What do you think?
Rate this book
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
Writer Nate Piven's star is rising. After several lean and striving years, he has his pick of both magazine assignments and women: Juliet, the hotshot business reporter; Elisa, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, now friend; and Hannah, "almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice," who holds her own in conversation with his friends. When one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants.
In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man--one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is a tale of one young man's search for happiness--and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.
In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man--one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times. The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is a tale of one young man's search for happiness--and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published July 16, 2013
About the author
Adelle Waldman
4 books390 followersAdelle Waldman is the author of the novels, Help Wanted, coming from W.W. Norton in March of 2024, and The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which was published by Henry Holt in 2013 and was named one of that year’s best books by The New Yorker, The Economist, The New Republic, NPR, Slate, Bookforum, The Guardian and others. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and daughter.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,197 reviews
May 31, 2020
Turns out Nathaniel P. is a self-absorbed rotter.
End of story.
End of story.
November 12, 2013
Bright young men, do you feel that chilly wind of exposure? Somehow, Adelle Waldman has stolen your passive-aggressive playbook and published it in her first novel, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” You’ll want to tell your female friends that you’ve heard it’s not very good. Mutter something about how condescending it is to women. In the bookstore, reshelve copies back in the “Gardening” section. . . . .
An overreaction? I don’t think so. My daughter just graduated from college, but her education won’t be complete till she’s studied Waldman’s brilliant taxonomy of homo erectus brooklynitis. I’m making her read “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” in exchange for paying off her student loans. Not that she’ll need much persuading. Waldman offers a delectable analysis of contemporary dating among literary wannabes. You might think it’d be easier to find a parking space in Manhattan than to say anything new about that subject, but this dark comedy delivers one prickling insight after another.
Admittedly, Waldman isn’t much for plot. Like an episode of “Girls,” this svelte novel moves through a series of loosely structured conversations — in an apartment, at a trendy restaurant, on the way to the subway. Unlike an episode of “Girls,” though, Waldman’s novel concentrates on the experiences of a young man. Nathaniel Piven is an ambitious intellectual, a few years out of Harvard (which he finds some humble way to drop into every conversation). Naturally, “the well-groomed, stylishly clad, expensively educated women of publishing found him appealing.” He writes book reviews and cultural criticism for Very Important Magazines, and he’s just sold a book for a six-figure advance, which gives him extra cachet amid this tiny subspecies of New Yorkers who chart each other’s ascendancy with the solemnity of Renaissance astronomers.
I don’t want to give the misimpression that there’s anything trite or grasping about him. Waldman’s hero is a perfectly upstanding guy. “Nathaniel Piven,” she tells us at the opening, “was a product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education. He had learned all about male privilege. Moreover he was in possession of a functional and frankly rather clamorous conscience.” That noisy conscience, the epitome of modern “latte liberalism,” is the real subject of this novel. (By my count, the word “guilt” appears more than 20 times in these pages.) Nate feels guilty about almost everything: about homeless people on the street; about black janitors cleaning up after him; about taking the earned income tax credit, “since it was clearly intended for real poor people, not Harvard grads.” But Waldman demonstrates that all his ready guilt is really a kind of salve for a man who’s impenetrably selfish. In his mind, low-level remorse has become a viable substitute for actual reformation.
Do you know this man? Are you this man?
We first meet Nate when he runs into an old girlfriend who tells him off, even though “he had done everything that could have been expected of him.” Her animus is a mystery to him, deeply troubling. “Contrary to what these women seemed to think,” Waldman writes, “he was not indifferent to their unhappiness. And yet he seemed, in spite of himself, to provoke it.” Over the next 200 pages, Waldman shows why.
It’s not that Nate is a cad in any ordinary sense. Indeed, he’s extraordinarily sensitive, so unlike his male friends, who are still rating women’s breasts and telling him to “stop overthinking . . . like a girl.” While they brag about their sexual exploits, Nate sips constantly from a “cocktail of guilt and pity and dread.” But there’s something intoxicating about that cocktail, and Waldman traces it coursing through his blood with clinical precision, as though she’s diagnosing the symptoms of a functional alcoholic.
Although “The Love Affairs” makes reference to several previous (and future) love affairs in Nate’s life, the novel concentrates on one promising relationship with an attractive freelance writer named Hannah. We see them meet, date and become a couple, but the real action of the novel remains in Nate’s analytical mind, his tireless attention to the filament of desire. Falling in love is so lovely, but this is a time-lapse photo of the bouquet withering. “When you’re single,” Nate thinks, “your weekend days are wide-open vistas that extend in every direction; in a relationship, they’re like the sky over Manhattan: punctuated, hemmed in, compressed.”
Waldman’s finest work here is letting us see the first spores of mold settle on Nate’s heart. Panicked, he grows cold; confronted, he apologizes. Rinse and repeat in a pose of perfect reasonableness until his lover is reduced to a madwoman whose fury and tears he can pity and forgive — and abandon. “It was not always unpleasant to deal with a hysterical woman,” Waldman says in her best 21st-century Jane Austen voice. “One feels so thoroughly righteous in comparison.”
Neither chick lit nor lad lit, “The Love Affairs” presents a series of scenes that lay out exactly what’s so maddening about this young man — and, to be fair, many of the grasping, self-absorbed women who throw up their hands at him. Waldman has captured a whole group of privileged people who’ve been seduced into believing that their choice of a spouse is just one more consumer purchase — like an expensive coffee maker, something to be considered according to its pros and cons and then constantly reevaluated for how much it satisfies the original expectations.
In one comically poisonous scene, as Hannah tries to figure out why he’s grown so distant, Nate stops listening to her and notices that “when she moved her arms in emphasis . . . the skin underneath jiggled a little bit, like a much older woman’s. It was odd because she was quite fit. He felt bad for noticing and worse for being a little repelled. And yet he was transfixed. The distaste he felt, in its crystalline purity, was perversely pleasurable. He kept waiting for her to wave her arms again.”
These are rarefied creatures, to be sure, with their “cushy jobs and preening social consciences,” but handling them this wittily and wisely, Waldman attains something like the universal truths an older female writer articulated by recording the antics of a group of genteel folk in early 19th-century Bath. How far have we come, really, in the 50 years since John Updike’s Rabbit bounded across America, satisfying his appetites, nursing his hurt feelings and offering up his glib apologies?
In a dead suburb of Pennsylvania or the hippest neighborhood of Brooklyn, he still runs. Ah: runs. Runs.
Women, let him go.
An overreaction? I don’t think so. My daughter just graduated from college, but her education won’t be complete till she’s studied Waldman’s brilliant taxonomy of homo erectus brooklynitis. I’m making her read “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” in exchange for paying off her student loans. Not that she’ll need much persuading. Waldman offers a delectable analysis of contemporary dating among literary wannabes. You might think it’d be easier to find a parking space in Manhattan than to say anything new about that subject, but this dark comedy delivers one prickling insight after another.
Admittedly, Waldman isn’t much for plot. Like an episode of “Girls,” this svelte novel moves through a series of loosely structured conversations — in an apartment, at a trendy restaurant, on the way to the subway. Unlike an episode of “Girls,” though, Waldman’s novel concentrates on the experiences of a young man. Nathaniel Piven is an ambitious intellectual, a few years out of Harvard (which he finds some humble way to drop into every conversation). Naturally, “the well-groomed, stylishly clad, expensively educated women of publishing found him appealing.” He writes book reviews and cultural criticism for Very Important Magazines, and he’s just sold a book for a six-figure advance, which gives him extra cachet amid this tiny subspecies of New Yorkers who chart each other’s ascendancy with the solemnity of Renaissance astronomers.
I don’t want to give the misimpression that there’s anything trite or grasping about him. Waldman’s hero is a perfectly upstanding guy. “Nathaniel Piven,” she tells us at the opening, “was a product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education. He had learned all about male privilege. Moreover he was in possession of a functional and frankly rather clamorous conscience.” That noisy conscience, the epitome of modern “latte liberalism,” is the real subject of this novel. (By my count, the word “guilt” appears more than 20 times in these pages.) Nate feels guilty about almost everything: about homeless people on the street; about black janitors cleaning up after him; about taking the earned income tax credit, “since it was clearly intended for real poor people, not Harvard grads.” But Waldman demonstrates that all his ready guilt is really a kind of salve for a man who’s impenetrably selfish. In his mind, low-level remorse has become a viable substitute for actual reformation.
Do you know this man? Are you this man?
We first meet Nate when he runs into an old girlfriend who tells him off, even though “he had done everything that could have been expected of him.” Her animus is a mystery to him, deeply troubling. “Contrary to what these women seemed to think,” Waldman writes, “he was not indifferent to their unhappiness. And yet he seemed, in spite of himself, to provoke it.” Over the next 200 pages, Waldman shows why.
It’s not that Nate is a cad in any ordinary sense. Indeed, he’s extraordinarily sensitive, so unlike his male friends, who are still rating women’s breasts and telling him to “stop overthinking . . . like a girl.” While they brag about their sexual exploits, Nate sips constantly from a “cocktail of guilt and pity and dread.” But there’s something intoxicating about that cocktail, and Waldman traces it coursing through his blood with clinical precision, as though she’s diagnosing the symptoms of a functional alcoholic.
Although “The Love Affairs” makes reference to several previous (and future) love affairs in Nate’s life, the novel concentrates on one promising relationship with an attractive freelance writer named Hannah. We see them meet, date and become a couple, but the real action of the novel remains in Nate’s analytical mind, his tireless attention to the filament of desire. Falling in love is so lovely, but this is a time-lapse photo of the bouquet withering. “When you’re single,” Nate thinks, “your weekend days are wide-open vistas that extend in every direction; in a relationship, they’re like the sky over Manhattan: punctuated, hemmed in, compressed.”
Waldman’s finest work here is letting us see the first spores of mold settle on Nate’s heart. Panicked, he grows cold; confronted, he apologizes. Rinse and repeat in a pose of perfect reasonableness until his lover is reduced to a madwoman whose fury and tears he can pity and forgive — and abandon. “It was not always unpleasant to deal with a hysterical woman,” Waldman says in her best 21st-century Jane Austen voice. “One feels so thoroughly righteous in comparison.”
Neither chick lit nor lad lit, “The Love Affairs” presents a series of scenes that lay out exactly what’s so maddening about this young man — and, to be fair, many of the grasping, self-absorbed women who throw up their hands at him. Waldman has captured a whole group of privileged people who’ve been seduced into believing that their choice of a spouse is just one more consumer purchase — like an expensive coffee maker, something to be considered according to its pros and cons and then constantly reevaluated for how much it satisfies the original expectations.
In one comically poisonous scene, as Hannah tries to figure out why he’s grown so distant, Nate stops listening to her and notices that “when she moved her arms in emphasis . . . the skin underneath jiggled a little bit, like a much older woman’s. It was odd because she was quite fit. He felt bad for noticing and worse for being a little repelled. And yet he was transfixed. The distaste he felt, in its crystalline purity, was perversely pleasurable. He kept waiting for her to wave her arms again.”
These are rarefied creatures, to be sure, with their “cushy jobs and preening social consciences,” but handling them this wittily and wisely, Waldman attains something like the universal truths an older female writer articulated by recording the antics of a group of genteel folk in early 19th-century Bath. How far have we come, really, in the 50 years since John Updike’s Rabbit bounded across America, satisfying his appetites, nursing his hurt feelings and offering up his glib apologies?
In a dead suburb of Pennsylvania or the hippest neighborhood of Brooklyn, he still runs. Ah: runs. Runs.
Women, let him go.
January 15, 2014
This is all Donna Tartt's fault.
I really, really wish I'd read this book a few months ago, when it came out, when I was really excited about it. Because it was pretty good! Really! I mean if it had just been a regular part of my reading life, I would have liked it fine. But—and I knew this before I was twenty pages in—Adelle Waldman is NO Donna Tartt. I'm actually afraid that anything I read for the next several months is going to wilt in comparison to even the vaguest whiff of The Goldfinch.
So.
This book's titular Nathaniel P. is a semi-successful writer who is my age (30ish), living in my part of the world (Brooklyn), at this very moment in time. As advertised, the book is sort of a catalogue of his dating life for a year or so (although honestly it's mostly the story of him dating one girl, with a lot of backstory about a few other girls he dated previously, and then a sort of rushed gloss about the girl he dates next). I mean but the point is that it's the kind of thing I really should like. It's set in my reality, it's full of clever characters and just dense with interior monologue, there's no trickery but it's still a smart read.
And yet.
The whole book just feels so mechanical and planned. You can see all the writerly seams, barely concealed. You can feel Adelle thinking: "In this scene I need their emotional tenor to shift, so here's how they'll get from Point A to Point B, here's the conversation they'll have, here's the subtext that will be revealed, and here's the menial task they'll be doing with their hands meanwhile." It's not a book that you can lose yourself in, not for a moment, because the author is holding everything so tightly, working it so intently. There's so much telling rather than showing, and it keeps the reader always at a very sharp remove.
And then too, it's all so agonizingly self-conscious. This is of course partly because the narrator is so absurdly deep inside his own head, but also partly, I would bet, because the author is too. It's easy to guess which anecdotes were probably taken from her life, which small bits of banter she heard or said and then built a scene around, putting the snippets snugly in the mouths of her characters. At times the plotting feels a bit like a checklist: what books and magazines the characters read and discuss, what kind of people they hang out with (gay friend, foreign friend), where they go for a drink (hipster café in low-income, newly gentrified area, semi-sexy urban dive bar), how they talk (with exaggeratedly liberal repartee, daring one another to be offended by their off-color wit).
And but yet it does, on the whole, feel very real: the shifting alliances, the droll conversations that suddenly, with the benefit of too much interior monologue, take on vast chasms of subtext, the body language that augments and counterpoints simple acts.
I do respect what she did, I just didn't enjoy it.
Is it banal to mention that the characters are on the whole unlikeable? I heard recently that that's something only vapid women say: Oh, I didn't like the characters so I couldn't like the book. But what are you supposed to do? They are all, especially Nathaniel P., pretty awful��not evil, but ordinarily obnoxious and self-obsessed and neurotic and shallow and cloyingly desperate for attention—so even when they feel real, it's real with a headache, with a patina of "Why exactly am spending my time with these people?" I mean, I don't hang out with people I don't like, so why would I be excited to spend my 200+ pages of my reading life with them?
Sigh. On to the next book that isn't The Goldfinch and is bound to let me down.
I really, really wish I'd read this book a few months ago, when it came out, when I was really excited about it. Because it was pretty good! Really! I mean if it had just been a regular part of my reading life, I would have liked it fine. But—and I knew this before I was twenty pages in—Adelle Waldman is NO Donna Tartt. I'm actually afraid that anything I read for the next several months is going to wilt in comparison to even the vaguest whiff of The Goldfinch.
So.
This book's titular Nathaniel P. is a semi-successful writer who is my age (30ish), living in my part of the world (Brooklyn), at this very moment in time. As advertised, the book is sort of a catalogue of his dating life for a year or so (although honestly it's mostly the story of him dating one girl, with a lot of backstory about a few other girls he dated previously, and then a sort of rushed gloss about the girl he dates next). I mean but the point is that it's the kind of thing I really should like. It's set in my reality, it's full of clever characters and just dense with interior monologue, there's no trickery but it's still a smart read.
And yet.
The whole book just feels so mechanical and planned. You can see all the writerly seams, barely concealed. You can feel Adelle thinking: "In this scene I need their emotional tenor to shift, so here's how they'll get from Point A to Point B, here's the conversation they'll have, here's the subtext that will be revealed, and here's the menial task they'll be doing with their hands meanwhile." It's not a book that you can lose yourself in, not for a moment, because the author is holding everything so tightly, working it so intently. There's so much telling rather than showing, and it keeps the reader always at a very sharp remove.
And then too, it's all so agonizingly self-conscious. This is of course partly because the narrator is so absurdly deep inside his own head, but also partly, I would bet, because the author is too. It's easy to guess which anecdotes were probably taken from her life, which small bits of banter she heard or said and then built a scene around, putting the snippets snugly in the mouths of her characters. At times the plotting feels a bit like a checklist: what books and magazines the characters read and discuss, what kind of people they hang out with (gay friend, foreign friend), where they go for a drink (hipster café in low-income, newly gentrified area, semi-sexy urban dive bar), how they talk (with exaggeratedly liberal repartee, daring one another to be offended by their off-color wit).
