Good review! I just finished the book myself and I'm struck that you think Xavier is negatively portrayed. He's the only character who knows what he wants and who is able to be genuinely creative, in part no doubt because he's older than the millennials.
The main couple has potential but they suffer from a failure of desire that I think is supposed to be typical of their generation. Xavier knew what Mariko wanted and was pretty delicate about it, first having a relationship with her and then, moving on and drawing what the book assures us is a clear line, giving Mariko the most fulfilling roles of her career in small productions of Shakespeare and Chekov. In contrast, Dan doesn't know or at least won't acknowledge or act on either what Mariko wants (a family) or what Eliza wants (sex / the more impressive version of himself he presents in his lectures). This is partly because Dan the potentially interesting leftist intellectual who wrote about Henry James through the lens of Lukács has been diminished on every level by the internet, becoming a generic leftist blogger and a mediocre boyfriend. He sees his early potential reflected in Eliza, the student who is charmed by his lectures, but he can't even convincingly impersonate the man she wants him to be. Xavier, for his part, appreciates Mariko for exactly who she is. But Xavier is dying, and neither Dan nor Mariko can be creative in the way Xavier (and by implication his formed-before-the-internet generation) was.
(Gasda is a friendly acquaintance fwiw, discount as needed.)
I found Xavier one of the most interesting characters. Like you said, he achieved a level of artistic success that the others can only dream of, but he finds no solace in these achievements and in the end acts just as porn-brained as the rest of them, which suggests that the real cultural rot runs much deeper than the impact of the Internet.
It isn't just success, Akari is successful in a bastardized artistic vocation but Xavier is a real artist. He actually gave Mariko the most meaningful experiences of her life (prior to motherhood). Part of his vampire-ishness comes from the fact that he knows Mariko better than she knows herself: he knows to stop sleeping with her, knows to stop offering her roles when she is with Dan, and then knows he can briefly step back in because he knows better than she does that her relationship is kaputt.
I also wouldn't describe him as porn-brained. Xavier is extremely analog! He doesn't want sex with just anybody, but with women from his past who make him feel alive. A sort of Yeatsian dying lion type. What he can't do is treat her as a romantic equal (nobody can do that in the novel) or give her children. There's something funereal and disturbing about their sexual encounter, but he doesn't try to make her stay with him and push the wheelchair. (Although he briefly fantasizes about casting her in a last play.) (*Their encounter reminds me of the disturbing but somehow beautiful scene where Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello gives a handjob to the dying amateur painter Mr. Phillips, although the dynamic is different because Xavier requests it.)
You're right: "porn-brained" doesn't capture what I was referring to - perhaps "Freud-brained" is better. He is definitely presented in a more flattering light than the rest of the characters, his real artistry counts for something, but for how much?
I have in mind the following passage:
"In the days following his diagnosis, fucking was all he could think about: thousands of fucks between the ages of sixteen and fifty-seven split between hundreds of lovers (ninety percent of which were women)—futureless, mindless, animal rutting. There were other things, too, that he cared about—friendships, family, his many projects—but his anxiety, his grief, concerned the imminence of the loss of touch, the death of the sensual subject. The libido died last: the evolutionary logic was obvious. He couldn’t really comprehend that this decades long phenomenological thread—him, his decades of touching, breathing, desiring—this refined, self-organizing aesthetic sensibility, this catalogue of existence, would be destroyed."
His erotic desires are more sophisticated than any women will do, but in the end he is still using his superior powers of understanding for the pleasure of seducing Mariko for old times' sake, rather than actually listening to her and trying to help her in any meaningful way. It's hard to trust Mariko's perspective, of course, but the picture she paints is not one of benevolence (it's also not clear to me that the offer to cast her in his last play is not just empty flattery):
“I don’t think I like this,” Mariko admitted, picking at her cuticles.
“What is ‘this’?”
“I think there’s a reason I stopped working with you . . .”
Well, by the time the book takes place Xavier is the one who needs help. And he is if anything unpleasantly honest:
“It’s not very flattering to be invited to fuck you just because you’re
going to become medically impotent soon.”
“I never said it was flattering.”
“It’s actually remarkably crass.”
“I understand that,” he said calmly.
and:
“Now I’m turned on,” she said in a throaty voice, while brushing her
dress back down to just above her knees. “That wasn’t fair or nice.”
“I wasn’t trying to be either of those things,” he responded dryly.
But you're right that the book questions the value of art (and for that matter of sex) in the face of death. Xavier not the book's beau ideal and would not have been right for Mariko because he can't give her a family and never wanted to, although that is what *she* wants in her heart of hearts. I'm really struck by how both Sleepers and Major Arcana end with a baby.
I'm not convinced that anyone can give Mariko the family she wants - she reminded me of Edith from John William's Stoner. From John's review: "I admire the novel’s avoidance of facile pro-natalism in its conclusion, which concedes that reproduction is as likely to reproduce the problem as anything else." The question I'm left with is why we have stopped being able to imagine Sisyphus happy.
