for sure. ...more
Choire Sicha is a gifted writer and a perceptive observer of the NYC media landscape, which sometimes people mistake as being an omniscient observer oChoire Sicha is a gifted writer and a perceptive observer of the NYC media landscape, which sometimes people mistake as being an omniscient observer of all of New York. Sicha is way too smart to make that claim, and throws in a few sentences to signify that he knows the group of young gay guys that make up the 'characters' of this book are not even close to a representative slice of the city. I mean, this book takes place in 2009 and focuses on a bunch of people who are afraid of Brooklyn! (Fun fact: In 2009 I lived about six blocks aways from the street where two characters refuse to move because of its far-flung location and perceived danger. Also I made about $24,000 that year and had no credit card debt, so, you know, it was possible.)
So why write about this specific group of people alongside the faux-historical explanation-y stuff about the financial crisis? I guess because living in Manhattan and working for media companies brings them somewhat closer to the millionaires and billionaires that rule the city than the rest of the population? And that's supposed to bring the contradictions of late capitalism in the metropolis into sharp relief? But although their jobs are in danger, and they're in debt and that's annoying, they are all still basically cosseted from real danger- they have families to go home to, or to borrow city apartments from, they aren't going to get evicted or lose their house, they have no dependents relying on them for food and shelter. They don't rely on constantly gutted public assistance, and although it may hurt their wallets a bit, they can still take cabs instead of choosing between a subway ride home and a gallon of milk. This is probably a point that Sicha wants to make- he certainly highlights how this generation of gay youth live largely outside the shadow of the AIDS epidemic and all men lost to it a generation before. But still, as Roxane Gay wrote in her review, the effect is something a male version of the television show Girls.
And I just did not understand the rhetorical decisions in this book. Why be so vague about 'the City' and 'the Mayor' and the media insider baseball, and then name all the bars that these guys go to? (They are real bars.) There were a few moments of real poetry in the book. The sentence "Very little fresh gold was arriving from space" will stick with me.
Rounded up to three stars because I want their to be more novels about capitalism and the absurdities of wealth inequality...more
This book was just excellent, opened up so many new areas of curiosity for me- Minoa, Linear B, the ancient world in general, linguistics, deciphermenThis book was just excellent, opened up so many new areas of curiosity for me- Minoa, Linear B, the ancient world in general, linguistics, decipherment, the politics of discovery. I loved the focus on Alice Kober, and Fox's attention to how she did her work, how the utterly bullshit gender politics of her era conspired against her, and how Kober just keep building her database of index cards and working on Linear B. A well-written and masterfully structured piece of nonfiction that is illuminating and never a chore. ...more