And but yet it does, on the whole, feel very real: the shifting alliances, the droll conversations that suddenly, with the benefit of too much interior monologue, take on vast chasms of subtext, the body language that augments and counterpoints simple acts.
I do respect what she did, I just didn't enjoy it.
Is it banal to mention that the characters are on the whole unlikeable? I heard recently that that's something only vapid women say: Oh, I didn't like the characters so I couldn't like the book. But what are you supposed to do? They are all, especially Nathaniel P., pretty awful��not evil, but ordinarily obnoxious and self-obsessed and neurotic and shallow and cloyingly desperate for attention—so even when they feel real, it's real with a headache, with a patina of "Why exactly am spending my time with these people?" I mean, I don't hang out with people I don't like, so why would I be excited to spend my 200+ pages of my reading life with them?
Sigh. On to the next book that isn't The Goldfinch and is bound to let me down.
October 4, 2013
The fact that this book was written by a woman makes it sort of scary. At times, I was identifying with the thought processes of the protagonist so much that it creeped me out a little.
I found it a very accurate, detailed and realistic account of one man's struggle with love (or whatever he mistook for love). At times the prose was a bit dry and I missed the immediacy of the dialog whenever the protagonist got lost in memories and justifications.
Still, I noticed a lot of people complaining about the characters, in the sense that they feel a need to judge them. Well, I think that's one of the signs that the book succeeds in its ambitions.
Nathaniel is not an asshole. He's a coward at times, but that can be said of most men. He definitely reminded me of some people I know.
On the other hand, some of the pseudo-intellectual conversations got a bit of hand, and made me feel like I was stuck listening to a bunch of empty-headed, arrogant pricks. Again, a feeling I used to experience at parties a lot. (Haven't been to one in ages... )
If anything, it made me wonder about the world the author inhabits in real life. Are the characters based on her friends or acquaintances? Perhaps even herself or one of her former lovers?
Adelle Waldman has certainly managed to intrigue me with her debut, and I look forward to her future work.
I found it a very accurate, detailed and realistic account of one man's struggle with love (or whatever he mistook for love). At times the prose was a bit dry and I missed the immediacy of the dialog whenever the protagonist got lost in memories and justifications.
Still, I noticed a lot of people complaining about the characters, in the sense that they feel a need to judge them. Well, I think that's one of the signs that the book succeeds in its ambitions.
Nathaniel is not an asshole. He's a coward at times, but that can be said of most men. He definitely reminded me of some people I know.
On the other hand, some of the pseudo-intellectual conversations got a bit of hand, and made me feel like I was stuck listening to a bunch of empty-headed, arrogant pricks. Again, a feeling I used to experience at parties a lot. (Haven't been to one in ages... )
If anything, it made me wonder about the world the author inhabits in real life. Are the characters based on her friends or acquaintances? Perhaps even herself or one of her former lovers?
Adelle Waldman has certainly managed to intrigue me with her debut, and I look forward to her future work.
November 11, 2013
Loathsome. That is the best word to describe the pretentious, self-absorbed and self-congratulatory, emotionally stunted protagonist of this novel.
Smarmy. That is how I would describe the entire novel.
The entire thing left me feeling as if I needed a shower. My major complaints are listed below, in no particular order:
1. The main character is loathsome;
2. The author, though female, appeared to hate women;
3. If she used the word "gentrification" one more time, I may have smothered her in her own self-satisfaction.
4. The entire lot of characters were a bunch of winy, arrogant, hipster douchebags. (And I generally shy away from using slang in literature reviews. But I just hated this book THAT much.)
5. The callous and insensitive reference to people with Asperger's syndrome that I thought was ludicrous.
6. Back to the gentrification: for all the repeated use of this 50 cent SAT word, the author sure did enjoy heaping on the racial and cultural stereotypes. What??
**SPOILER**
7. The ending MADE NO FREAKIN' sense. Was it satire that I just didn't "get"? There was no character resolution. When we last see Nate, he is engaged in what I would determine to be a dysfunctional cyclic feeding of codependent egos. Was that supposed to be a "happy" ending?? Or were we meant to be left with the impression that once a douche, always a douche??
UGH. This book absolutely infuriated me. I wanted to bail about halfway through, but I held on, hoping for some iota of redemption. If I had taken the time to peak at the author's self-satisfied and "ironic" dust jacket photo, I would have known not to waste my time. Damn hipsters.
Smarmy. That is how I would describe the entire novel.
The entire thing left me feeling as if I needed a shower. My major complaints are listed below, in no particular order:
1. The main character is loathsome;
2. The author, though female, appeared to hate women;
3. If she used the word "gentrification" one more time, I may have smothered her in her own self-satisfaction.
4. The entire lot of characters were a bunch of winy, arrogant, hipster douchebags. (And I generally shy away from using slang in literature reviews. But I just hated this book THAT much.)
5. The callous and insensitive reference to people with Asperger's syndrome that I thought was ludicrous.
6. Back to the gentrification: for all the repeated use of this 50 cent SAT word, the author sure did enjoy heaping on the racial and cultural stereotypes. What??
**SPOILER**
7. The ending MADE NO FREAKIN' sense. Was it satire that I just didn't "get"? There was no character resolution. When we last see Nate, he is engaged in what I would determine to be a dysfunctional cyclic feeding of codependent egos. Was that supposed to be a "happy" ending?? Or were we meant to be left with the impression that once a douche, always a douche??
UGH. This book absolutely infuriated me. I wanted to bail about halfway through, but I held on, hoping for some iota of redemption. If I had taken the time to peak at the author's self-satisfied and "ironic" dust jacket photo, I would have known not to waste my time. Damn hipsters.
December 27, 2016
Whew. It's tough to get into the love affairs of Nathaniel (call him "Nate") P. if you don't much care for Nathaniel (call him "Nate") P., and really, I didn't. At all. Not that it's deadly to dislike a protagonist. Poe pulled it off with aplomb. First-person creep POV, but the reader's still there. But Nate? He's just so much milquetoast angst. Shallow, despite his supposed Ivy League intelligence. And his biggest love affair is with himself. Yawn.
As for the girls, you can't help but wonder what's wrong with them. Have they no sense? The Emperor wears no clothes here. It's marketed as a savvy, 30-something, Brooklyn-is-cool situated novel about love these days, but if this is love, we need a new word for the real thing.
The other drag on the narrative is the writing. It seems, in many spots, to be a lot of telling. Not that telling can't work sometimes. Here, it just doesn't. This happened, then that happened; Nate saw her, then Nate thought this; what happened a minute ago, is happening again -- only differently maybe because the girl's hair is longer than the last's or her laugh more affected or her monologue more boring, and Nate is micro-analyzing every blessed moment. In fact, in one section, Nate admits to be sensitive to the charge of overthinking things. Oy. Small wonder! In the end, it's just a long slog through a lot of sameness passing as clever social commentary. Or not passing.
Bottom line: No Exit, Brooklyn-style.
As for the girls, you can't help but wonder what's wrong with them. Have they no sense? The Emperor wears no clothes here. It's marketed as a savvy, 30-something, Brooklyn-is-cool situated novel about love these days, but if this is love, we need a new word for the real thing.
The other drag on the narrative is the writing. It seems, in many spots, to be a lot of telling. Not that telling can't work sometimes. Here, it just doesn't. This happened, then that happened; Nate saw her, then Nate thought this; what happened a minute ago, is happening again -- only differently maybe because the girl's hair is longer than the last's or her laugh more affected or her monologue more boring, and Nate is micro-analyzing every blessed moment. In fact, in one section, Nate admits to be sensitive to the charge of overthinking things. Oy. Small wonder! In the end, it's just a long slog through a lot of sameness passing as clever social commentary. Or not passing.
Bottom line: No Exit, Brooklyn-style.
December 14, 2013
I went in prepared to hate this. I mean, hello? Another A. Waldman? But it was pretty fucking great. The insight into the way these literary boys think about women? Terrific.
May 13, 2016
God damn, why was this easy little book so rough. I ran through some of the reviews to get my bearings, and, by and large, and in some major organs, Waldman is being hailed as having delivered a masterpiece. Jane Austen/Edith Wharton comparisons. Uncomfortably incisive. Remarkably observant. You’ll feel she’s been peeking into your very brunches. Skewers a culture and roasts it to succulent perfection. A real make-you-thinker.
Which, all right. I can't say it wasn't a make-you-thinker. I certainly found myself mulling my own collection of exes for degrees of Nateishness. I certainly found myself getting irritated, frustrated, and even angry. Which, evidently, is what I’m meant to do.
Waldman has written a book of unlikable characters in order to render knowable the eensy singular precious inhabitants of the eensy singular precious world of Brooklyn circa now--finicky, entitled, self-obsessed, interpersonally clumsy and romantically disabled by the constant pressure of all the morebetterdifferent and toomuchness of this cluttered little asshole of a town--and shine some light on the motivations and difficulties these unlikable characters are experiencing. A moral satire. A comedy of manners. A book operating outside its paper flesh in the realm of social commentary. She mentions Mailer and Roth only in passing but she definitely mentions them on purpose.
This is meant to be contemporary American realism in the long blue vein of those two schlongs, but whittled, cleaned, deboned--their slender, clever granddaughter, twirling prettily. Appraising without sentiment or fawning the very same territory that crammed itself around the grimy, risible fucks of Mailer and Roth--how do the intelligent couple.
In putting everything in third-person semi-omniscient, Waldman achieves what some are calling an admirable detachment--but I don’t think it reads as detachment, I think it reads as judgment. I think the main reason this book skeeved me out and irritated me, aside from the dialogue being awful and the scenes themselves so artlessly constructed you can basically see Waldman standing behind everything holding up backgrounds labeled BRUNCH, APARTMENT, PROSPECT PARK, while wiggling the puppets on her hands, her blacksleeved arms visible over the painted canvas, is that everyone in this book is a shithead. This isn’t a criticism, of course--if she’s written a moral satire, then of course she should be sitting in judgment.
The problem is that it’s extremely difficult to tell whether we’re reading judgment through the skrim of Nate’s dumbassedness, or whether it’s Waldman herself cutting people down into these conventional, dismissable categories and using Nate as a vehicle to do so. If it’s Nate, then fine--his pronouncements on Aurit, Hannah, Kristen, Elisa, women in general--are just him being shitty, and part of the ride. But there are a lot of places in this book where you’re like oh wait this isn’t a book about a judgmental brat it’s a book by one.
I get no sense that Waldman is on board with anyone; she seems to hate them all, even Aurit, who, even though we are told over and over that everyone is always talking about ideas all the time, we never really see anyone talk about ideas, except with Aurit, who, for her trouble, gets reduced to a distinctly feminine weakness (overwhelmed by emotions and can’t argue properly, which just what the fuck on that. Like how low is the bar to avoid only the most basic cookie cutter misogyny it is so low is the answer. Hop it for chrissakes. It's boring when you don't). Even Hannah, who is probably the character Waldman is writing for and around most sympathetically (one reviewer supersharply suggests that “this might be the book Hannah finally gets around to writing,” which how much do you love that observation, I looove it), is just kind of stomped on, made lame, and tossed aside.
A book like this, about a subject that’s been done to death, should, to me, bring something fucking great to the table. If you really really really have to add to the bodypile of young white people in New York trying to get their emotional and intellectual bearings, I just feel like, Jesus, when I finish it I should win some kind of oh shit moment. Like oh shit I never thought of it like that at the very, very least. This book brings paperthin characters and a paperthin world to the table and then it just sets up the dollhouse and leaves you there staring at it. I’m already here, though. I don’t really care.
Which, all right. I can't say it wasn't a make-you-thinker. I certainly found myself mulling my own collection of exes for degrees of Nateishness. I certainly found myself getting irritated, frustrated, and even angry. Which, evidently, is what I’m meant to do.
Waldman has written a book of unlikable characters in order to render knowable the eensy singular precious inhabitants of the eensy singular precious world of Brooklyn circa now--finicky, entitled, self-obsessed, interpersonally clumsy and romantically disabled by the constant pressure of all the morebetterdifferent and toomuchness of this cluttered little asshole of a town--and shine some light on the motivations and difficulties these unlikable characters are experiencing. A moral satire. A comedy of manners. A book operating outside its paper flesh in the realm of social commentary. She mentions Mailer and Roth only in passing but she definitely mentions them on purpose.
This is meant to be contemporary American realism in the long blue vein of those two schlongs, but whittled, cleaned, deboned--their slender, clever granddaughter, twirling prettily. Appraising without sentiment or fawning the very same territory that crammed itself around the grimy, risible fucks of Mailer and Roth--how do the intelligent couple.
In putting everything in third-person semi-omniscient, Waldman achieves what some are calling an admirable detachment--but I don’t think it reads as detachment, I think it reads as judgment. I think the main reason this book skeeved me out and irritated me, aside from the dialogue being awful and the scenes themselves so artlessly constructed you can basically see Waldman standing behind everything holding up backgrounds labeled BRUNCH, APARTMENT, PROSPECT PARK, while wiggling the puppets on her hands, her blacksleeved arms visible over the painted canvas, is that everyone in this book is a shithead. This isn’t a criticism, of course--if she’s written a moral satire, then of course she should be sitting in judgment.
The problem is that it’s extremely difficult to tell whether we’re reading judgment through the skrim of Nate’s dumbassedness, or whether it’s Waldman herself cutting people down into these conventional, dismissable categories and using Nate as a vehicle to do so. If it’s Nate, then fine--his pronouncements on Aurit, Hannah, Kristen, Elisa, women in general--are just him being shitty, and part of the ride. But there are a lot of places in this book where you’re like oh wait this isn’t a book about a judgmental brat it’s a book by one.
I get no sense that Waldman is on board with anyone; she seems to hate them all, even Aurit, who, even though we are told over and over that everyone is always talking about ideas all the time, we never really see anyone talk about ideas, except with Aurit, who, for her trouble, gets reduced to a distinctly feminine weakness (overwhelmed by emotions and can’t argue properly, which just what the fuck on that. Like how low is the bar to avoid only the most basic cookie cutter misogyny it is so low is the answer. Hop it for chrissakes. It's boring when you don't). Even Hannah, who is probably the character Waldman is writing for and around most sympathetically (one reviewer supersharply suggests that “this might be the book Hannah finally gets around to writing,” which how much do you love that observation, I looove it), is just kind of stomped on, made lame, and tossed aside.
A book like this, about a subject that’s been done to death, should, to me, bring something fucking great to the table. If you really really really have to add to the bodypile of young white people in New York trying to get their emotional and intellectual bearings, I just feel like, Jesus, when I finish it I should win some kind of oh shit moment. Like oh shit I never thought of it like that at the very, very least. This book brings paperthin characters and a paperthin world to the table and then it just sets up the dollhouse and leaves you there staring at it. I’m already here, though. I don’t really care.
August 16, 2013
I hated this book for so many reasons. It's fake high brow trash for former ivy leaguers who live in Brooklyn. I won't even say it's a good beach read because nothing happens, there is no plot and the protagonist, a single guy in his 30s, is so boring. He's suppose to be an offensive character but he's just SO BLEH. I also don't think Waldman captured how a single man actually thinks--this book was CLEARLY written by a woman (what man spends so much time analyzing his romantic relationships? that is quintessential female!) I was annoyed the entire time I was reading this that it got so much hype and such good reviews when it is so cliched, boring, unmemorable and silly. Perhaps I should've known this book wasn't for me from the simple fact that all reviewers are saying it's the modern day Pride and Prejudice--which is the all time worst and silliest book ever and never should have become part of the canon. The anti-Israel, anti-Orthodox vibe was so annoying, uninspired and unoriginal. The repeated use of the phrase "stentorian voice" gave me the creeps. I almost gave this book 1 star but I added an extra one because Waldman seemed like she is probably bright. And I gave Twilight one star, and I don't think this was quite as bad as the inner monologue of an adolescent girl debating the merits of a vampire vs a werewolf.
September 14, 2013
Debut novelist Adelle Waldman has an uncanny talent of describing women through the eyes of a man. The love Affairs of Nathaniel P is essentially, in the words of reviewer Sasha Weiss, "a mercilessly clear view into a man’s mind as he grows tired of a worthy woman."
Women readers must find the journey into the male mind infuriating. I found it to be fascinating, and slightly troubling. How is it that a woman can describe my subconscious behavior toward women better than myself? Who told her all the secrets?
This isn't a book that I would recommend to everyone. Some of my friends would find it intellectually snobbish. Others would say of the characters, "no one really talks like that." But then, those friends haven't spent time with Ivy League humanities grads slumming it in Brooklyn.
