Like most people trying to get by in something like the regular current of American life, I don't act like a total asshole to most people I meet, and am generally regarded as *pretty nice* -- mainly because I leave myself vulnerable to hearing out other people's crises and complaints for longer, on average, than would be merely polite. And the fact is, I do tend to like people in practice, even though I've built an airtight case against them in principle. It's a natural response, I guess, to being raised by relatively kind parents who taught me to be polite and decent and to rely on the company and help of others, but to also consider myself smarter and, on some fundamental level, more deserving of complete fulfillment than anyone in the world besides maybe my sisters.
This may be why, when my girlfriend, Julia, asked me to meet her at the house of a recent acquaintance of ours, a New Age-leaning woman named Anna whose family, through what specific brand of plunder I don't know, owned a gigantic house out in horse country, I agreed. Julia would be arriving late from a shift in the ICU and wanted me to be the advance guard. She believed this dinner held the potential for a better-than-usual time, since it brought together a number of people we didn't know very well but had been told we would like. Of course, the "people we would like" often turned out to be amateur poets and holistic healers, but to her eternal credit, this didn't stop Julia from holding out for social transcendence, the nature of which I didn't fully understand. My goals at these things usually extended no further than making at least one moderately clever comment and trying not to spill anything on my shirt.
-Should you read "Early Work," by Andrew Martin? Yes. Definitely. And I have some quibbles. The job of teaching writing to prisoners in Virginia seems inadequately-thought-through. It seems like a vehicle for a few gags; I don't believe it for a second. Also: We have all read too, too many novels that build up to an adulterous night of sex, and the sex happens right before Part One gives way to Part Two, so when that happens in this particular book, which is often so smart and insightful, we're a bit disappointed. And the story loses steam toward the end; Martin hasn't maintained the right level of narrative tension. But, as his self-referential title tells us, this is "Early Work."
-I love the opening (quoted above) so much because it's a throw-back. It's like "Call me Ishmael," or the start of "The Great Gatsby." I love that the narrator does not throw us into some dramatic scene to grab our attention, which would be a cliche. Instead, he is Old School. The first paragraph is also very funny. You can imagine someone speaking in deadpan style: "My parents taught me to be decent, but also to believe, secretly, that I'm smarter than everyone else." Is this not what is wrong with America? Would it not lead to a race of twenty-somethings deciding "to dislike people, in principle if not in practice"? There's a self-mocking, self-knowing quality to the voice, and so the narrator is immediately appealing (and just a bit irritating). In his worst moments, he is like the guy in "Love Affairs of Nathaniel P" (and this new novel owes something to that older one). He also reminds me of the hyper-alert, and slightly crazy, narrator of "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You."
-A lesser novel would begin with the second paragraph. But that bold, old-fashioned, broadly-generalizing first paragraph has set us on edge; it lets us know we're in for something special. From the broad to the specific: We are swept up in a party (a bad party). So many bitchy flourishes: "through whose specific brand of plunder I don't know," "she wanted me to be the advance guard," "a better-than-usual time," "making at least one moderately clever comment and trying not to spill anything on my shirt." Andrew Martin has established--already--that he is uniquely well-equipped to indict a certain kind of hipster behavior (in this case, behavior you would find near UVA). The narrator's mental landscape is so objectionable. "Brand of plunder," "advance guard": These are the phrases of someone who dislikes people "in principle, if not in practice." His general sense of loathing also includes self-loathing: He expects nothing of himself beyond a strong effort "not to spill anything on anyone." He is a child dressed as something other than a child, and the comedy of this situation, the indecisiveness/hypocrisy/deceit that grow out of this situation, is the engine of the story.
-I also want to applaud one of Andrew Martin's details. He has the narrator changing the radio to a new channel, a pop channel, and "singing along to Taylor Swift's song about Starbucks." I'm not sure if this is a fanciful "dystopia" moment--if Martin is envisioning an inevitable future in which Ms. Swift just bluntly writes, and sells, songs about Starbucks products and Starbucks merchandise. I'm not sure if the character in the novel has just misconstrued a Swift lyric. I'm not sure if it's just another snippy comment about the world we live in (i.e. "She's a mouthpiece for corporate America, and if she's not actually alluding to pumpkin spice lattes, it's *as if* that is the sort of thing she is directly alluding to.") I'm not fully sure what is going on with that line, but I loved it, as I loved many other parts of this daring and intelligent book.
