Related News
Odd telling of love story
By Alexandra Jacobs |
September 4, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
ANYONE who suffers from writer's block will appreciate the raw agony of the creative process laid bare in Patricia Marx's new novel, "Starting From Happy." To reach her "target word count," the constitutionally and often brilliantly economical Marx pads her text with, among other enhancements, pen-and-ink illustrations; pie charts; footnotes; graphological analysis, even her own signature; a catalog of punctuation; another of pasta shapes; a supposed survey from her publisher; letters from cranky "readers;" and 26 desperate lines of barn-animal noises.
A humorist at The New Yorker and the author of the novel "Him Her Him Again the End of Him," Marx is not exactly Nabokov, but she shares with him the talent for affixing butterflies to a page. Namely, her main characters, Imogene Gilfeather and Wally Yez: two upper-middle-class New Yorkers whose sort-of love story the author metes out over the course of 600-odd miniature chapters, or "chaplettes." These consist of jokes, evasions and aphorisms ("There is never an end of anything, just an evermoving middle," one posits), alternated with fitful narrative bursts.
Imogene is the founder and designer of a lingerie company, Featherware, perfectly content (hence the title) to be alone, puttering about her enviable one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment with wraparound terrace and lavishing so much time and money on her hair that she calls it "my child." Wally is a scientist who finds instruction manuals emotionally cathartic. They meet at a clambake, while in line for apple pie, and - once Wally has detached himself from an affair defined by a dual membership to the American Museum of Natural History - begin a-courtin' like modern yuppies, canceling a few dates and then e-mailing continually for several weeks before upgrading to the telephone. (For a novel so exquisitely tailored to the Twitter age - many of the chaplettes are fewer than 140 characters - there is something quaintly AOL-era about this pace.) Eventually they get married and have two children, even though Imogene asserts that "babies... are the worst kind of house guest."
As a novelist, however, Marx undersells herself. There is enough acute human observation glinting through the gimmickry to make one long for less self-deprecation; heck, maybe even for a Franzen-style doorstopper from Marx. However excruciating for her, it could be highly edifying for the rest of us.
A humorist at The New Yorker and the author of the novel "Him Her Him Again the End of Him," Marx is not exactly Nabokov, but she shares with him the talent for affixing butterflies to a page. Namely, her main characters, Imogene Gilfeather and Wally Yez: two upper-middle-class New Yorkers whose sort-of love story the author metes out over the course of 600-odd miniature chapters, or "chaplettes." These consist of jokes, evasions and aphorisms ("There is never an end of anything, just an evermoving middle," one posits), alternated with fitful narrative bursts.
Imogene is the founder and designer of a lingerie company, Featherware, perfectly content (hence the title) to be alone, puttering about her enviable one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment with wraparound terrace and lavishing so much time and money on her hair that she calls it "my child." Wally is a scientist who finds instruction manuals emotionally cathartic. They meet at a clambake, while in line for apple pie, and - once Wally has detached himself from an affair defined by a dual membership to the American Museum of Natural History - begin a-courtin' like modern yuppies, canceling a few dates and then e-mailing continually for several weeks before upgrading to the telephone. (For a novel so exquisitely tailored to the Twitter age - many of the chaplettes are fewer than 140 characters - there is something quaintly AOL-era about this pace.) Eventually they get married and have two children, even though Imogene asserts that "babies... are the worst kind of house guest."
As a novelist, however, Marx undersells herself. There is enough acute human observation glinting through the gimmickry to make one long for less self-deprecation; heck, maybe even for a Franzen-style doorstopper from Marx. However excruciating for her, it could be highly edifying for the rest of us.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