90% of American men are clueless to the fact that there is a foreign land where attractive, well-dressed, sophisticated women fight for the attention of bookish, introverted men. This foreign land is called New York and it must be a terrible place to be a woman looking for love. My assumption is that many of these women move to New York for professional ambition, or because they watched too much Felicity growing up, but eventually, as Nathaniel P observes:
The first three-fourths of this book could have been written by a modern, urbanite Hemingway. Only toward the end does it become occasionally clear that its author is a woman.
My hunch, based on the most popular Kindle highlights, is that the majority of readers are women as well. That shouldn't keep men away. It's a surreal and satisfying experience to peer into the male mind from a woman's point of view.
Women readers must find the journey into the male mind infuriating. I found it to be fascinating, and slightly troubling. How is it that a woman can describe my subconscious behavior toward women better than myself? Who told her all the secrets?
This isn't a book that I would recommend to everyone. Some of my friends would find it intellectually snobbish. Others would say of the characters, "no one really talks like that." But then, those friends haven't spent time with Ivy League humanities grads slumming it in Brooklyn.
90% of American men are clueless to the fact that there is a foreign land where attractive, well-dressed, sophisticated women fight for the attention of bookish, introverted men. This foreign land is called New York and it must be a terrible place to be a woman looking for love. My assumption is that many of these women move to New York for professional ambition, or because they watched too much Felicity growing up, but eventually, as Nathaniel P observes:
"... in his thirties everything was different. The world seemed to be populated, to an alarming degree, by women whose careers, whether soaring or sputtering along, no longer preoccupied them. No matter what they claimed, they seemed in practice, to care about little except relationships."
The first three-fourths of this book could have been written by a modern, urbanite Hemingway. Only toward the end does it become occasionally clear that its author is a woman.
My hunch, based on the most popular Kindle highlights, is that the majority of readers are women as well. That shouldn't keep men away. It's a surreal and satisfying experience to peer into the male mind from a woman's point of view.
July 18, 2013
Bright young men, do you feel that chilly wind of exposure? Somehow, Adelle Waldman has stolen your passive-aggressive playbook and published it in her first novel, “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” You’ll want to tell your female friends that you’ve heard it’s not very good. Mutter something about how condescending it is to women. In the bookstore, reshelve copies back in the “Gardening” section. . . . . An overreaction? I don’t think so. Read the review: http://wapo.st/16Miqoa
March 19, 2013
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased review
This book y'all! Seriously! If you have ever just tried to date someone, you should probably read this
This book chronicles the dating life of Nate, who is, or so he claims, a nice guy. He's not the malicious sleezeball that we think of when we think of dating. He's not leading women on for no other reason than sex, he's not the kind of guy that cheats on his gf, or the kind of guy that has no empathy for other people's feelings. He's just a guy who has had a few breakups.
Except, he's not. Not really. Not from most women's perspective anyway. He manages to find fault with the women he is dating without ever taking stock of how his behavior plays a part in the demise of the relationship. And THAT is what made me rage so hard (but in a good way, because I think it's actually told in a realistic way). In some ways he's more despicable than the sleezeball, because you expect better from him. As a writer and self-proclaimed overthinker, you expect that he will consider his relationships objectively and from all sides, but he doesn't. He's the kind of guy you cry over, and you cry even harder because you didn't think he would make you cry in the first place. Nate is the guy you spend hours and days and weeks wondering "what did I do wrong?"
The story picks up when he's going to a dinner party hosted by his ex-gf Elisa, and where he meets Hannah. It chronicles his interactions with Hannah, as well as flashes back to parts of his relationship with Elisa and his first serious gf (Rachel? Rebecca?). And the more you read, the harder his book is to swallow, not because it's unrealistic, but because it is just all too real.
Nate is a little too self-absorbed and self-important for my tastes, but seeing as how he hangs with literary thinkers who spend all day intellectualizing, I can see where in that circle, he has some appeal. But it turns out he is much more self-absorbed than you would think upon meeting him, and this is ultimately the downfall of the women he interacts with.
The story itself was pretty good. I had some serious problems with the ending, and I felt like for someone with such little self-awareness he sure spent a lot of time thinking about himself. But those problems are to be expected, and aren't a flaw of the writer or the writing, it's just how the book made me feel. And that's the thing about this book. You will definitely feel something.
This book y'all! Seriously! If you have ever just tried to date someone, you should probably read this
This book chronicles the dating life of Nate, who is, or so he claims, a nice guy. He's not the malicious sleezeball that we think of when we think of dating. He's not leading women on for no other reason than sex, he's not the kind of guy that cheats on his gf, or the kind of guy that has no empathy for other people's feelings. He's just a guy who has had a few breakups.
Except, he's not. Not really. Not from most women's perspective anyway. He manages to find fault with the women he is dating without ever taking stock of how his behavior plays a part in the demise of the relationship. And THAT is what made me rage so hard (but in a good way, because I think it's actually told in a realistic way). In some ways he's more despicable than the sleezeball, because you expect better from him. As a writer and self-proclaimed overthinker, you expect that he will consider his relationships objectively and from all sides, but he doesn't. He's the kind of guy you cry over, and you cry even harder because you didn't think he would make you cry in the first place. Nate is the guy you spend hours and days and weeks wondering "what did I do wrong?"
The story picks up when he's going to a dinner party hosted by his ex-gf Elisa, and where he meets Hannah. It chronicles his interactions with Hannah, as well as flashes back to parts of his relationship with Elisa and his first serious gf (Rachel? Rebecca?). And the more you read, the harder his book is to swallow, not because it's unrealistic, but because it is just all too real.
Nate is a little too self-absorbed and self-important for my tastes, but seeing as how he hangs with literary thinkers who spend all day intellectualizing, I can see where in that circle, he has some appeal. But it turns out he is much more self-absorbed than you would think upon meeting him, and this is ultimately the downfall of the women he interacts with.
The story itself was pretty good. I had some serious problems with the ending, and I felt like for someone with such little self-awareness he sure spent a lot of time thinking about himself. But those problems are to be expected, and aren't a flaw of the writer or the writing, it's just how the book made me feel. And that's the thing about this book. You will definitely feel something.
January 6, 2014
This should really be a 3.5 star ranking. Or actually, possibly even a 4 or 5, but good lord, I could not deal with being in Nathaniel P.'s head for a minute longer.
The book is so smart about the ways ladies and dudes in their 20s sabotage relationships. I saw me and/or my friends in page after page, which YES, made me squirm uncomfortably and be extremely happy that I am a bit out of this phase of life.
The revelation Nate has at the end,
Adele Waldman has done an excellent job of recreating in writing the sort of person I want to spend absolutely zero hours of my life with.
The book is so smart about the ways ladies and dudes in their 20s sabotage relationships. I saw me and/or my friends in page after page, which YES, made me squirm uncomfortably and be extremely happy that I am a bit out of this phase of life.
The revelation Nate has at the end,
Adele Waldman has done an excellent job of recreating in writing the sort of person I want to spend absolutely zero hours of my life with.
September 8, 2016
One of the greatest boons I discovered upon discovering dating was not the tenderness of someone’s arm around your waist or the security of always having Friday night plans but the ability to ask boys everything I ever wanted to know about them but wasn’t daring enough to ask. I have pestered every one of my boyfriends with the same questions: How do you talk about girls with your friends? What do you truly look for in a girl? Why did you really break up with your ex? Are you actually that obsessed with porn? Yes? Okay, well why?
Because although our brains are identical at birth, by our 20s boy brains have been masculinized and girl brains feminized, even if we grew up in the most liberal of households, and my inquiring mind wants to explore and understand these differences. Boys and girls are taught to approach the world in fantastically different ways, so dating, that ritual where we, along with our socially acquired differences, interact most intimately, can become a disaster real fast.
For example, a quick google search for what men are looking for in a girlfriend brings you to this top 10 list which includes “She lets you be a man” and “She respects you.” A lengthier female equivalent, 21 Things To Look For In A Boyfriend, includes “He loves your laugh, even your ugly laugh” and “He knows your favorite dish at the Thai place is. He knows what movie you two watched on your first date. He knows the blanket you love to curl up with when reading.” If we take these articles to represent societal standards, it is abundantly obvious how incompatible the “average” man and woman’s dating goals are. And so dating is this fraught, often bloody battlefield simply because boys and girls taught to approach sex and relationships differently.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. depicts the inevitable dating explosion that arises when two people cannot overcome this cultural indoctrination. It’s especially interesting because the protagonist, Nathaniel P, a budding Brooklynite writer with a book deal (did I mention he has a book deal? Because Nathaniel P. wants everyone to know he has a book deal), is aware that social forces have influenced his utter romantic failures, but he’s so weak that he cannot rid himself of these nefarious influences to find Truth and Happiness in a relationship.
Nate is one of the most frustrating and brilliant characters I’ve encountered in a while. He’s the prototype of a white, urban, intellectual male with heaps of liberal guilt. He has this guilt, yet he lacks the guts to surmount it. He knows, for instance, that men and women are equal intellectually, and regrets that a misogynistic culture refuses to acknowledge that, but then he wonders which male academic his girlfriend is quoting when she makes a particularly salient argument. And thus Nate wallows. He thwarts himself, searching for ways to be unhappy because he doesn’t believe he has a right to be happy nor does he even know what would make him properly happy.
The closest he comes to discovering happiness is his relationship with Hannah, also a brilliant young writer, though without a book deal (Nate would like you to know that Hannah does not have a book deal, though he, Nathaniel P, does have a book deal). Unlike his previous girlfriends, Hannah actually challenges Nate. Their relationship is intellectually demanding, and Nate, misogynized subconsciously since birth, fears this. He fears the equal he recognizes in Hannah. Therefore he sabotages their relationship, even though it’s the only thing that brings him real, unfiltered, incandescent joy instead of mere contentment.
Read this book to observe a promising relationship fall apart because a boy has been taught, blindly and unwillfully, to always prelude every date with “I’m just not looking for a relationship right now.” Read this book if you’re the type of person who hears that line and then asks, “Okay, sure…but why exactly?”
Waldman, in precise, piercing prose, dissects the anatomy of a “modern man” to expose what she calls "a certain type of male thinking." When she cuts Nate up, what you see is terrifying, and the best evidence that socialized gender norms not only hurt women but men too.
Because although our brains are identical at birth, by our 20s boy brains have been masculinized and girl brains feminized, even if we grew up in the most liberal of households, and my inquiring mind wants to explore and understand these differences. Boys and girls are taught to approach the world in fantastically different ways, so dating, that ritual where we, along with our socially acquired differences, interact most intimately, can become a disaster real fast.
For example, a quick google search for what men are looking for in a girlfriend brings you to this top 10 list which includes “She lets you be a man” and “She respects you.” A lengthier female equivalent, 21 Things To Look For In A Boyfriend, includes “He loves your laugh, even your ugly laugh” and “He knows your favorite dish at the Thai place is. He knows what movie you two watched on your first date. He knows the blanket you love to curl up with when reading.” If we take these articles to represent societal standards, it is abundantly obvious how incompatible the “average” man and woman’s dating goals are. And so dating is this fraught, often bloody battlefield simply because boys and girls taught to approach sex and relationships differently.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. depicts the inevitable dating explosion that arises when two people cannot overcome this cultural indoctrination. It’s especially interesting because the protagonist, Nathaniel P, a budding Brooklynite writer with a book deal (did I mention he has a book deal? Because Nathaniel P. wants everyone to know he has a book deal), is aware that social forces have influenced his utter romantic failures, but he’s so weak that he cannot rid himself of these nefarious influences to find Truth and Happiness in a relationship.
Nate is one of the most frustrating and brilliant characters I’ve encountered in a while. He’s the prototype of a white, urban, intellectual male with heaps of liberal guilt. He has this guilt, yet he lacks the guts to surmount it. He knows, for instance, that men and women are equal intellectually, and regrets that a misogynistic culture refuses to acknowledge that, but then he wonders which male academic his girlfriend is quoting when she makes a particularly salient argument. And thus Nate wallows. He thwarts himself, searching for ways to be unhappy because he doesn’t believe he has a right to be happy nor does he even know what would make him properly happy.
The closest he comes to discovering happiness is his relationship with Hannah, also a brilliant young writer, though without a book deal (Nate would like you to know that Hannah does not have a book deal, though he, Nathaniel P, does have a book deal). Unlike his previous girlfriends, Hannah actually challenges Nate. Their relationship is intellectually demanding, and Nate, misogynized subconsciously since birth, fears this. He fears the equal he recognizes in Hannah. Therefore he sabotages their relationship, even though it’s the only thing that brings him real, unfiltered, incandescent joy instead of mere contentment.
Read this book to observe a promising relationship fall apart because a boy has been taught, blindly and unwillfully, to always prelude every date with “I’m just not looking for a relationship right now.” Read this book if you’re the type of person who hears that line and then asks, “Okay, sure…but why exactly?”
Waldman, in precise, piercing prose, dissects the anatomy of a “modern man” to expose what she calls "a certain type of male thinking." When she cuts Nate up, what you see is terrifying, and the best evidence that socialized gender norms not only hurt women but men too.
December 7, 2019
Ah Nate, küçük şerefsiz; o kadar haklı, o kadardan daha haksız ve hepsinden daha fazla zavallısın ki… Hannah ise asla düşünmek istemediğim bir yansıma.
Romanı aslında yazın okumuştum fakat yorum girmemiştim. Bilgisayar ve internetin olmadığı, doğanın içinde bir kamp alanındaydım. İstanbul’a dönüş yaptıktan sonra da ‘bir ara bir şeyler yazarım’ savsaklamasına takıldı kaldı. Bugün uyandığımda Hannah aklıma gelmemiş olsaydı, belki daha uzun süre savsaklayacaktım, bilmiyorum. Üzerinden zaman geçtiği için biraz karıştırdım romanı ve sevdiğime karar vermekle birlikte, düşüncelerimi de ucundan köşesinden topladım.
Öncelikle kitaba arsız bir beklentiyle başladığımı itiraf etmem gerek: Kitabın yoğun miktarda cinsellik ve ağzı bozukluk barındırdığını sanıyordum. Ama tabiî ki böyle bir şey bulamadım:) Eleştirmen muhafazakârlığının ya da reklamcı kışkırtıcılığının kurbanı oldum yani. Makul bir seviyede var elbette ama temel derdi, izleği olmadığını söyleyebilirim. Hayal kırıklığımı (yargılamayın lütfen, o an aradığım bu değildi sadece:)) aştıktan sonra kitabın hiç de fena olmadığını fark ettim.
Adelle Waldman, klasik anlamda bir roman yazarı değil: Aslında gazeteci, köşe yazarı ve kitap eleştirmeni. Yazarlığı bunların arkasından geliyor. Haliyle ilk romanında da en iyi bildiği dünyayı inşa etmeyi tercih etmiş. Kitapta New York’un çağdaş entelektüellerinin arasına konuk oluyoruz. Nate isimli başkarakterimiz aracılığıyla bu neo-bohem dünyaya katılıp, insan ilişkilerini izliyor ve büyük ölçüde de güruhun hayatı algılama biçimlerini, yargılarını, çıkarımlarını dinliyoruz. Tam da New York’un yayın trafiğinde kendine yer bulabilmiş kıvrak ve pratik zekâlı bir gazetecinin gözlemleri olabilecek ayrıntılar, kitabı ana izleğinin aşk meseleleri olmasının getirdiği hafiflikten kurtarıp; daha üst bir klasmana yerleştiriyor. Özellikle kitapta çokça gerçekleşen toplu buluşmalarda, karakterlerin diyalogları kitabın düşünsel tarafını ortaya koyuyor. WoodyAllen stili, zeki, mizahi ve ironik konuşmalar aslında bir kültürün dünyayı algılama biçimini, saptamalarını ve çıkarımlarını gösteriyor. Bu kitabın güçlü taraflarından biri olsa da şahsen burayı es geçmek istiyorum. Direkt Nate’in aşk meşk ilişkileri daha çok ilgimi çekti diyebilirim. Kendimi karakterlerin bir arkadaşı yerine koyduğum kitapta, elbette belli duygu durumlarına girmem de kaçınılmazdı.