The conclusion isn’t pro-natal in a didactic way above all because the husband is out of frame. But Mariko is sort of like the characters who escape on foot to Switzerland at the end of Grand Illusion or The Siren of the Mississippi: after catastrophe she suddenly has a chance to live.
Knowing yet gracious. And, fwiw, I agree. Well done!
I think you are right about the play quality, unsurprising given that Gasda is a playwright. I too noticed the long dialog stretches, and was a touch frustrated, but if you zoom out (as you suggest) they make sense. Gasda's conversations that go on too long, that cannot be left, trap the reader. Not exactly fun, but rather devastatingly effective. And I found myself losing patience with the whole scene, the whole generation?, the bullet . . .
Eager to read this. I have way too many books, and they pile up, but I think I will read this one promptly.
It occurs to me that there is a category of “books about New York“ and it would be interesting to see how this one stacks up against its predecessors, for example The Bonfire of the Vanities. Your comment that it is like a play reminds me of George Steiner‘s distinction between epic and dramatic in his book about Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
Also, looking forward to your “spicy“ new one in the works.
This might be my autism, but is it actually the case that Asian American women are more "submissive"? Because this always seemed made up to me. If anything, I feel like there are a higher proportion of girlbosses among Asian American women than other groups. Is this like a stand-in for talking about size and physical appearance?
From the first page quotes, those tired cliche phrases alienate me: "partied around", "always on the move," "Gum up the machinery", possibly even "eschew commitments"-- idiomatic platitudes and dead metaphors show no more literary effort than required of falling out of a chair. Maybe one could argue the author uses them knowingly for effect, but even if that were true, which I doubt, there isn't a better way to make the point with active, alert, surprising sentences?
Interesting point about deciding whether a piece of writing is worth the investment of time.
Based on the number of writing errors in this very early paragraph, I'm deciding that this post isn't worth my time, let alone the novel:
"This is not so much a utilitarian calculation as it is a aesthetic and spiritual one—the question you have ask yourself before you commit to reading a novel is whether or not it will give more than it takes."
When the surface is so lazy and sloppy, I'm making a self-interested decision about the possibility of depth.
Good review! I just finished the book myself and I'm struck that you think Xavier is negatively portrayed. He's the only character who knows what he wants and who is able to be genuinely creative, in part no doubt because he's older than the millennials.
The main couple has potential but they suffer from a failure of desire that I think is supposed to be typical of their generation. Xavier knew what Mariko wanted and was pretty delicate about it, first having a relationship with her and then, moving on and drawing what the book assures us is a clear line, giving Mariko the most fulfilling roles of her career in small productions of Shakespeare and Chekov. In contrast, Dan doesn't know or at least won't acknowledge or act on either what Mariko wants (a family) or what Eliza wants (sex / the more impressive version of himself he presents in his lectures). This is partly because Dan the potentially interesting leftist intellectual who wrote about Henry James through the lens of Lukács has been diminished on every level by the internet, becoming a generic leftist blogger and a mediocre boyfriend. He sees his early potential reflected in Eliza, the student who is charmed by his lectures, but he can't even convincingly impersonate the man she wants him to be. Xavier, for his part, appreciates Mariko for exactly who she is. But Xavier is dying, and neither Dan nor Mariko can be creative in the way Xavier (and by implication his formed-before-the-internet generation) was.
(Gasda is a friendly acquaintance fwiw, discount as needed.)
I found Xavier one of the most interesting characters. Like you said, he achieved a level of artistic success that the others can only dream of, but he finds no solace in these achievements and in the end acts just as porn-brained as the rest of them, which suggests that the real cultural rot runs much deeper than the impact of the Internet.
It isn't just success, Akari is successful in a bastardized artistic vocation but Xavier is a real artist. He actually gave Mariko the most meaningful experiences of her life (prior to motherhood). Part of his vampire-ishness comes from the fact that he knows Mariko better than she knows herself: he knows to stop sleeping with her, knows to stop offering her roles when she is with Dan, and then knows he can briefly step back in because he knows better than she does that her relationship is kaputt.
I also wouldn't describe him as porn-brained. Xavier is extremely analog! He doesn't want sex with just anybody, but with women from his past who make him feel alive. A sort of Yeatsian dying lion type. What he can't do is treat her as a romantic equal (nobody can do that in the novel) or give her children. There's something funereal and disturbing about their sexual encounter, but he doesn't try to make her stay with him and push the wheelchair. (Although he briefly fantasizes about casting her in a last play.) (*Their encounter reminds me of the disturbing but somehow beautiful scene where Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello gives a handjob to the dying amateur painter Mr. Phillips, although the dynamic is different because Xavier requests it.)
You're right: "porn-brained" doesn't capture what I was referring to - perhaps "Freud-brained" is better. He is definitely presented in a more flattering light than the rest of the characters, his real artistry counts for something, but for how much?
