Hannah Garden's Reviews > The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

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.