Bu noktadan sonra Nate’e küfür ederek başlayabilirim aslında. Greer gibileri aşağılamak için de inanılmaz bir fırsat. Elisa’ya ne demeli? Al birini vur diğerine. Şaka bir yana yaşadığımız yer ve sosyal konumlar farklı olabilir ama aslında bizim hikâyemiz anlatılıyor romanda. ‘Biz’ olarak sınıflandırdığım grubu tanımlamayacağım ama en azından birçoğumuzun hayatının bir döneminde, bu tarz ilişki sınavlarından geçtiğini düşünüyorum. İlişkilerin kendi içinde bir dinamiği var. Başlangıçta ayakların yerden kesilmesine sebep olan bir duygu hali, herhangi bir neden olmaksızın bir müddet sonra ayakları yere çivileyen dürtüye dönüşebiliyor. Hannah karşısında Nate’in geçirdiği dönüşüm ‘hayat işte’ gibi basmakalıp bir geçiştirmeyle açıklanmamalı. Nate gibi insanların savruk ilişki yaşama gelenekleri meşrulaştırılmamalı. Çok yaralı gibi konuşuyor olabilirim ama aslında ilişki romanlarında en temelde meseleye kibirle ve özdeşlikten yoksun bakıldığını düşünüyorum. Belki bir D.H.Lawrence romanı için bu tutum kabul edilebilir ama bu kadar güncel, hayatın ve trafiğin içinden bir roman için bence kabul edilemez. Bunu bir kişisel gelişime çevirmek de mantıklı değil de en azından karakterleri yargılamaya hakkımız olmalı:)
Nate, tam olarak cinsel organını liberal inançları doğrultusunda duygularına yön verdiren bir yeke gibi kullanıyor. Bilinçli bir tercih değil elbette bu; onun en doğal hali. Roth’un Portnoy’u gibi hakkını verebileceğimiz bir durumu da yok Nate’in. Baya onu hödükleştiren sistemin gön��llü figüranı olmuş durumda. O noktada kitaplar ve makaleler yazsa da, dünyanın gidişatı, sömürülen halklar hakkında vicdanlı ve kapsamlı, yerinde fikirleri olsa da hayatı yaşama tarzı konusunda başını kaldırıp, kendine farkındalıkla bakmaktan aciz. Ancak başka yerlerini kaldırmayı biliyor. Yazar kadın olsa bile, Nate üzerinden; kent yaşamı içerisinde, entelektüelliğin getirdiği olgunlukla(!) muhteşem doğal gözüken eril cinsiyetçiliği etrafına dayatan erkeğin iktidarlı bir portresini çiziyor. Hollywood romantik komedilerinin daimi mekânı olan New York, bize mağdur ve mahsun erkek profilini, boşalmak için daha egzantirik vajinalar arayan Nate aracılığıyla; pek romantik olmayan bir komedi olarak sunuyor. Belki de kadınların güç sahibi olduğu anlatılara alıştık, bilemiyorum. Yine de aradan geçen yüzyılın Bovary’i haklı çıkarırken, Nate’i haksız çıkardığını düşünüyorum. Yine de hakkını vermem lazım, hayata tutunmayı biliyor, bildiriyor da. Sistemin en iyi otokontrol aktörleri olduğuna inanıyorum o yüzden bu tarz insanların. Hem yaşasın Prozac, değil mi?:)
Okumuş birine yüzyüzede denk geldiğimde karakterleri çekiştirmeye devam edeceğim. Hoş bir roman olduğunu düşünüyorum. Nitelikli bir kadın-erkek romanı okumak isteyenlere mutlaka öneririm. Diğer yandan erotik bir şey yok, onu da bilin:)
Son olarak da kitabın orijinal diline de göz gezdirmiş biri olarak çevirisine değinmek istiyorum. Şahika Tokel tarafından yapılmış çeviri tam anlamıyla hayranlık uyandırıcı. Bazı yerlerinde gidip İngilizcesine bakıp, sonra Türkçesine dönüp ne kadar güzel çevrilmiş diye kıvanç ve gurur duydum. Daha nice çevirilere...
İyi okumalar.
7,9/10
Romanı aslında yazın okumuştum fakat yorum girmemiştim. Bilgisayar ve internetin olmadığı, doğanın içinde bir kamp alanındaydım. İstanbul’a dönüş yaptıktan sonra da ‘bir ara bir şeyler yazarım’ savsaklamasına takıldı kaldı. Bugün uyandığımda Hannah aklıma gelmemiş olsaydı, belki daha uzun süre savsaklayacaktım, bilmiyorum. Üzerinden zaman geçtiği için biraz karıştırdım romanı ve sevdiğime karar vermekle birlikte, düşüncelerimi de ucundan köşesinden topladım.
Öncelikle kitaba arsız bir beklentiyle başladığımı itiraf etmem gerek: Kitabın yoğun miktarda cinsellik ve ağzı bozukluk barındırdığını sanıyordum. Ama tabiî ki böyle bir şey bulamadım:) Eleştirmen muhafazakârlığının ya da reklamcı kışkırtıcılığının kurbanı oldum yani. Makul bir seviyede var elbette ama temel derdi, izleği olmadığını söyleyebilirim. Hayal kırıklığımı (yargılamayın lütfen, o an aradığım bu değildi sadece:)) aştıktan sonra kitabın hiç de fena olmadığını fark ettim.
Adelle Waldman, klasik anlamda bir roman yazarı değil: Aslında gazeteci, köşe yazarı ve kitap eleştirmeni. Yazarlığı bunların arkasından geliyor. Haliyle ilk romanında da en iyi bildiği dünyayı inşa etmeyi tercih etmiş. Kitapta New York’un çağdaş entelektüellerinin arasına konuk oluyoruz. Nate isimli başkarakterimiz aracılığıyla bu neo-bohem dünyaya katılıp, insan ilişkilerini izliyor ve büyük ölçüde de güruhun hayatı algılama biçimlerini, yargılarını, çıkarımlarını dinliyoruz. Tam da New York’un yayın trafiğinde kendine yer bulabilmiş kıvrak ve pratik zekâlı bir gazetecinin gözlemleri olabilecek ayrıntılar, kitabı ana izleğinin aşk meseleleri olmasının getirdiği hafiflikten kurtarıp; daha üst bir klasmana yerleştiriyor. Özellikle kitapta çokça gerçekleşen toplu buluşmalarda, karakterlerin diyalogları kitabın düşünsel tarafını ortaya koyuyor. WoodyAllen stili, zeki, mizahi ve ironik konuşmalar aslında bir kültürün dünyayı algılama biçimini, saptamalarını ve çıkarımlarını gösteriyor. Bu kitabın güçlü taraflarından biri olsa da şahsen burayı es geçmek istiyorum. Direkt Nate’in aşk meşk ilişkileri daha çok ilgimi çekti diyebilirim. Kendimi karakterlerin bir arkadaşı yerine koyduğum kitapta, elbette belli duygu durumlarına girmem de kaçınılmazdı.
Bu noktadan sonra Nate’e küfür ederek başlayabilirim aslında. Greer gibileri aşağılamak için de inanılmaz bir fırsat. Elisa’ya ne demeli? Al birini vur diğerine. Şaka bir yana yaşadığımız yer ve sosyal konumlar farklı olabilir ama aslında bizim hikâyemiz anlatılıyor romanda. ‘Biz’ olarak sınıflandırdığım grubu tanımlamayacağım ama en azından birçoğumuzun hayatının bir döneminde, bu tarz ilişki sınavlarından geçtiğini düşünüyorum. İlişkilerin kendi içinde bir dinamiği var. Başlangıçta ayakların yerden kesilmesine sebep olan bir duygu hali, herhangi bir neden olmaksızın bir müddet sonra ayakları yere çivileyen dürtüye dönüşebiliyor. Hannah karşısında Nate’in geçirdiği dönüşüm ‘hayat işte’ gibi basmakalıp bir geçiştirmeyle açıklanmamalı. Nate gibi insanların savruk ilişki yaşama gelenekleri meşrulaştırılmamalı. Çok yaralı gibi konuşuyor olabilirim ama aslında ilişki romanlarında en temelde meseleye kibirle ve özdeşlikten yoksun bakıldığını düşünüyorum. Belki bir D.H.Lawrence romanı için bu tutum kabul edilebilir ama bu kadar güncel, hayatın ve trafiğin içinden bir roman için bence kabul edilemez. Bunu bir kişisel gelişime çevirmek de mantıklı değil de en azından karakterleri yargılamaya hakkımız olmalı:)
Nate, tam olarak cinsel organını liberal inançları doğrultusunda duygularına yön verdiren bir yeke gibi kullanıyor. Bilinçli bir tercih değil elbette bu; onun en doğal hali. Roth’un Portnoy’u gibi hakkını verebileceğimiz bir durumu da yok Nate’in. Baya onu hödükleştiren sistemin gön��llü figüranı olmuş durumda. O noktada kitaplar ve makaleler yazsa da, dünyanın gidişatı, sömürülen halklar hakkında vicdanlı ve kapsamlı, yerinde fikirleri olsa da hayatı yaşama tarzı konusunda başını kaldırıp, kendine farkındalıkla bakmaktan aciz. Ancak başka yerlerini kaldırmayı biliyor. Yazar kadın olsa bile, Nate üzerinden; kent yaşamı içerisinde, entelektüelliğin getirdiği olgunlukla(!) muhteşem doğal gözüken eril cinsiyetçiliği etrafına dayatan erkeğin iktidarlı bir portresini çiziyor. Hollywood romantik komedilerinin daimi mekânı olan New York, bize mağdur ve mahsun erkek profilini, boşalmak için daha egzantirik vajinalar arayan Nate aracılığıyla; pek romantik olmayan bir komedi olarak sunuyor. Belki de kadınların güç sahibi olduğu anlatılara alıştık, bilemiyorum. Yine de aradan geçen yüzyılın Bovary’i haklı çıkarırken, Nate’i haksız çıkardığını düşünüyorum. Yine de hakkını vermem lazım, hayata tutunmayı biliyor, bildiriyor da. Sistemin en iyi otokontrol aktörleri olduğuna inanıyorum o yüzden bu tarz insanların. Hem yaşasın Prozac, değil mi?:)
Okumuş birine yüzyüzede denk geldiğimde karakterleri çekiştirmeye devam edeceğim. Hoş bir roman olduğunu düşünüyorum. Nitelikli bir kadın-erkek romanı okumak isteyenlere mutlaka öneririm. Diğer yandan erotik bir şey yok, onu da bilin:)
Son olarak da kitabın orijinal diline de göz gezdirmiş biri olarak çevirisine değinmek istiyorum. Şahika Tokel tarafından yapılmış çeviri tam anlamıyla hayranlık uyandırıcı. Bazı yerlerinde gidip İngilizcesine bakıp, sonra Türkçesine dönüp ne kadar güzel çevrilmiş diye kıvanç ve gurur duydum. Daha nice çevirilere...
İyi okumalar.
7,9/10
January 27, 2015
This is the best book on American culture I've read by a novelist in a long, long time. It was not only intellectually stimulating, psychologically penetrating and often very entertaining, it was a page-turner, one that honored the characters, articulated aspects of this rabble of citizens I needed to have articulated, all in all a novel that I will be thinking about for as long as I've been craving it - which has been a long fucking time.
It's her uses of irony that has stunned me the most. I don't know if it's new, or a 21st century form of it, but I have yet to come across irony in this incarnation. When Americans say "ironical" we invariably have it confused for "sarcastic." And when we do understand the difference we destroy the instinct by using it like a branch of knowledge. If irony isn't outwitting you you don't know what it is. Waldman is smarter than her better instincts as she is her feminist advocates. She has written her male lead as a corrective to the usual male boast when our ego turns to erotic fictions. But something odd happened along the way. She decided to take her male lead at his word. What resulted out of a desire to be fair is a kind of irony that the author herself might not even be aware of - but more on that in a moment.
To begin with I loved the character Hannah. Waldman has written her (as well as her other leads) in such a way that in retrospect it doesn't feel like I was reading fiction. One of the first substantive conversations she has with the titular Nate Piven is about reading and its legitimacy. There are people who read books and people who do not read books. There are many people who believe there is a qualitative difference between the two. The kind that believe that a better humanity exists among those who have read Tolstoy and Flaubert (or, for God's sakes, the postmodernists). I recall a round-table that was broadcast on C-SPAN around the time of Obama's election in 2008 which featured a group of novelists including Colm Tóibín. Regarding the new president they all agreed, "Well at least this one reads." Nate is sounding no different from these. Hannah, actually arguing for democracy, doesn't see the qualitative difference.
"Is it snobbery to think that Lolita is better than a television show about pets?" Nate persisted.
"It's snobbery to think you're a better person than someone else just because they don't happen to get off on the world's most elegant account of child molestation."
Now if I ever heard a woman say this on a date I'd ask for her hand in marriage instantaneously. But then again we'd never get this far because I loathe Nabokov.
It has been fascinating reading the negative reviews. I wonder what these people have against children of immigrants, in this case a Romanian Jew. They must take it for granted that they were born into a life where they didn't have to fight for their cultural cues and capital. Waldman is no Jhumpa Lahiri. She doesn't make a huge issue (i.e. an entire career) out of the immigrant experience. In fact I chuckled that she dispatched with this whole trauma on Nate's psyche in a mere two sentences: "Nate had never thought of himself as disadvantaged. His parents were immigrants, but the kind with good jobs." If Lahiri was this sensible she wouldn't have anything to write about.
There is a kind of cruel streak to Waldman's writing (in the way Orwell and Houellebecq need to be cruel) which is why I have warmed to her. The women in Nate's life are there as a Greek chorus to his asshole-ish, lustful ways. But what exactly does he desire? Like women everywhere they need to know exactly what this is. In doing so they often look as hypocritical and self-delusional as he. While out with his friend Aurit, for instance, she puts the iron maiden on him so that he can answer why he hasn't called Hannah four days after two very successful dates. Hannah is Catholic, but she tells Nate that's not the reason why she wishes to wait to have sex with him - perfectly reasonable. But now Hannah now worries she may have blown a good opportunity. He doesn't answer Aurit for the sake of Hannah, understandably. Because when he finally gets around to an explanation - a myriad of response passes through his head in the meantime - Aurit gives him a predictably accusatory "You sound defensive."
I am thinking of conservative columnist Ross Douthat here and his book on what it's like going to Harvard (which Nate did) as a key to understanding the main character of this book. Douthat's observation applies, the one that says those that attend elite institutions resist commitment (and sexual commitments generally) on account of dedication to their careers which must take precedent over true love which will only derail you from the night and day hours needed to set you apart. You must be ruthless with your time to attain a goal of a prestigious job. It should never be forgotten while reading this book that Nate being an "asshole" (if you want to be vulgar about it) is only partly attributable to his maleness. The rest is that he has just received a six figure advance on the book he has written. It's perfectly understandable that he's hesitant about committing to women who suddenly find him attractive. That's what makes Hannah interesting - she puts off sex knowing what everyone else knows, that he's now a commodity. But what wonderful women friends Nate has. "Like Freud, Aurit had a coherent theory of the universe." The one that states, you know, that single men are lacking in emotional well-being.
"Classic Aurit. Take whatever she was personally interested in and apply all her ingenuity to turning it into something important. It never occurred to her that there was anything more worth caring about or thinking about than upper-middle-class women's search for happiness, in the cozily coupled, fatally bourgeois sense of the word. She thought if she could convey how much this meant to women - articulate it once and for all - the world would come around. Never did she realize how limited her perspective was, how insensible she was to all that fell outside the sphere of her own preoccupations."
The exact kind of woman who would find Nate an asshole. Meanwhile Aurit and the waitress have an instinctive dislike of one another. Who asks Aurit if she's done with her food? "Uh, no." Then this: "The waitress scowled and walked away. Aurit's nostrils flared. Bad service was a source of great frustration for her, an irritant that might at any moment set her off, like science was for the medieval church." This is how Waldman's irony works. Aurit is telling Nate not to be such an asshole toward women. While saying this her contempt for another woman (one struggling at a waitress job) is instantly obvious to the waitress. It's amazing: we Americans do not realize the extent to what walking parodies we are. "When she comes back I'm going to tell her there was too much arugula on my pizza," says Aurit. You're being an asshole Nate for expecting things to be just right. Now someone bring me the right amount of arugula!!!
