Q&A

Answering questions from the comments! Feel free to ask me questions whenever you want. Also don’t forget about my Advice column, always available for confidential problem solving!

1. Why didn’t I like The Marriage Plot? I’M GLAD YOU ASKED! Well, I’ve been scared to write about it because I know I will devolve into Crazy Asshole Ranting Mode, so be warned. I preface this by saying that a lot of people I love and respect really enjoyed this book, and that is fine. My personal experience of it doesn’t need to inform anyone else’s. I also think that it’s hard for a true and devoted DFW acolyte to fully enjoy the writing of those of his contemporaries who are not his equals but who constantly refer to him derogatorily in interviews. SO, that being said: I thought it was really frustrating and disturbing to read a whole book ostensibly from a female character’s point of view, in which said female character really felt like such a cipher compared to the two male characters. She barely had any traits or subjectivity. Her main role in the plot was to be obsessed with a dude. She did sort of care about literature, but then she was also relentlessly depicted as not being a good critical thinker; not understanding critical theory or the direction her field had taken over the past 30 years; being unable to focus on her work because of the distraction of her obsession with the dude. I’m not sure if this was a point he was making? I get that the book was supposed to be ABOUT the novelistic tendency for female characters to only care about men and marriage….but, he just recapitulated that exact plot, which was weird, and then even worse than that was the fact that the whole triumphant ending, which was supposed to be about a feminist re-envisioning of the novel (and thus of life) via the main character BREAKING FREE of the marriage plot, was actually engineered by the male character?? He wisely and sorrowfully saw that Madeleine was unable to understand for herself that she didn’t need a boyfriend, so he made the decision for her, heroically, and she thanked him, and that was the end of the book. At the very very least, I thought that SHE would be the one to recognize that she was trapped in the Marriage Plot–you know, because that subject was HER LIFE’S WORK. Instead that realization was left to some dude. Both dudes, actually, because Leonard also saved her from himself by leaving her, knowing that his depression was an unfair burden on her, but that she would never find the strength to leave him. In both cases the dude heroically had the strength to set her free of him, knowing what was best for her. If this was supposed to be commentary on the history of the novel, for me it really didn’t work at all.

Added to this is the fact that Eugenides is altogether too proud of himself for my taste. I liked Middlesex but he acts like he’s James Freaking Joyce. I say this because of his rude dismissal of David Foster Wallace as “cold” and “alienating.” I have rarely felt more alienated by a novel than I did by The Marriage Plot, for starters, and for seconders, anyone who says DFW is cold and holds his reader in contempt, quite frankly doesn’t understand his writing, which manifests the most sincere, anguished attempt at real, warm, human communication I maybe have ever read. People like Eugenides and Franzen and others who are always snidely comparing themselves to DFW (especially weird in the case of Franzen, as the two were good friends) don’t realize how obvious they make their overwhelming anxiety about him in everything they say and write, and that is amazing and odd to me. It makes me feel sorry for them as men. I mean, as I read The Marriage Plot, it was just completely obvious–to the point that I assumed from the very beginning that it was meant to be obvious, as did basically everyone else on earth who read the book–that the Mitchell character was autobiographical (he sounds exactly like Eugenides in every way, including the religious journey, the ethnic background, and the way he looks) and that the Leonard character (hyperactive sweating; brilliance; manic depression; constant bandana-wearing) was DFW. So here’s this book recapitulating in fictional form Jeffrey Eugenides’ intense penis anxiety regarding the fact that deep down he knows DFW is a serious artist and he himself is sort of just a dabbler. And this anxiety is represented in the book simply by the fact that DFW gets all the pussy and Eugenides doesn’t. GROSS!

AND THEN, to discover after finishing the book that Eugenides DENIES these comparisons and actually GETS MAD WHEN INTERVIEWERS BRING THEM UP!!!!!!!!!!!!! People will say “so the Leonard character is obviously DFW, do you want to talk about what you were doing with that” and Eugenides goes “WHAT? That’s so insane that you would say that. That’s not true!” What on earth. Can he really be that out of touch with his own psyche? It’s astounding.

These guys! Did you know that NICHOLAS SPARKS has the audacity to say that Cormac McCarthy isn’t really a good writer? Unreal.

2. I did read the Twelve and I didn’t like it! I liked the Passage so much, but the Twelve made the classic dystopian future fiction blunder and just swerved way too hard into the supernatural/religious for my taste. I don’t like when multiple plot points are resolved with characters being guided by a divine hand or supernatural coincidence. I stopped caring about what was going on. I liked the bleak ambiguous post-apocalyptic vibe of The Passage way more!

I’m very sorry for being such a grouch. I hate when people on the internet disagree with me and I am sorry if I have played that role in your lives today.

In other news:

I got a new tarot deck. It’s vintage from the 80s and is really swirly and envisions sex in that kind of 70s way they used to, where it’s super hetero and both the man and woman are big and meaty and have huge heads of long hair and the dude has a beard.

I’ve been trying to give tarot readings over email for $10 a pop, to hone my craft and make a little pocket money. If you want a reading, email me!! I am getting better at it.

I am at that point in the semester where everything is falling apart. I’ve completely lost track of which students I gave extensions to and which students just have turned their papers in; my office is a mess, there’s trash and weird crumbs everywhere, my computer is super buggy but I haven’t had time to call IT; I’m really confused about serialism, which I’m supposed to be teaching our nation’s youth about right now but which I straight up don’t understand. I end up asking this one smart kid to explain stuff, like, what else are you gonna do? I know he’s taking 20th century theory so let him give it a shot. I just keep saying “it’s math!” and referring them to this weird graph in the textbook. I also sent them a youtube video of Vi Hart explaining it. I like to think that in 10 years I will be explaining serialism like a champ but it’s hard to see how I will get to that place.

I got home after my first disastrous serialism day and told my old man about it and he was really condescending and was like “serialism is easy to explain, they just took 12 notes and used them without repeating them” and I was like “uh huh, so if I showed you a Milton Babbit piece could you point out how the first hexachord of the prime row can be combined with the second hexachord of the row in retrograde inversion to create a new row with no duplicate pitches and how he’s using those two rows in the first 7 measures?” and he said “no” and I said “neither can I”

Today is TGIF and the weather is beautiful. There is nothing in the house for breakfast. I might go get a waffle taco.

I’m so glad some of you are getting into Federicci!! Let me know what you think!