I have in mind the following passage:
"In the days following his diagnosis, fucking was all he could think about: thousands of fucks between the ages of sixteen and fifty-seven split between hundreds of lovers (ninety percent of which were women)—futureless, mindless, animal rutting. There were other things, too, that he cared about—friendships, family, his many projects—but his anxiety, his grief, concerned the imminence of the loss of touch, the death of the sensual subject. The libido died last: the evolutionary logic was obvious. He couldn’t really comprehend that this decades long phenomenological thread—him, his decades of touching, breathing, desiring—this refined, self-organizing aesthetic sensibility, this catalogue of existence, would be destroyed."
His erotic desires are more sophisticated than any women will do, but in the end he is still using his superior powers of understanding for the pleasure of seducing Mariko for old times' sake, rather than actually listening to her and trying to help her in any meaningful way. It's hard to trust Mariko's perspective, of course, but the picture she paints is not one of benevolence (it's also not clear to me that the offer to cast her in his last play is not just empty flattery):
“I don’t think I like this,” Mariko admitted, picking at her cuticles.
“What is ‘this’?”
“I think there’s a reason I stopped working with you . . .”
“What’s that, Mariko?” Xavier said, feeling nothing, wanting nothing, barely evening listening.
“The way you break people down . . .”
“Did I break you down?”
“Many times.”
Well, by the time the book takes place Xavier is the one who needs help. And he is if anything unpleasantly honest:
“It’s not very flattering to be invited to fuck you just because you’re
going to become medically impotent soon.”
“I never said it was flattering.”
“It’s actually remarkably crass.”
“I understand that,” he said calmly.
and:
“Now I’m turned on,” she said in a throaty voice, while brushing her
dress back down to just above her knees. “That wasn’t fair or nice.”
“I wasn’t trying to be either of those things,” he responded dryly.
But you're right that the book questions the value of art (and for that matter of sex) in the face of death. Xavier not the book's beau ideal and would not have been right for Mariko because he can't give her a family and never wanted to, although that is what *she* wants in her heart of hearts. I'm really struck by how both Sleepers and Major Arcana end with a baby.
I'm not convinced that anyone can give Mariko the family she wants - she reminded me of Edith from John William's Stoner. From John's review: "I admire the novel’s avoidance of facile pro-natalism in its conclusion, which concedes that reproduction is as likely to reproduce the problem as anything else." The question I'm left with is why we have stopped being able to imagine Sisyphus happy.
The conclusion isn’t pro-natal in a didactic way above all because the husband is out of frame. But Mariko is sort of like the characters who escape on foot to Switzerland at the end of Grand Illusion or The Siren of the Mississippi: after catastrophe she suddenly has a chance to live.
Knowing yet gracious. And, fwiw, I agree. Well done!
I think you are right about the play quality, unsurprising given that Gasda is a playwright. I too noticed the long dialog stretches, and was a touch frustrated, but if you zoom out (as you suggest) they make sense. Gasda's conversations that go on too long, that cannot be left, trap the reader. Not exactly fun, but rather devastatingly effective. And I found myself losing patience with the whole scene, the whole generation?, the bullet . . .
Anyway, good book, and good review.
Strong, strong review. Gasda should feel obliged to confer some status for your next book.
Glad you liked it!
The kids are not alright.
Fascinating review. Fun Intellectual ride.
Excellent piece, I preordered it!
Eager to read this. I have way too many books, and they pile up, but I think I will read this one promptly.
It occurs to me that there is a category of “books about New York“ and it would be interesting to see how this one stacks up against its predecessors, for example The Bonfire of the Vanities. Your comment that it is like a play reminds me of George Steiner‘s distinction between epic and dramatic in his book about Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.
Also, looking forward to your “spicy“ new one in the works.
Good post.
It’s at once a “New York” book but also a universalist take on millennials more broadly. I think you’ll really like it.
This might be my autism, but is it actually the case that Asian American women are more "submissive"? Because this always seemed made up to me. If anything, I feel like there are a higher proportion of girlbosses among Asian American women than other groups. Is this like a stand-in for talking about size and physical appearance?
From the first page quotes, those tired cliche phrases alienate me: "partied around", "always on the move," "Gum up the machinery", possibly even "eschew commitments"-- idiomatic platitudes and dead metaphors show no more literary effort than required of falling out of a chair. Maybe one could argue the author uses them knowingly for effect, but even if that were true, which I doubt, there isn't a better way to make the point with active, alert, surprising sentences?
I enjoyed the whole Dimes Square collection, with the caveat that there's a very defined and rigid style and thematic arena in which Gasda operates.
Interesting point about deciding whether a piece of writing is worth the investment of time.
Based on the number of writing errors in this very early paragraph, I'm deciding that this post isn't worth my time, let alone the novel:
"This is not so much a utilitarian calculation as it is a aesthetic and spiritual one—the question you have ask yourself before you commit to reading a novel is whether or not it will give more than it takes."
When the surface is so lazy and sloppy, I'm making a self-interested decision about the possibility of depth.