Another big theme: A blowjob didn't quite work out and Hannah asks Nate if there's something she should be doing differently. Waldman has Nate fret about having to explain what he really wants, his discomfort discussing this, for having to become a different person in order to get what he sexually wants. This discomfort is actually the normal reaction. Everyone's fear that they might be lousy in bed is irrational. If there is a mutual attraction and for the right reasons there's nothing to worry about, nothing to explain. No one technically can be called lousy in bed. Though there are many who have a knack for choosing the wrong person. It helps to know what exactly turns you on, on instinct and not on explanation. That someone might be lousy in bed is just the single person's lament for continuing to be that way and the married person's one for not understanding the true nature of marriage.
That Waldman is so psychologically astute about this, to combine this with her understanding of class distinctions and the nature of ambition is what makes this novel so compelling. I loved it and cannot wait to see what she does next.
It's her uses of irony that has stunned me the most. I don't know if it's new, or a 21st century form of it, but I have yet to come across irony in this incarnation. When Americans say "ironical" we invariably have it confused for "sarcastic." And when we do understand the difference we destroy the instinct by using it like a branch of knowledge. If irony isn't outwitting you you don't know what it is. Waldman is smarter than her better instincts as she is her feminist advocates. She has written her male lead as a corrective to the usual male boast when our ego turns to erotic fictions. But something odd happened along the way. She decided to take her male lead at his word. What resulted out of a desire to be fair is a kind of irony that the author herself might not even be aware of - but more on that in a moment.
To begin with I loved the character Hannah. Waldman has written her (as well as her other leads) in such a way that in retrospect it doesn't feel like I was reading fiction. One of the first substantive conversations she has with the titular Nate Piven is about reading and its legitimacy. There are people who read books and people who do not read books. There are many people who believe there is a qualitative difference between the two. The kind that believe that a better humanity exists among those who have read Tolstoy and Flaubert (or, for God's sakes, the postmodernists). I recall a round-table that was broadcast on C-SPAN around the time of Obama's election in 2008 which featured a group of novelists including Colm Tóibín. Regarding the new president they all agreed, "Well at least this one reads." Nate is sounding no different from these. Hannah, actually arguing for democracy, doesn't see the qualitative difference.
"Is it snobbery to think that Lolita is better than a television show about pets?" Nate persisted.
"It's snobbery to think you're a better person than someone else just because they don't happen to get off on the world's most elegant account of child molestation."
Now if I ever heard a woman say this on a date I'd ask for her hand in marriage instantaneously. But then again we'd never get this far because I loathe Nabokov.
It has been fascinating reading the negative reviews. I wonder what these people have against children of immigrants, in this case a Romanian Jew. They must take it for granted that they were born into a life where they didn't have to fight for their cultural cues and capital. Waldman is no Jhumpa Lahiri. She doesn't make a huge issue (i.e. an entire career) out of the immigrant experience. In fact I chuckled that she dispatched with this whole trauma on Nate's psyche in a mere two sentences: "Nate had never thought of himself as disadvantaged. His parents were immigrants, but the kind with good jobs." If Lahiri was this sensible she wouldn't have anything to write about.
There is a kind of cruel streak to Waldman's writing (in the way Orwell and Houellebecq need to be cruel) which is why I have warmed to her. The women in Nate's life are there as a Greek chorus to his asshole-ish, lustful ways. But what exactly does he desire? Like women everywhere they need to know exactly what this is. In doing so they often look as hypocritical and self-delusional as he. While out with his friend Aurit, for instance, she puts the iron maiden on him so that he can answer why he hasn't called Hannah four days after two very successful dates. Hannah is Catholic, but she tells Nate that's not the reason why she wishes to wait to have sex with him - perfectly reasonable. But now Hannah now worries she may have blown a good opportunity. He doesn't answer Aurit for the sake of Hannah, understandably. Because when he finally gets around to an explanation - a myriad of response passes through his head in the meantime - Aurit gives him a predictably accusatory "You sound defensive."
I am thinking of conservative columnist Ross Douthat here and his book on what it's like going to Harvard (which Nate did) as a key to understanding the main character of this book. Douthat's observation applies, the one that says those that attend elite institutions resist commitment (and sexual commitments generally) on account of dedication to their careers which must take precedent over true love which will only derail you from the night and day hours needed to set you apart. You must be ruthless with your time to attain a goal of a prestigious job. It should never be forgotten while reading this book that Nate being an "asshole" (if you want to be vulgar about it) is only partly attributable to his maleness. The rest is that he has just received a six figure advance on the book he has written. It's perfectly understandable that he's hesitant about committing to women who suddenly find him attractive. That's what makes Hannah interesting - she puts off sex knowing what everyone else knows, that he's now a commodity. But what wonderful women friends Nate has. "Like Freud, Aurit had a coherent theory of the universe." The one that states, you know, that single men are lacking in emotional well-being.
"Classic Aurit. Take whatever she was personally interested in and apply all her ingenuity to turning it into something important. It never occurred to her that there was anything more worth caring about or thinking about than upper-middle-class women's search for happiness, in the cozily coupled, fatally bourgeois sense of the word. She thought if she could convey how much this meant to women - articulate it once and for all - the world would come around. Never did she realize how limited her perspective was, how insensible she was to all that fell outside the sphere of her own preoccupations."
The exact kind of woman who would find Nate an asshole. Meanwhile Aurit and the waitress have an instinctive dislike of one another. Who asks Aurit if she's done with her food? "Uh, no." Then this: "The waitress scowled and walked away. Aurit's nostrils flared. Bad service was a source of great frustration for her, an irritant that might at any moment set her off, like science was for the medieval church." This is how Waldman's irony works. Aurit is telling Nate not to be such an asshole toward women. While saying this her contempt for another woman (one struggling at a waitress job) is instantly obvious to the waitress. It's amazing: we Americans do not realize the extent to what walking parodies we are. "When she comes back I'm going to tell her there was too much arugula on my pizza," says Aurit. You're being an asshole Nate for expecting things to be just right. Now someone bring me the right amount of arugula!!!
Another big theme: A blowjob didn't quite work out and Hannah asks Nate if there's something she should be doing differently. Waldman has Nate fret about having to explain what he really wants, his discomfort discussing this, for having to become a different person in order to get what he sexually wants. This discomfort is actually the normal reaction. Everyone's fear that they might be lousy in bed is irrational. If there is a mutual attraction and for the right reasons there's nothing to worry about, nothing to explain. No one technically can be called lousy in bed. Though there are many who have a knack for choosing the wrong person. It helps to know what exactly turns you on, on instinct and not on explanation. That someone might be lousy in bed is just the single person's lament for continuing to be that way and the married person's one for not understanding the true nature of marriage.
That Waldman is so psychologically astute about this, to combine this with her understanding of class distinctions and the nature of ambition is what makes this novel so compelling. I loved it and cannot wait to see what she does next.
September 2, 2014
Really not a fan of the feeling this book gave me, its incessantly intellectualizing, grating, oft amusing but never LOL observations, its annoying new New York characters, all of them seeming more like snooty journalists than fiction writers/artists with screws joyously loose. I was thankful for the consistent physical description of characters, something so often missing in contemporary novels, but the book in general succeeded more as a collection of character sketches than a novel. Nothing really pulled me through the story other than the rise and fall of a relationship I knew would rise and fall, followed by inevitable resolution. Around page 110 at a party scene I felt like things started to fall off, as though Nate's humanizing interest in Hannah, their happiness engaged cruise control en route to the end. Houllebecq would have done something bold -- suddenly kill Hannah or even Nate -- but no such luck in this. As a male writer who lived in Brooklyn from 2000 to 2004, I'm not qualified to discuss whether the author did a good job creating a reasonable male who went to Harvard and has immigrant parents and doesn't really seem passionate about writing or literature or art or people or music or sports or anything, really. He's a wishy-washy male composite, an ink blot -- of course male readers will associate indistinct Rorschachian expressions of manliness with themselves and female readers will nod at something that reminds them of someone they know. But really there are many more women in this than Nate and his underdescribed friends Jason, Mark, Eugene -- Kristen, Aurit, Elisa, Hannah, Greer, Cara -- and all of them other than Hannah until page 130 or so seem pretty ughful -- their character assasination verges on fun at times but left me feeling ickily rough-cut once the blades of the language seemed to lose some sharpness midway. At times the swashbuckling observations -- shredding inhabitants of contemporary literary Brooklyn, oh my! -- seemed excessive, an exagerration of "what it's like to live now" more than satirical truthiness -- also maybe four raised eyebrows (pet peeve) and sometimes a mechanical-seeming 19th-century syntax studded with current expletives/slang. Not the worst but like Gessen's novel (All the Sad Young Literary Men) I wish these novels about sad young lit types involved experientially open, rangy, committed various fiction writers and artists more than straight, white, overly intellectual yet imaginatively close-minded journalists debating their privilege, concerned with fulfilling their ambition more than developing their art. Every era gets the NYC depiction it deserves, I suppose, and it's sad the city (its depiction at least) has come to this -- and it didn't even mention the proliferation of high-rise condos in Brooklyn.
July 27, 2013
Like high brow Tucker Max. Makes fun of pretension while being pretentious.
August 10, 2013
Nathaniel Piven could be considered by some to be quite a catch. A well-read Harvard graduate, Nate is a good-looking writer who recently sold his first book, and thinks of himself as a bit of an intellectual. Raised by immigrant parents to respect intelligence and hard work, he wants to be seen as irresistible, but he struggles with his self esteem. Nate has had several long-term relationships with women, but ultimately he's grown bored, or wearies of his girlfriends' idiosyncrasies.
"Although it wasn't something he'd admit aloud, he often thought women were either deep or reasonable, but rarely both."
When Nate meets Hannah, a fellow writer, at his ex-girlfriend's dinner party, he is charmed by her intellect and her knack for conversation, as well as her looks, but he is unsure whether he should pursue a relationship with her. Hannah isn't looking for a serious relationship either, but as Nate begins to pursue her, and she realizes how much she enjoys being with him, she finds herself falling for him. And Nate loves the way Hannah can hold her own in arguments and match wits with his pretentious friends.
As the relationship deepens, however, Nate finds himself falling into the same behavior patterns. Will he realize what he really wants before it's too late, or will he wind up ending another relationship for superficial reasons?
Honestly, I know there are many men like Nate out there, and I'd like to apologize to all women everywhere. Not only wouldn't I ever want someone I knew to date him, I didn't enjoy spending time reading about him. I found this book utterly frustrating and even a bit annoying—the marketing of this book leads you to believe Nate is going to have some major epiphany, but in the end, he remains the same callow, unrepentant man-child he has always been. There is so much pretension among the characters in this book, except Hannah, that I couldn't understand why she was even friends with these people, let alone interested in pursuing a relationship with Nate.
There are times you read a book and find yourself wondering, "Who cares?" That was the way I felt while reading The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. While Arielle Waldman is a very talented writer—she certainly has created a group of utterly unappealing characters—I wish this book had a little more depth to it, a little more heart, and a little more growth. While I'm curious to know what happened to Nate after the book ended, I hope someday someone was able to smack some sense into him.
"Although it wasn't something he'd admit aloud, he often thought women were either deep or reasonable, but rarely both."
When Nate meets Hannah, a fellow writer, at his ex-girlfriend's dinner party, he is charmed by her intellect and her knack for conversation, as well as her looks, but he is unsure whether he should pursue a relationship with her. Hannah isn't looking for a serious relationship either, but as Nate begins to pursue her, and she realizes how much she enjoys being with him, she finds herself falling for him. And Nate loves the way Hannah can hold her own in arguments and match wits with his pretentious friends.
As the relationship deepens, however, Nate finds himself falling into the same behavior patterns. Will he realize what he really wants before it's too late, or will he wind up ending another relationship for superficial reasons?
Honestly, I know there are many men like Nate out there, and I'd like to apologize to all women everywhere. Not only wouldn't I ever want someone I knew to date him, I didn't enjoy spending time reading about him. I found this book utterly frustrating and even a bit annoying—the marketing of this book leads you to believe Nate is going to have some major epiphany, but in the end, he remains the same callow, unrepentant man-child he has always been. There is so much pretension among the characters in this book, except Hannah, that I couldn't understand why she was even friends with these people, let alone interested in pursuing a relationship with Nate.
There are times you read a book and find yourself wondering, "Who cares?" That was the way I felt while reading The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. While Arielle Waldman is a very talented writer—she certainly has created a group of utterly unappealing characters—I wish this book had a little more depth to it, a little more heart, and a little more growth. While I'm curious to know what happened to Nate after the book ended, I hope someday someone was able to smack some sense into him.
Read
July 1, 2013A loving, lovely literary break-up letter for the Brooklyn literati, prefaced by a George Eliot quote ("To give a true account for what passes within us, something else is necessary besides sincerity.").
Nate P is in some ways a cross between Hal and Orin Incandenza. In the same vein, this novel could have been written by the female interviewer of Krasinki's adaptation of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. But it's its own thing—it's not The End of the Story as the point of view differs and the narrative structure has less stricture and is overall more "knowing" if you know what I mean.
This is an enjoyable book for those who find solace in the awkward or feel awkward from solace. There are a few cringe-inducing characters and situations but it's all in good fun.
& the grammar is as on point as the word choices. (Chortling is good, as is redbrick) but the winning thing about this book is the overarching consistency of narrative tone throughout. Truly, there are some moments of real poetic brilliance here, especially this one bit about the NYC skyline, which, as someone who can really get off on a place, this was something else.
But I digress. Maybe I just liked this book because some part of me could identify with the main character.
Oh and there's much subtle use of both compassion and irony, like the idea that the psychopath's cunning is an essential impetus for human evolution.
Favorite lines: "She bled if you pricked her."
"He imitated the stylistics devices of writers he admired without realizing that for those writers these weren't mere devices but means of expressing something true."
"... he'd eventually quit his bi-weekly book-reviewing gig, which had been the only claim to status he'd had in the world. ... But the reviews hadn't paid enough to justify the time and energy they required."
So yeah, 21st century novel of manners populated by over-educated NYCers. Smart phonies and smart phones alike are taken for granted with absolutely ZERO mention of ANY form of social networking. Which on one level seriously smashes any pretense towards "realism" but on the other hand, eliminates a slew of potential instances for inanity. Although had Nate became a GoodReads author, I would have chuckled.
The sexy parts were well-done. Not over the top but not too muted.
Caveat: this book features lots of straight people screwing around and getting drunk. If that's not your thing, I'm frankly surprised you read this far.
& were I still playing the "starring books" game right now, this book would get 10/3 stars.
Nate P is in some ways a cross between Hal and Orin Incandenza. In the same vein, this novel could have been written by the female interviewer of Krasinki's adaptation of Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. But it's its own thing—it's not The End of the Story as the point of view differs and the narrative structure has less stricture and is overall more "knowing" if you know what I mean.
This is an enjoyable book for those who find solace in the awkward or feel awkward from solace. There are a few cringe-inducing characters and situations but it's all in good fun.
& the grammar is as on point as the word choices. (Chortling is good, as is redbrick) but the winning thing about this book is the overarching consistency of narrative tone throughout. Truly, there are some moments of real poetic brilliance here, especially this one bit about the NYC skyline, which, as someone who can really get off on a place, this was something else.
But I digress. Maybe I just liked this book because some part of me could identify with the main character.
Oh and there's much subtle use of both compassion and irony, like the idea that the psychopath's cunning is an essential impetus for human evolution.
Favorite lines: "She bled if you pricked her."
"He imitated the stylistics devices of writers he admired without realizing that for those writers these weren't mere devices but means of expressing something true."
"... he'd eventually quit his bi-weekly book-reviewing gig, which had been the only claim to status he'd had in the world. ... But the reviews hadn't paid enough to justify the time and energy they required."
So yeah, 21st century novel of manners populated by over-educated NYCers. Smart phonies and smart phones alike are taken for granted with absolutely ZERO mention of ANY form of social networking. Which on one level seriously smashes any pretense towards "realism" but on the other hand, eliminates a slew of potential instances for inanity. Although had Nate became a GoodReads author, I would have chuckled.
The sexy parts were well-done. Not over the top but not too muted.
Caveat: this book features lots of straight people screwing around and getting drunk. If that's not your thing, I'm frankly surprised you read this far.
& were I still playing the "starring books" game right now, this book would get 10/3 stars.
May 15, 2014
Before I say anything about this book itself, I want to address how it has been portrayed in the media. When this novel first came out, I seem to recall that a lot of the coverage proclaimed that its title character, Nate, was some kind of representative of straight males as a group. Even the back cover of my paperback maintains that Nate is "an emblem of our time." This is a terrible, terrible thing to saddle a novel with. It can't lead to anything but women reading the book and being horrified that this is how all men think, and men reading the book and growing incensed at the implication that this character represents them. Anger at the novel and its author ensues, with none of it having anything to do with the actual writing, the actual novel. Please do not read this book thinking Nate represents anyone but himself, or I don't see how you can avoid hating it.
