Take a photo of a barcode or cover
savaging 's review for:
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
by Adelle Waldman
I read this in a tiny Mexican fishing village, where a man said to me "Don't take this personally, but the U.S. Empire -- it's going to fall."
A good reminder to keep with me while reading this vapid and insufferable novel about vapid and insufferable literary people in Brooklyn. These characters seem to think their precious thoughts and words and sad, empty lives are universally admired, are the pinnacle of success, and continue carrying out their 'decadent' little rounds of brunches and essays and sexual exploits with the assumption that all eyes are on them, long after we've grown bored and turned our gazes elsewhere. The praise on the dust jacket sounds almost frantic, like people who recognize themselves in the book are desperate to convince their own selves that their lives are meaningful, are NOT boring, are the middle of something.
I do think it's valuable that the book shows the way the main character gaslights and emotionally wrecks the women he's with. There was even some satisfaction in seeing how a 'nice guy' douchebag (spoiler alert!) remains a douchebag. But for all the self-conscious 'liberalism' in this book I was surprised nobody could ever muster the phrase "White Feminism." Any given episode of Girls contains more interesting characters and deeper political analysis than these 242 pages.
This book reminds me: that world is spent; is over, irrelevant, done-for. The witty-well-educated-rich-white Literary Empire has tried it's best to conjure up a good story, and it's failed. The stories that move us will come from elsewhere -- and when they do come from New York, it will be from that "Consuela or Imelda or Pilar or whatever" who cleans this asshole's toilet.
A good reminder to keep with me while reading this vapid and insufferable novel about vapid and insufferable literary people in Brooklyn. These characters seem to think their precious thoughts and words and sad, empty lives are universally admired, are the pinnacle of success, and continue carrying out their 'decadent' little rounds of brunches and essays and sexual exploits with the assumption that all eyes are on them, long after we've grown bored and turned our gazes elsewhere. The praise on the dust jacket sounds almost frantic, like people who recognize themselves in the book are desperate to convince their own selves that their lives are meaningful, are NOT boring, are the middle of something.
I do think it's valuable that the book shows the way the main character gaslights and emotionally wrecks the women he's with. There was even some satisfaction in seeing how a 'nice guy' douchebag (spoiler alert!) remains a douchebag. But for all the self-conscious 'liberalism' in this book I was surprised nobody could ever muster the phrase "White Feminism." Any given episode of Girls contains more interesting characters and deeper political analysis than these 242 pages.
This book reminds me: that world is spent; is over, irrelevant, done-for. The witty-well-educated-rich-white Literary Empire has tried it's best to conjure up a good story, and it's failed. The stories that move us will come from elsewhere -- and when they do come from New York, it will be from that "Consuela or Imelda or Pilar or whatever" who cleans this asshole's toilet.