P.S. The special attention to indecisiveness reminded me of "Ms. Hempel Chronicles" (high praise). And the narrator's problem--the fact that his attentiveness is just a little bit fake--is established right there in the very first paragraph. This is maybe a big part of why he can't really be a writer (a thing he'll struggle with for the entirety of the novel). Although: Do you have to be a decent person to write well? Is Leslie--blessed with talent the narrator doesn't have--a decent person? Anyway, I will continue to think about the narrator's predicament, even though I have finished the book.
This may be why, when my girlfriend, Julia, asked me to meet her at the house of a recent acquaintance of ours, a New Age-leaning woman named Anna whose family, through what specific brand of plunder I don't know, owned a gigantic house out in horse country, I agreed. Julia would be arriving late from a shift in the ICU and wanted me to be the advance guard. She believed this dinner held the potential for a better-than-usual time, since it brought together a number of people we didn't know very well but had been told we would like. Of course, the "people we would like" often turned out to be amateur poets and holistic healers, but to her eternal credit, this didn't stop Julia from holding out for social transcendence, the nature of which I didn't fully understand. My goals at these things usually extended no further than making at least one moderately clever comment and trying not to spill anything on my shirt.
-Should you read "Early Work," by Andrew Martin? Yes. Definitely. And I have some quibbles. The job of teaching writing to prisoners in Virginia seems inadequately-thought-through. It seems like a vehicle for a few gags; I don't believe it for a second. Also: We have all read too, too many novels that build up to an adulterous night of sex, and the sex happens right before Part One gives way to Part Two, so when that happens in this particular book, which is often so smart and insightful, we're a bit disappointed. And the story loses steam toward the end; Martin hasn't maintained the right level of narrative tension. But, as his self-referential title tells us, this is "Early Work."
-I love the opening (quoted above) so much because it's a throw-back. It's like "Call me Ishmael," or the start of "The Great Gatsby." I love that the narrator does not throw us into some dramatic scene to grab our attention, which would be a cliche. Instead, he is Old School. The first paragraph is also very funny. You can imagine someone speaking in deadpan style: "My parents taught me to be decent, but also to believe, secretly, that I'm smarter than everyone else." Is this not what is wrong with America? Would it not lead to a race of twenty-somethings deciding "to dislike people, in principle if not in practice"? There's a self-mocking, self-knowing quality to the voice, and so the narrator is immediately appealing (and just a bit irritating). In his worst moments, he is like the guy in "Love Affairs of Nathaniel P" (and this new novel owes something to that older one). He also reminds me of the hyper-alert, and slightly crazy, narrator of "Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You."
-A lesser novel would begin with the second paragraph. But that bold, old-fashioned, broadly-generalizing first paragraph has set us on edge; it lets us know we're in for something special. From the broad to the specific: We are swept up in a party (a bad party). So many bitchy flourishes: "through whose specific brand of plunder I don't know," "she wanted me to be the advance guard," "a better-than-usual time," "making at least one moderately clever comment and trying not to spill anything on my shirt." Andrew Martin has established--already--that he is uniquely well-equipped to indict a certain kind of hipster behavior (in this case, behavior you would find near UVA). The narrator's mental landscape is so objectionable. "Brand of plunder," "advance guard": These are the phrases of someone who dislikes people "in principle, if not in practice." His general sense of loathing also includes self-loathing: He expects nothing of himself beyond a strong effort "not to spill anything on anyone." He is a child dressed as something other than a child, and the comedy of this situation, the indecisiveness/hypocrisy/deceit that grow out of this situation, is the engine of the story.
-I also want to applaud one of Andrew Martin's details. He has the narrator changing the radio to a new channel, a pop channel, and "singing along to Taylor Swift's song about Starbucks." I'm not sure if this is a fanciful "dystopia" moment--if Martin is envisioning an inevitable future in which Ms. Swift just bluntly writes, and sells, songs about Starbucks products and Starbucks merchandise. I'm not sure if the character in the novel has just misconstrued a Swift lyric. I'm not sure if it's just another snippy comment about the world we live in (i.e. "She's a mouthpiece for corporate America, and if she's not actually alluding to pumpkin spice lattes, it's *as if* that is the sort of thing she is directly alluding to.") I'm not fully sure what is going on with that line, but I loved it, as I loved many other parts of this daring and intelligent book.
P.S. The special attention to indecisiveness reminded me of "Ms. Hempel Chronicles" (high praise). And the narrator's problem--the fact that his attentiveness is just a little bit fake--is established right there in the very first paragraph. This is maybe a big part of why he can't really be a writer (a thing he'll struggle with for the entirety of the novel). Although: Do you have to be a decent person to write well? Is Leslie--blessed with talent the narrator doesn't have--a decent person? Anyway, I will continue to think about the narrator's predicament, even though I have finished the book.
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