Nate is certainly an interesting character. A douchebag, to be sure, but not only a douchebag. You can see how he sometimes works hard to be a better person. You will probably find yourself relating to him in some ways, even agreeing with him at some points (I did). He overthinks everything, which could've been tedious, but instead is somehow entertaining. I think Adelle Waldman did an impressive job of making Nate both complex and consistent. Are all men like Nate? Of course not, and I don't think Waldman intended to make that statement. But I will say there were a couple of astute observations in here that jibed pretty well with my own experiences with men, and it was kind of a relief to see them in print. Some interesting things are being said about the way men and women interact with each other.
So was the book entertaining? Somehow, yes--every time I had to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. Nate's brain was a surprisingly enjoyable place to be in spite of it all, and the rest of the characters were very, very, well drawn. We see them all through Nate's eyes, but are somehow able to form our own opinions of them as well--another impressive feat Waldman is able to pull off. The interactions between the characters never fail to be interesting, and there's definitely some humor if you're open to it. I will admit that by the last twenty pages or so, I found Nate so loathesome that I couldn't wait to be done. But then Waldman capped the whole thing off with an absolutely perfect ending.
Reading zeitgeisty books is always a risk (see: How Should a Person Be?--or better yet, don't), but I am very, very glad I gave this one a chance. I fervently hope Adelle Waldman's next book doesn't feature any characters like Nate, but I will be eager to see what she comes up with.
Nate is certainly an interesting character. A douchebag, to be sure, but not only a douchebag. You can see how he sometimes works hard to be a better person. You will probably find yourself relating to him in some ways, even agreeing with him at some points (I did). He overthinks everything, which could've been tedious, but instead is somehow entertaining. I think Adelle Waldman did an impressive job of making Nate both complex and consistent. Are all men like Nate? Of course not, and I don't think Waldman intended to make that statement. But I will say there were a couple of astute observations in here that jibed pretty well with my own experiences with men, and it was kind of a relief to see them in print. Some interesting things are being said about the way men and women interact with each other.
So was the book entertaining? Somehow, yes--every time I had to put it down I couldn't wait to get back to it. Nate's brain was a surprisingly enjoyable place to be in spite of it all, and the rest of the characters were very, very, well drawn. We see them all through Nate's eyes, but are somehow able to form our own opinions of them as well--another impressive feat Waldman is able to pull off. The interactions between the characters never fail to be interesting, and there's definitely some humor if you're open to it. I will admit that by the last twenty pages or so, I found Nate so loathesome that I couldn't wait to be done. But then Waldman capped the whole thing off with an absolutely perfect ending.
Reading zeitgeisty books is always a risk (see: How Should a Person Be?--or better yet, don't), but I am very, very glad I gave this one a chance. I fervently hope Adelle Waldman's next book doesn't feature any characters like Nate, but I will be eager to see what she comes up with.
February 10, 2013
I think we've all known a guy like Nate Piven: the self-proclaimed "nice guy", the kind of a guy who thinks of himself as a feminist, who understands women's struggles. Invariably this guy is always just as much of a callow jerk as your average frat boy, quickly growing impatient with women's feelings and foibles, and blaming them for any problems in the relationship. After all, he's a nice, understanding guy, it's not his fault the relationship is failing! Nate Piven is no exception, and what makes him so insufferable is not that he's a jerk, but that he so smugly believes he isn't. What saves him, and what makes the book so brilliant, is these flashes of self-awareness he has. Occasionally he is stricken with self-doubt and it makes him human (and less murder-able). I enjoyed every page of this sharp debut, and I can't wait for more from Adelle Waldman!
August 8, 2013
Nathaniel P., part of Brooklyn’s young literati complete with a decent book deal, is on his way to a dinner party at his ex-girlfriend-turned-just-friend’s apartment when he runs into a different ex who, in their brief exchange, shames him for his past bad behavior. His social crime: Getting her pregnant, playing the role of a supportive boyfriend through the trip to the abortion clinic and a day of recovery, calling to check in with her -- then never talking to her ever again.
He can justify this. He can justify almost anything: Finding a new girlfriend at his old girlfriend’s dinner party, sizing up one woman while on a date with another, being sickened by his lover’s slack underarms which have defied her devotion to pilates.
Adelle Waldman’s debut novel “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P” is a super ugly portrait of modern love among the young and restless.” Nate, the quintessential sexually-entitled asshole, is 30, a freelance writer with a small circle of friends living in a neighborhood on the cusp of hipster takedown. He went to Harvard. That’s one of the first things he would tell you. He had a serious relationship that started in college, but since that ended has soured mightily on women. He’s got plenty of generalizations about how they act and what they say and what it means and and how awful it all is for him. In the meantime, he doesn’t have a hard time finding one or two that are willing to date him and then revel in his loathsomeness in an obsessive way when it all ends.
Mostly the novel focuses on his time with Hannah, also a writer, who seems skeptical of Nate but gradually falls into it with him. She’s smart. His friends like her (though, Nate thinks, they would believe her to be about a 7 on the attractiveness scale and this bothers him -- especially when faced with a prettier, yet dimmer woman his friend is dating).
There is the whole Falling in Love, slow dance to the bedroom, and onset of the relationship. Eventually this is upended when, after a bad day, Nate begins to notice the seams in his partner. Her underarms jiggle. Why haven’t her friends told her that he ass looks bad in those jeans. She’s being emotionally manipulative. He begins to pull away from her, then expresses surprise when she’s hurt. It turns into a treat-her-bad, treat-her-awesome tango until they are forced into a series of State of The Relationship convos -- each more exhausting than the last.
Technically, the book is okay. It’s full of exposition and unnecessary back stories and occasional filler characters that lend little to the narrative. Plot wise, it’s simple: A party, a coffee shop, my apartment, her apartment, and interactions with women -- including an aggressive ex. Still, it’s a struggle to cut it loose. There is something addictive about the entitlement and whining and imagined torture of the titular character. The lecherous looks and manipulation. The way a reader might want Hannah to haul off and nail him in the nuts, but instead she disavows every strong woman sensibility she’s developed in her life to Try to Make Things Work.
There is nothing redeeming about Nate, nothing to make a reader sympathetic to his Inability to Be in a Relationship. Not even the revelation that before he had enough lit cred to wow a woman or two, he had been not-so cool in high school. The kind of guy who attracts the attention of a smart girl with frizzy hair instead of the It Girl whose scrunchy he sniffs in the privacy of his bedroom. Waldman’s book sounds like Retaliation Lit. The kind of words jotted in anger to express a frustration in men trends and incredulousness about how sometimes a smart woman gets her feet stuck in the muck and finds herself uncharacteristically asking in a voice she doesn’t recognize: “Are you mad at me?”
There are two ways to take this book: A reader can get annoyed at Nate, his generalizations and disdain for women and annoyed with the women who sometimes seem to fall right into his unflattering characterizations. A reader can throw her Kindle at the wall and say: “C’mon. Why do I want to read about such awful people?” Or. A reader can ooze through it like reality television. But the real kind of reality television. Hidden cameras, stolen dream journals. Flipping the scab with a thumb nail to see how it attaches to the skin. One might suspect that this ugly, ugly look at Dating in Brooklyn in 20-whatever has enough real to it to make a player cringe in embarrassment and bring back a slide show of a decade of bad decision making.
He can justify this. He can justify almost anything: Finding a new girlfriend at his old girlfriend’s dinner party, sizing up one woman while on a date with another, being sickened by his lover’s slack underarms which have defied her devotion to pilates.
Adelle Waldman’s debut novel “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P” is a super ugly portrait of modern love among the young and restless.” Nate, the quintessential sexually-entitled asshole, is 30, a freelance writer with a small circle of friends living in a neighborhood on the cusp of hipster takedown. He went to Harvard. That’s one of the first things he would tell you. He had a serious relationship that started in college, but since that ended has soured mightily on women. He’s got plenty of generalizations about how they act and what they say and what it means and and how awful it all is for him. In the meantime, he doesn’t have a hard time finding one or two that are willing to date him and then revel in his loathsomeness in an obsessive way when it all ends.
Mostly the novel focuses on his time with Hannah, also a writer, who seems skeptical of Nate but gradually falls into it with him. She’s smart. His friends like her (though, Nate thinks, they would believe her to be about a 7 on the attractiveness scale and this bothers him -- especially when faced with a prettier, yet dimmer woman his friend is dating).
There is the whole Falling in Love, slow dance to the bedroom, and onset of the relationship. Eventually this is upended when, after a bad day, Nate begins to notice the seams in his partner. Her underarms jiggle. Why haven’t her friends told her that he ass looks bad in those jeans. She’s being emotionally manipulative. He begins to pull away from her, then expresses surprise when she’s hurt. It turns into a treat-her-bad, treat-her-awesome tango until they are forced into a series of State of The Relationship convos -- each more exhausting than the last.
Technically, the book is okay. It’s full of exposition and unnecessary back stories and occasional filler characters that lend little to the narrative. Plot wise, it’s simple: A party, a coffee shop, my apartment, her apartment, and interactions with women -- including an aggressive ex. Still, it’s a struggle to cut it loose. There is something addictive about the entitlement and whining and imagined torture of the titular character. The lecherous looks and manipulation. The way a reader might want Hannah to haul off and nail him in the nuts, but instead she disavows every strong woman sensibility she’s developed in her life to Try to Make Things Work.
There is nothing redeeming about Nate, nothing to make a reader sympathetic to his Inability to Be in a Relationship. Not even the revelation that before he had enough lit cred to wow a woman or two, he had been not-so cool in high school. The kind of guy who attracts the attention of a smart girl with frizzy hair instead of the It Girl whose scrunchy he sniffs in the privacy of his bedroom. Waldman’s book sounds like Retaliation Lit. The kind of words jotted in anger to express a frustration in men trends and incredulousness about how sometimes a smart woman gets her feet stuck in the muck and finds herself uncharacteristically asking in a voice she doesn’t recognize: “Are you mad at me?”
There are two ways to take this book: A reader can get annoyed at Nate, his generalizations and disdain for women and annoyed with the women who sometimes seem to fall right into his unflattering characterizations. A reader can throw her Kindle at the wall and say: “C’mon. Why do I want to read about such awful people?” Or. A reader can ooze through it like reality television. But the real kind of reality television. Hidden cameras, stolen dream journals. Flipping the scab with a thumb nail to see how it attaches to the skin. One might suspect that this ugly, ugly look at Dating in Brooklyn in 20-whatever has enough real to it to make a player cringe in embarrassment and bring back a slide show of a decade of bad decision making.
August 10, 2013
It's all the rage. Yesterday, I read an admiring profile in the NY Times of Adelle Waldman. They met at a hip bar in Brooklyn (incidentally, the inspiration for a bar in her novel), and the reporter got to scrutinize The Scene. Turns out, while she was writing a (quasi) fictional book about literary Brooklyn, her husband was a book called Literary Brooklyn: The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life.
But all of that is scenery, all of that is gossip. I read this book because it was supposed to introduce the Jane Austen of the 21st century. With that perspective, you can see Waldman made some excellent choices for moral satire. She chose a bounded community with shared expectations, ambitions, and vanities (a sliver of Brooklyn, itself a swollen sliver of NYC). She chose for the novel's perspective a young man recently come into his strengths - his intelligence, his attractiveness, his ability to mime love. She threw this walking foible into rough spots. A good start.
"Nate hated, really hated, being told he thought too much...But not thinking was a way of giving oneself license to be a dick." (Good - the high seriousness of the moral imperative; the assumption of bad faith in yourself; the sense that if given the chance, you would be a monster, despite a total lack of evidence for this sense.)
So why didn't I love it?
- I didn't find her dialogue writing especially convincing. In particular, the cutesy exchange between Nathaniel and Aurit about the arugula and prosciutto pizza seemed snipped from a romantic comedy. It didn't read like a man's friendship with a woman. Also Waldman's habit of inserting jumpy ironic phrases in italics, meant to represent Nathaniel's thoughts on the fly. It did not feel like a man's thinking - I'm not an expert, but I'm one after all, and I've known a couple. Rather, I thought Waldman was leaning against an easy genre-style - snappy romantic comedies, rather than people on the fly.
- Aurit the Author's Mouthpiece. See her speech about dating being "the most fraught human interaction there is." It's dumb to have to say, "There's important things to say about love," but there are. But Waldman is interested in dating as a kind of consumerism, where, alarmingly, your purchase talks back to you and can conceivably anchor you to children. Relationships, even the positive relationship offered by Hannah, are in this book investments, part of five year plans. Where is the "odi et amo...sed fieri sentio et excrucior"?
- "...an irritant that might at any moment set her off, like science was for the medieval church."
- that I found myself wondering if Greer on page 233 was a sideways look at Lena Dunham.
- that Hannah is almost inexpressibly perfect - not merely a good woman that Nathaniel fails - but the Bunyanesque image of Unappreciated Woman. That Nathaniel walks through almost exactly the same paces as Rob in High Fidelity, including mildly admitting to real cruelty. In other words, just dark enough to be more than a pasty fuck-up, just articulate enough to be more than a Bad Guy Jerk.
Overall, it's good - sharp, attuned to the batsqueaks of conversation and flirting, occasionally atmospheric but quickened with action. Waldman also shows the guilty self-obsession, and the narcissism of self-recrimination, which leads not to enlightened citizens, but boils of resentment and childishness.
Worth a read.
But all of that is scenery, all of that is gossip. I read this book because it was supposed to introduce the Jane Austen of the 21st century. With that perspective, you can see Waldman made some excellent choices for moral satire. She chose a bounded community with shared expectations, ambitions, and vanities (a sliver of Brooklyn, itself a swollen sliver of NYC). She chose for the novel's perspective a young man recently come into his strengths - his intelligence, his attractiveness, his ability to mime love. She threw this walking foible into rough spots. A good start.
"Nate hated, really hated, being told he thought too much...But not thinking was a way of giving oneself license to be a dick." (Good - the high seriousness of the moral imperative; the assumption of bad faith in yourself; the sense that if given the chance, you would be a monster, despite a total lack of evidence for this sense.)
So why didn't I love it?
- I didn't find her dialogue writing especially convincing. In particular, the cutesy exchange between Nathaniel and Aurit about the arugula and prosciutto pizza seemed snipped from a romantic comedy. It didn't read like a man's friendship with a woman. Also Waldman's habit of inserting jumpy ironic phrases in italics, meant to represent Nathaniel's thoughts on the fly. It did not feel like a man's thinking - I'm not an expert, but I'm one after all, and I've known a couple. Rather, I thought Waldman was leaning against an easy genre-style - snappy romantic comedies, rather than people on the fly.
- Aurit the Author's Mouthpiece. See her speech about dating being "the most fraught human interaction there is." It's dumb to have to say, "There's important things to say about love," but there are. But Waldman is interested in dating as a kind of consumerism, where, alarmingly, your purchase talks back to you and can conceivably anchor you to children. Relationships, even the positive relationship offered by Hannah, are in this book investments, part of five year plans. Where is the "odi et amo...sed fieri sentio et excrucior"?
- "...an irritant that might at any moment set her off, like science was for the medieval church."
- that I found myself wondering if Greer on page 233 was a sideways look at Lena Dunham.
- that Hannah is almost inexpressibly perfect - not merely a good woman that Nathaniel fails - but the Bunyanesque image of Unappreciated Woman. That Nathaniel walks through almost exactly the same paces as Rob in High Fidelity, including mildly admitting to real cruelty. In other words, just dark enough to be more than a pasty fuck-up, just articulate enough to be more than a Bad Guy Jerk.
Overall, it's good - sharp, attuned to the batsqueaks of conversation and flirting, occasionally atmospheric but quickened with action. Waldman also shows the guilty self-obsession, and the narcissism of self-recrimination, which leads not to enlightened citizens, but boils of resentment and childishness.
Worth a read.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2020
3,5'ten 4.
Okumayı beklediğimden daha farklı bir romanla karşı karşıya kaldım; fakat bu durumun beni hayal kırıklığına uğrattığını söyleyemem. Aksine daha "hafif" bir roman beklerken aralara sıkıştırılmış okuyucuyu düşünmeye sevk edebilecek hususlarla karşılaşmak beni mutlu etti.
Yazar Adelle Waldman bir gazeteciymiş ve bu ilk romanında da bildiği bir çevreyi merkezine almış. Kitabın ana karakteri Nathaniel, kitabının yayımlanmasını bekleyen bir yazar. Her ne kadar pek kabul etmese de daima kendini onaylatma isteği olan ve "sınıf atlama çabası" içinde bir adam. Aslında özel hayatı da bu arzu ve çabalar üzerine kurulu. Bu çerçevede Waldman, Nathaniel'in hayatını bize anlatırken "üst orta sınıf" olarak nitelendirilebilecek kesimi gerçekçi bir şekilde ve başarıyla okuyucuya aktarıyor. Bu açıdan "toplumsal" bir yönü de olan bir kitap olduğunu söylemek mümkün. Bunun haricinde çizdiği kadın ve erkek profilleri ve bunlar arasındaki ilişkiyi ele alışı da başarılı.
Benim keyifle okuduğum bir roman oldu.
Okumayı beklediğimden daha farklı bir romanla karşı karşıya kaldım; fakat bu durumun beni hayal kırıklığına uğrattığını söyleyemem. Aksine daha "hafif" bir roman beklerken aralara sıkıştırılmış okuyucuyu düşünmeye sevk edebilecek hususlarla karşılaşmak beni mutlu etti.
Yazar Adelle Waldman bir gazeteciymiş ve bu ilk romanında da bildiği bir çevreyi merkezine almış. Kitabın ana karakteri Nathaniel, kitabının yayımlanmasını bekleyen bir yazar. Her ne kadar pek kabul etmese de daima kendini onaylatma isteği olan ve "sınıf atlama çabası" içinde bir adam. Aslında özel hayatı da bu arzu ve çabalar üzerine kurulu. Bu çerçevede Waldman, Nathaniel'in hayatını bize anlatırken "üst orta sınıf" olarak nitelendirilebilecek kesimi gerçekçi bir şekilde ve başarıyla okuyucuya aktarıyor. Bu açıdan "toplumsal" bir yönü de olan bir kitap olduğunu söylemek mümkün. Bunun haricinde çizdiği kadın ve erkek profilleri ve bunlar arasındaki ilişkiyi ele alışı da başarılı.
Benim keyifle okuduğum bir roman oldu.
March 24, 2016
Indescribably bad.
(“But I’ll give it a try anyhow”)
Honestly. The hype about this novel is inexplicable except as the effect of conditions in a publishing industry that have left increasingly uncultivated reviewers and editors so insecure (financially, professionally, intellectually, socially), they do little but take dictation from agents and publicists. The writing is actually incompetent. Waldman's tossed-off, unedited prose has the flavor of a transcript of some teenager's tedious oral rehashing of _Sex and the City_ episodes. The diction often suggests the deployment of words found in a thesaurus whose usage is not really mastered, and not only for arcane terms: Waldman (and her protagonist) appear to believe "inexorable" is a synonym for "ineluctable". In a book exhibiting the consciousness of a rising young New York intellectual, native English speaker, repeatedly characterized as a cultural snob, it is startling to find:
She struck him as cloying, overweening, as if there was nothing in the world she wanted to do more than make him breakfast.
That telltale, ungraceful was that would just jar will be overlooked, though this book was a year in editing, while one is forced to ponder: What does Waldman imagine “overweening” to mean? I suppose this might be simply a transcription error; it is remotely possible, as well, that it is some editor’s attempt at inserting jazzy, Martin Amis-ian incongruities to release a flood of the reader’s desperate sense-making hormones. But a pervasive ham-handedness with vocabulary, if usually shy of solecism, gives the book a strong whiff of childish faking. I’m betting Waldman just thinks “overweening” means “overeager” or “ingratiating”. Perhaps because “weening” reminds of her “whining”. “She struck him as cloying” is bad enough (she’s not quite sure how “cloying” signifies – imagines it something emphasizing what she is doing (like nagging) rather than what he experiences (like sickening)) without the overweening that seems to be there to convey something like “over-whining”.
This flavour of clumsy fraud, as of an not particularly precocious adolescent’s attempt to mimic the styles of certain “good” but not Great writers (Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Franzen) while simulating conversations like those lightly spoofed by Woody Allen’s films (knowing them only through such spoofs which the adolescent has not identified as spoof) arises even more comprehensively from the lazy tactics Waldman deploys in her efforts to persuade the reader that her protagonist values literature of a certain seriousness and art. Her narrator informs us, repeatedly and dogmatically, that Nate is a connoisseur of stuff that's commonly assigned the odious badge "high brow" from a scheme apparently revered in this novel. Italo Svevo and Thomas Bernhard are the canonical giants repeatedly named as exemplars of the level of aesthetic and intellectual achievement Nate is declared equipped to appreciate and which he requires for full satisfaction in his cultural consumption. As consequence of this reverence, we’re to understand, Nate aspires to produce belletristic book reviews and respectable literary fiction - "upper middlebrow” product, on which rank it appears Waldman would place the book itself, by mere insistence. The promise made is this is not crap beach reading; this is a novel about The Svevo-Lover; this is a novel about a serious literary artist attracted to the exquisite profundities of successful modernist experiments in some way that colors and shapes his life and loves. The pitch is that Nathaniel P – that initial signaling his belonging to the rank of masterly creations of character perfectly balancing the archetypal and the marvellous facsimile of the unique individual – has above all a love affair with literature – with the Great Unsentimental European Moderns – and this is the greatest of all the love affairs to which the title refers. That’s the pitch.
The execution is in every way its opposite, with this vaunted love of Svevo an authorial contrivance akin to the fetishistic attachment to comic books or Tarantino movies that flat characters in romcoms will be assigned as a substitute for complexity, like a tattoo or hipster haircut to identify which bro is which.
With her shallow and fetishistic relation to the A list oeuvres and those actual human affairs that inspire and penetrate them to which her protagonist is repeatedly credited a notable sensitivity that remains invisible to the reader, Waldman resorts to the plodding attribution of superficial signs of education and sophistication as a substitute for the creation of educated and sophisticated personalities. She doesn't seem to have any ideas about how people who really do love and value canonical literature think about it. She conveys no thoughts about how such a love might inform the lover's engagement with all things, and she cannot depict either the musings or the conversation of her characters in such a way as to give the least indication they have ever consumed any culture product other than bad television, pornography, the clunky comedies of American cultureworker manners that she plunders for the most overused types and motifs, and synopses of Great Books That Zadie Smith Has Read.
The aggressive (and impressive) publicity campaign pedaled hard on the promise that this book was about literati for literati by a member of the literati, but the book does not give the impression that its author has read much of the literature its protagonist, according to the narrator’s assertions, cherishes, nor that she has been present at discussions between people educated in the humanities and social sciences whom her publicist suggests will enjoy the book for its insights into their own “literary world.” Instead we have stilted and trivial conversationettes constructed from the junk punditry of Slavoj Zizek (ersatz “insights” about greenwashing or meritocracy), and hackneyed stuffy pronouncements about Aristotle that seem lifted from Waugh by way of Hogwarts. In this flimsy cardboard set of “cultured folk,” the talismanic authors and books whose esteem defines Nate are present as so many <3s as they might appear on social media profiles, brand name consumer items to adorn the liker and identify his tribe. We are told Nate wants a lover who reads Svevo, but Waldman’s own prose and narrative is so destitute of any trace of engagement with Svevo, and she is so incapable of depicting any character’s knowledge of Svevo, any character’s erudition and imaginative and intellectual maturation through reading Svevo, or even any memory of anything Svevo wrote, this “read Svevo” requirement is merely an accessory, a Svevo tshirt, indistinguishable from Nate needing a lover in Prada boots, but pretentiously claiming to be the antithesis of such an attitude. Even in Sex and the City or Seinfeld, from which these ticks come, the writers would trouble themselves to convey some sense of what is superior about Prada boots from the point of view of those esteeming and coveting them. Nothing of the kind interrupts Waldman’s focus on Nate’s finical judgments – free from any thoughts of Svevo, Bernhard, Bely or Lermontov or any that could have been inspired or informed by them -- about the women vying for the job as his girlfriend.
Despite the novel's oft-declared upper-middle-browness of concerns and milieux, the implied promises (that this isn’t just more chick lit with lame gender twist) are never fulfilled. Virtually every passage of narration and every conversation in the novel is about dating among urban culture workers. Every such conversation warms up stale scoops of processed aperçus from the chick lit in the freezer. Nothing deviates from the most passé “men this women that” schemes. The author and her characters even manage to misread Middlemarch (unimaginably obtusely) in order to transform it into a Cosmo dating advice column allowing the recycling of hokey platitudes about dating to go in superficial disguise as banter about books.
Waldman makes this move frequently throughout the novel, and this example can serve to illustrate the book's bathetic operations, although it is especially embarrassingly strained. Really, Waldman paints the respectable façade of “Middlemarch” on imbecile hackneyed observations about bimbos, for anything resembling which one would search the pages of that novel in vain. One of Waldman’s half educated friends would no doubt defend this passage by pretending its idiocy is intentional, a skewering of shallow hipsters who for all their cultural vanity have no use for Middlemarch but to metaphorically conceal their helpful compilations of Cosmogirl sex advice chick lit quotations in its book jacket. But that wouldn’t convince – it is Waldman, not the character Aurit (whom the narrator exhibits Nate judging “brilliant”, though the reader is never invited to understand why) who somehow pretends to extract from Middlemarch a warning to bourgeois Manhattan males of the perils of marrying stupid beauties.
So like Svevo and Lermontov, Middlemarch is noted as more brand <3ery allowing the shallow chick lit pleasures the characters despise to be indulged and disavowed. But this elaborate "this book is good and good for you" excuse for more chick lit brain snacks turns out to be contructed in vain: on this score as well, Waldman fails, because those pleasures (humor produced by insights into the experience of young people seeking sex and love, of the sort concocted by the gallon by Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella) are signaled, as well, but not delivered either.
For all the book’s declared devotion to “quality” in litfic, the obvious influence of internet and television writing conventions, heavily reliant on clichés, give the book a YA feel, with Waldman wholly depending on that niche’s familiar shorthand techniques for characterization. Literary snobbery is signaled by Waldman as a trait from the list of Male Martian features, as vulgarity of taste and lack of judgment is inscribed alongside clinging, fearfulness and unmerited success/failure as Female Venusianisms. But although the social media and internet publication’s lazy, breezy ersatz social commentary seems to inform The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. so strongly it is easily imagined re-published in condensed form as a listicle, many of Waldman’s powdered instant types seem so dated one might suspect they’re borrowed from lower middlebrow fictions of the 1970s:
Waldman gives us middlebrow suburbanite and upper middlebrown cultivated elites:
Growing up, Nate discussed current events at the dinner table; as a family they watched 60 Minutes and Jeopardy. Apparently, though, some parents read the New York Review of Books and drank martinis.
And comic plebs as scenery:
Joe, Sr. thought adding a dishwasher or replacing the old bathtub would have been a better investment. "But I told him that wasn't the way to attract high-class tenants," Joe, jr. explained to Nate and Elisa one afternoon, while he repaired some tiles in the bathroom. "I told him the kind of tenants who pay the big bucks go wild for clawfoot tubs.
For some of her clichés, Waldman reaches further to the fifties and suburbia:
Nate brings up his hokey Zizekian greenwash “insights” (relying on that dumbed down hipster substitute for argumentation, in The New Inquiry style, wherein for an explanation of the quotidian it suffices to declare something a commodity or capital – style capital, the mothering commodity) and then the narrator who Is largely limited to his interior informs us:
He knew that he was violating an implicit rule of dinner party etiquette. Conversation was supposed to be ornamental, aimed to amuse. One wasn’t supposed to be invested in the content of what was said, only the tone.
This novels clichés are deployed opportunistically, because there is no project here other than the production of a facsimile of some or other kind of novel: we are at once to recognize these transplanted Midwesterners to have come to New York for those fabled erudite and passionate conversation “at dinner parties” among those who were nursed on martinis as children, but if necessary the assumptions of an entirely different milieu (that of the 50s prime time series they watch marathon reruns of on Nick at Nite) can be parachuted in, to dissolve again in a few sentences.
*http://observer.com/2014/05/nathaniel-p/
(“But I’ll give it a try anyhow”)
Honestly. The hype about this novel is inexplicable except as the effect of conditions in a publishing industry that have left increasingly uncultivated reviewers and editors so insecure (financially, professionally, intellectually, socially), they do little but take dictation from agents and publicists. The writing is actually incompetent. Waldman's tossed-off, unedited prose has the flavor of a transcript of some teenager's tedious oral rehashing of _Sex and the City_ episodes. The diction often suggests the deployment of words found in a thesaurus whose usage is not really mastered, and not only for arcane terms: Waldman (and her protagonist) appear to believe "inexorable" is a synonym for "ineluctable". In a book exhibiting the consciousness of a rising young New York intellectual, native English speaker, repeatedly characterized as a cultural snob, it is startling to find:
She struck him as cloying, overweening, as if there was nothing in the world she wanted to do more than make him breakfast.
That telltale, ungraceful was that would just jar will be overlooked, though this book was a year in editing, while one is forced to ponder: What does Waldman imagine “overweening” to mean? I suppose this might be simply a transcription error; it is remotely possible, as well, that it is some editor’s attempt at inserting jazzy, Martin Amis-ian incongruities to release a flood of the reader’s desperate sense-making hormones. But a pervasive ham-handedness with vocabulary, if usually shy of solecism, gives the book a strong whiff of childish faking. I’m betting Waldman just thinks “overweening” means “overeager” or “ingratiating”. Perhaps because “weening” reminds of her “whining”. “She struck him as cloying” is bad enough (she’s not quite sure how “cloying” signifies – imagines it something emphasizing what she is doing (like nagging) rather than what he experiences (like sickening)) without the overweening that seems to be there to convey something like “over-whining”.
This flavour of clumsy fraud, as of an not particularly precocious adolescent’s attempt to mimic the styles of certain “good” but not Great writers (Lorrie Moore, Jonathan Franzen) while simulating conversations like those lightly spoofed by Woody Allen’s films (knowing them only through such spoofs which the adolescent has not identified as spoof) arises even more comprehensively from the lazy tactics Waldman deploys in her efforts to persuade the reader that her protagonist values literature of a certain seriousness and art. Her narrator informs us, repeatedly and dogmatically, that Nate is a connoisseur of stuff that's commonly assigned the odious badge "high brow" from a scheme apparently revered in this novel. Italo Svevo and Thomas Bernhard are the canonical giants repeatedly named as exemplars of the level of aesthetic and intellectual achievement Nate is declared equipped to appreciate and which he requires for full satisfaction in his cultural consumption. As consequence of this reverence, we’re to understand, Nate aspires to produce belletristic book reviews and respectable literary fiction - "upper middlebrow” product, on which rank it appears Waldman would place the book itself, by mere insistence. The promise made is this is not crap beach reading; this is a novel about The Svevo-Lover; this is a novel about a serious literary artist attracted to the exquisite profundities of successful modernist experiments in some way that colors and shapes his life and loves. The pitch is that Nathaniel P – that initial signaling his belonging to the rank of masterly creations of character perfectly balancing the archetypal and the marvellous facsimile of the unique individual – has above all a love affair with literature – with the Great Unsentimental European Moderns – and this is the greatest of all the love affairs to which the title refers. That’s the pitch.
The execution is in every way its opposite, with this vaunted love of Svevo an authorial contrivance akin to the fetishistic attachment to comic books or Tarantino movies that flat characters in romcoms will be assigned as a substitute for complexity, like a tattoo or hipster haircut to identify which bro is which.
With her shallow and fetishistic relation to the A list oeuvres and those actual human affairs that inspire and penetrate them to which her protagonist is repeatedly credited a notable sensitivity that remains invisible to the reader, Waldman resorts to the plodding attribution of superficial signs of education and sophistication as a substitute for the creation of educated and sophisticated personalities. She doesn't seem to have any ideas about how people who really do love and value canonical literature think about it. She conveys no thoughts about how such a love might inform the lover's engagement with all things, and she cannot depict either the musings or the conversation of her characters in such a way as to give the least indication they have ever consumed any culture product other than bad television, pornography, the clunky comedies of American cultureworker manners that she plunders for the most overused types and motifs, and synopses of Great Books That Zadie Smith Has Read.
The aggressive (and impressive) publicity campaign pedaled hard on the promise that this book was about literati for literati by a member of the literati, but the book does not give the impression that its author has read much of the literature its protagonist, according to the narrator’s assertions, cherishes, nor that she has been present at discussions between people educated in the humanities and social sciences whom her publicist suggests will enjoy the book for its insights into their own “literary world.” Instead we have stilted and trivial conversationettes constructed from the junk punditry of Slavoj Zizek (ersatz “insights” about greenwashing or meritocracy), and hackneyed stuffy pronouncements about Aristotle that seem lifted from Waugh by way of Hogwarts. In this flimsy cardboard set of “cultured folk,” the talismanic authors and books whose esteem defines Nate are present as so many <3s as they might appear on social media profiles, brand name consumer items to adorn the liker and identify his tribe. We are told Nate wants a lover who reads Svevo, but Waldman’s own prose and narrative is so destitute of any trace of engagement with Svevo, and she is so incapable of depicting any character’s knowledge of Svevo, any character’s erudition and imaginative and intellectual maturation through reading Svevo, or even any memory of anything Svevo wrote, this “read Svevo” requirement is merely an accessory, a Svevo tshirt, indistinguishable from Nate needing a lover in Prada boots, but pretentiously claiming to be the antithesis of such an attitude. Even in Sex and the City or Seinfeld, from which these ticks come, the writers would trouble themselves to convey some sense of what is superior about Prada boots from the point of view of those esteeming and coveting them. Nothing of the kind interrupts Waldman’s focus on Nate’s finical judgments – free from any thoughts of Svevo, Bernhard, Bely or Lermontov or any that could have been inspired or informed by them -- about the women vying for the job as his girlfriend.
Despite the novel's oft-declared upper-middle-browness of concerns and milieux, the implied promises (that this isn’t just more chick lit with lame gender twist) are never fulfilled. Virtually every passage of narration and every conversation in the novel is about dating among urban culture workers. Every such conversation warms up stale scoops of processed aperçus from the chick lit in the freezer. Nothing deviates from the most passé “men this women that” schemes. The author and her characters even manage to misread Middlemarch (unimaginably obtusely) in order to transform it into a Cosmo dating advice column allowing the recycling of hokey platitudes about dating to go in superficial disguise as banter about books.
Waldman makes this move frequently throughout the novel, and this example can serve to illustrate the book's bathetic operations, although it is especially embarrassingly strained. Really, Waldman paints the respectable façade of “Middlemarch” on imbecile hackneyed observations about bimbos, for anything resembling which one would search the pages of that novel in vain. One of Waldman’s half educated friends would no doubt defend this passage by pretending its idiocy is intentional, a skewering of shallow hipsters who for all their cultural vanity have no use for Middlemarch but to metaphorically conceal their helpful compilations of Cosmogirl sex advice chick lit quotations in its book jacket. But that wouldn’t convince – it is Waldman, not the character Aurit (whom the narrator exhibits Nate judging “brilliant”, though the reader is never invited to understand why) who somehow pretends to extract from Middlemarch a warning to bourgeois Manhattan males of the perils of marrying stupid beauties.
So like Svevo and Lermontov, Middlemarch is noted as more brand <3ery allowing the shallow chick lit pleasures the characters despise to be indulged and disavowed. But this elaborate "this book is good and good for you" excuse for more chick lit brain snacks turns out to be contructed in vain: on this score as well, Waldman fails, because those pleasures (humor produced by insights into the experience of young people seeking sex and love, of the sort concocted by the gallon by Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella) are signaled, as well, but not delivered either.
For all the book’s declared devotion to “quality” in litfic, the obvious influence of internet and television writing conventions, heavily reliant on clichés, give the book a YA feel, with Waldman wholly depending on that niche’s familiar shorthand techniques for characterization. Literary snobbery is signaled by Waldman as a trait from the list of Male Martian features, as vulgarity of taste and lack of judgment is inscribed alongside clinging, fearfulness and unmerited success/failure as Female Venusianisms. But although the social media and internet publication’s lazy, breezy ersatz social commentary seems to inform The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. so strongly it is easily imagined re-published in condensed form as a listicle, many of Waldman’s powdered instant types seem so dated one might suspect they’re borrowed from lower middlebrow fictions of the 1970s:
Waldman gives us middlebrow suburbanite and upper middlebrown cultivated elites:
Growing up, Nate discussed current events at the dinner table; as a family they watched 60 Minutes and Jeopardy. Apparently, though, some parents read the New York Review of Books and drank martinis.
And comic plebs as scenery:
Joe, Sr. thought adding a dishwasher or replacing the old bathtub would have been a better investment. "But I told him that wasn't the way to attract high-class tenants," Joe, jr. explained to Nate and Elisa one afternoon, while he repaired some tiles in the bathroom. "I told him the kind of tenants who pay the big bucks go wild for clawfoot tubs.
For some of her clichés, Waldman reaches further to the fifties and suburbia:
Nate brings up his hokey Zizekian greenwash “insights” (relying on that dumbed down hipster substitute for argumentation, in The New Inquiry style, wherein for an explanation of the quotidian it suffices to declare something a commodity or capital – style capital, the mothering commodity) and then the narrator who Is largely limited to his interior informs us:
He knew that he was violating an implicit rule of dinner party etiquette. Conversation was supposed to be ornamental, aimed to amuse. One wasn’t supposed to be invested in the content of what was said, only the tone.
This novels clichés are deployed opportunistically, because there is no project here other than the production of a facsimile of some or other kind of novel: we are at once to recognize these transplanted Midwesterners to have come to New York for those fabled erudite and passionate conversation “at dinner parties” among those who were nursed on martinis as children, but if necessary the assumptions of an entirely different milieu (that of the 50s prime time series they watch marathon reruns of on Nick at Nite) can be parachuted in, to dissolve again in a few sentences.
*http://observer.com/2014/05/nathaniel-p/
January 28, 2015
So, I was pretty impressed that this was written by a woman, because it seemed scarily dead-on - and before I said that definitively, I had to look around and double check some reviews actually written by men, who seem to agree - whether or not they actually enjoyed the novel.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. (or Nate) is a fascinating look into a hipster writer's Brooklyn, with plenty of social commentary - on upbringing, American cities, the college experience, and most of all, love. Some of the above I was just not on the mental level to agree or disagree with (I'm just not what you'd term an intellectual), but it was incredibly interesting all the same.
Nate is a self-absorbed Brooklynite who grew up in the Midwest but attended Harvard, moved to New York, and is now slowly rising in the literary scene, with a newly finished first novel and a six-figure advance. And he's finally getting the attention and recognition he's felt he deserved since high school that never quite materialized. The novel details his life as he tries to navigate through the complexities of the New York dating scene, and he works through a string of (for the most part) smart, attractive women that he starts out as heavily infatuated with and subsequently loses interest in.
Nate is obsessed with how others view his life - he disregards potential groups of friends because of his college roommate's distaste for them, he agonizes over dating certain girls - usually ones who aren't traditionally beautiful - because of what his friends might think (he's bothered more than once that his friends probably consider his current girlfriend only about a 7 on a 1-10 scale). He's often shallow and cowardly and hypocritical. And likely because of this, I've seen so many criticisms highlighting Nate's lack of likability, which I find so silly - to me, that is the entire draw of the novel. Who wouldn't want to peek inside the brain of someone like this? Isn't it fascinating to read about the inner workings of a mind so unlike yours, one that you've maybe encountered in the dating world and come off on the wrong side of?
It's simultaneously amusing and frustrating to read Nate's lengthy self-justifications for his contemptible behavior towards women. He's stuck in a vicious cycle. He wants to date someone independent and without low self-esteem, and he's suffocated by the thought of neediness and responsibility - but his behavior to counteract these fears causes the girl's insecurities in the first place, causes her to cling on and tolerate poor treatment. Which in turn triggers his annoyance that she would allow herself to be treated in such a way, that she's "self-victimizing". You just want to shake him, because you can see a glimmer of the potential he has to be more on the lovable side of the "lovable jerk", but he just ends up acting on his cruelest impulses.
If all of this sounds stuffy and unbearable, it's really not - mostly because of Adelle Waldman's simple yet effective prose. There's nothing flowery here, no grand descriptions, but it's direct and witty and clean. And I will definitely be picking up whatever she decides to write next.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. (or Nate) is a fascinating look into a hipster writer's Brooklyn, with plenty of social commentary - on upbringing, American cities, the college experience, and most of all, love. Some of the above I was just not on the mental level to agree or disagree with (I'm just not what you'd term an intellectual), but it was incredibly interesting all the same.
Nate is a self-absorbed Brooklynite who grew up in the Midwest but attended Harvard, moved to New York, and is now slowly rising in the literary scene, with a newly finished first novel and a six-figure advance. And he's finally getting the attention and recognition he's felt he deserved since high school that never quite materialized. The novel details his life as he tries to navigate through the complexities of the New York dating scene, and he works through a string of (for the most part) smart, attractive women that he starts out as heavily infatuated with and subsequently loses interest in.
Nate is obsessed with how others view his life - he disregards potential groups of friends because of his college roommate's distaste for them, he agonizes over dating certain girls - usually ones who aren't traditionally beautiful - because of what his friends might think (he's bothered more than once that his friends probably consider his current girlfriend only about a 7 on a 1-10 scale). He's often shallow and cowardly and hypocritical. And likely because of this, I've seen so many criticisms highlighting Nate's lack of likability, which I find so silly - to me, that is the entire draw of the novel. Who wouldn't want to peek inside the brain of someone like this? Isn't it fascinating to read about the inner workings of a mind so unlike yours, one that you've maybe encountered in the dating world and come off on the wrong side of?
It's simultaneously amusing and frustrating to read Nate's lengthy self-justifications for his contemptible behavior towards women. He's stuck in a vicious cycle. He wants to date someone independent and without low self-esteem, and he's suffocated by the thought of neediness and responsibility - but his behavior to counteract these fears causes the girl's insecurities in the first place, causes her to cling on and tolerate poor treatment. Which in turn triggers his annoyance that she would allow herself to be treated in such a way, that she's "self-victimizing". You just want to shake him, because you can see a glimmer of the potential he has to be more on the lovable side of the "lovable jerk", but he just ends up acting on his cruelest impulses.
If all of this sounds stuffy and unbearable, it's really not - mostly because of Adelle Waldman's simple yet effective prose. There's nothing flowery here, no grand descriptions, but it's direct and witty and clean. And I will definitely be picking up whatever she decides to write next.
June 19, 2013
Self-absorbed and believing his own press, Nate is that curious mix of insecure bravado and utter cluelessness that results in his lack of real connection to the opposite sex. Typical of the ‘tortured artist’ mode, Nate has a tendency to overthink everything. That in and of itself is not a bad characteristic, unless or until it stops forward progress, or the information that you are basing all decisions upon are flawed. And that is, as I see it, most of Nate’s problem. He has zero clue about the development of these characteristics that he can write about: he understands compassion and connection, and he appears to fit his self-proclaimed “nice guy” tag, but understanding is not the same as incorporating traits into your life.
I’ve known several “Nates” in my life, I think everyone has met a couple. Surprisingly, they are rather charismatic and intriguing people, on the surface: deeper down however the cracks start to show as you have someone who is consistently unable to recognize his own faults or rushes to judgment for he is proclaiming his ‘balanced nature’ rather than acquiring one. It was hard to dislike him entirely, however, so well nuanced was his underlying insecurity and desire to connect, even though he was clueless.
Similarly well-defined were the secondary characters, complex and well developed they refused to be pigeonholed into the more ‘standard expectations’ of their initial appearance. Whether male or female, each brought a unique and unexpected twist to their role in the story, challenging the reader’s general ideas of 30-somethings in the big city.
I’m torn between this being a stellar satirical view on finding love, or a thoughtfully nuanced story based on actual people in real situations. The satirical tone is less broad, more a nod or covert wink than an elbow and pointing, and there are several moments of spot-on description and observations that fit the tone of satire. Then, just as quickly the story turns to a more softly spoken retelling, encouraging the reader to empathize and connect with the loneliness at the core of the characters, their questions and concerns and their insecurities.
Waldman has used her skill and crafted an elegant story that is fast paced, humorous and intelligent, providing a new look at what it means to be human.
I received an Arc copy from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
I’ve known several “Nates” in my life, I think everyone has met a couple. Surprisingly, they are rather charismatic and intriguing people, on the surface: deeper down however the cracks start to show as you have someone who is consistently unable to recognize his own faults or rushes to judgment for he is proclaiming his ‘balanced nature’ rather than acquiring one. It was hard to dislike him entirely, however, so well nuanced was his underlying insecurity and desire to connect, even though he was clueless.
Similarly well-defined were the secondary characters, complex and well developed they refused to be pigeonholed into the more ‘standard expectations’ of their initial appearance. Whether male or female, each brought a unique and unexpected twist to their role in the story, challenging the reader’s general ideas of 30-somethings in the big city.
I’m torn between this being a stellar satirical view on finding love, or a thoughtfully nuanced story based on actual people in real situations. The satirical tone is less broad, more a nod or covert wink than an elbow and pointing, and there are several moments of spot-on description and observations that fit the tone of satire. Then, just as quickly the story turns to a more softly spoken retelling, encouraging the reader to empathize and connect with the loneliness at the core of the characters, their questions and concerns and their insecurities.
Waldman has used her skill and crafted an elegant story that is fast paced, humorous and intelligent, providing a new look at what it means to be human.
I received an Arc copy from the publisher via NetGalley for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.
February 6, 2014
Nate is the kind of Nice Guy asshole who hides behind a carefully cultivated veneer of intellectualism to disguise how vile he actually is. He has a lot of thoughts about the women in his and relationships and some career stuff and that's basically what happens in this book.
The examination of his character and the social circles he inhabits was vaguely interesting but not enough to sustain a whole book.
The writing was OK,I guess, but pretty clinical. So many times I found myself thinking, oh I see what you did there, writer. The jokes were so on the nose it was painful. Hipsters like kale! Observations about over-priced jokes and mom jeans! Nothing truly insightful or witty. And despite all that, by the end of the book, I still didn't get the point.
Unlikeable main characters are not a deal breaker for me. But something about highlighting a gross person like Nate and quietly indulging this privileged, self-absorbed set leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He should have been the butt of the joke but I kind of feel like the joke was actually on whoever reads this.
The examination of his character and the social circles he inhabits was vaguely interesting but not enough to sustain a whole book.
The writing was OK,I guess, but pretty clinical. So many times I found myself thinking, oh I see what you did there, writer. The jokes were so on the nose it was painful. Hipsters like kale! Observations about over-priced jokes and mom jeans! Nothing truly insightful or witty. And despite all that, by the end of the book, I still didn't get the point.
Unlikeable main characters are not a deal breaker for me. But something about highlighting a gross person like Nate and quietly indulging this privileged, self-absorbed set leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He should have been the butt of the joke but I kind of feel like the joke was actually on whoever reads this.
January 1, 2015
There are not many times that I've had an emotional reaction to a book like this one. I kept changing sides on just how I felt about it, one minute getting very upset at what felt like cheap shots at my gender, the next admiring a portrayal of the simple deception of a male mind at work, the next peevishly setting my nook down and muttering "Dammit, that's low. But, true." While there is no way for me to really connect completely with this novel (You'd have to be a writer and/or live in New York for that), I think this is a pretty good look at how (some) modern males go through dating. And the main character, Nate, feels like an a-hole, but not one you would imprint as such right away. He feels like one of those guys who, the first time you meet him (male or female), you thinks he's great, but slowly that high opinion gets eroded as his facade, and interest in what you think, fades away. The only complaint I have with the book is that Hannah, Nate's girlfriend through most of the book, seems like she is a little too innocently presented. That was my biggest struggle with the book, she does nothing to deserve the crap unloaded on her by Nate, and I'm not sure if Waldman does that on purpose to make sure that, at the end, your alliance is on the preferred side. To be fair, Waldman doesn't portray all the females in the book like that. As you learn more about the women in Nate's past, roads get connected, lights turn on, and you start to realize why he is how he is. And when he finally ends up with a much more attractive, and emotionally combative partner, that does seem like where he should have been the whole time. I read this book quickly, and since finishing a couple of days ago, have not stopped pondering why it got under my skin. It may just be an instinctual reaction to an attack on my team. It could be that Waldman is actually being unfair, loading the decks before the game. But I love how much this book made me question every little moment for what it meant. It's not a comforting read, but a worthy one, certainly.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,197 reviews