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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2851 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 12, 2025

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Earlier this week I finished Tony Tulathimutte's second book Rejection. I have thoughts on it, and this seems like as good a place as any for a "review".

I first became aware of Tulathimutte when someone on the Motte (back in the Reddit era) shared his short story "The Feminist", which I loved and shared with everyone I knew. My sister bought me his first novel Private Citizens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Citizens_(novel)) for my birthday that year, which I adored, tearing through it in two days (unusually fast for me) and have repeatedly recommended. Naturally I was very excited for his second book, which is a collection of seven loosely connected short stories/novellas, of which (to bring it full circle) "The Feminist" is the first.

When I started reading it, I was glad that my eager anticipation wasn't misplaced: "The Feminist" was just as good on a second (or fourth or fifth, most likely) read, although it's been lightly edited from its original publication, namely by extending out the description of the protagonist's Tinder bio. This felt a bit like over-egging the pudding a smidge, but hardly a fatal misstep. The second story is even better, a masterpiece of cringe comedy drama which I found almost physically painful to read as its hapless protagonist digs herself into ever deeper holes, and was by far the strongest in the collection. It was the third story where I started to have some doubts. Its opening is very strong, with a sympathetic portrayal of the kind of private hell experienced by a man whose fetishes are so warped that they are not merely difficult but physically impossible to accomplish (I've never felt more grateful to be so vanilla in my appetites) and a description of the difference between embarrassment and shame that stopped me in my tracks. Unfortunately, it concludes with an extended sequence of gross-out humour which is, without exaggeration, the most disgusted I've felt reading a work of fiction since either American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis or (a much less flattering comparison) Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. There were a few gross bits in Private Citizens, but they were used in moderation for context and flavour in a largely funny, perceptive and empathetic novel, and didn't outstay their welcome (such that I didn't feel uncomfortable lending the book to my mum). But this sequence goes on far longer than needed for the joke to land, and just felt like Tulathimutte trying to be shocking and puerile for no good reason. It could have been half as long (or one quarter) and lost nothing.

The fourth story is framed as an Am I the Asshole? post on Reddit and is narrated by a tech bro protagonist who, like Tulathimutte, spends far too much time online, communicating entirely through a dizzying range of Internet slang - not for nothing does the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_(short_story_collection)) refer to it as a "terminally online... brainrot" novel (although people in glass houses: the fact that I was able to understand the entire thing without once consulting Urban Dictionary is probably a red flag that I need to cut down on my social media consumption). It's an amusing once-off gag, but I couldn't help but feel that it disrupted the verisimilitude: the protagonist just feels like too broad a parody to exist in the same universe as the other more grounded characters, and the story's dénouement too overtly farcical. (As Chris Jesu Lee pointed out, in 2024, a satirical joke story taking aim at tech bros for being cod-visionary and obliviously sociopathic seems a bit behind the times - by this stage we're practically drowning in arrogant, deluded Elon Musk expies.) The rest of the book consists largely of meta postmodern navel-gazing, culminating in a final chapter which is framed as an excessively detailed rejection (ha ha) letter from a publisher for the book you are currently reading. Here, the fictional publisher deconstructs the creepy subtext for all of the preceding stories, bluntly asserting that Tulathimutte's attempts to mask his own neuroses, paraphilias and worldview by putting them in the mouths of fictional characters who are unlike him on one or more identity axes is blindingly transparent and fooling no one. This chapter essentially comes off as Tulathimutte attempting to head off criticism about the book, to which the reader might reasonably ask - if you know it's bad, why are you doing it?

It's still a good book, primarily on the strength of the first two-and-a-half stories, and like Private Citizens I read the whole thing in two days, but I do think it's a step down from the debut. One thing I found particularly disconcerting about the book was its Bukowski-esque disgust for human bodies and the corporeal form, its "relaxed contempt for the flesh" (to quote Gibson). Offhand I can think of only one actual character in the whole book who isn't described as being in some way physically repulsive, unclean or similar - so of course she's a superficial airheaded bimbo who comes in for ire for misspelling and misusing the word "négligée". It doesn't surprise me at all that Tulathimutte is an outspoken advocate for trans rights - he doesn't merely believe that some people are born in the wrong bodies, but that everyone is born in the wrong body: the wrong body is any human body which actually exists, and the Internet, porn and video games are wonderful inventions in large part because they enable us to distract ourselves from the horrific reality of being embodied within these nauseating mechanistic flesh prisons. This is one of the most Gnostic books I've ever read without even trying to be.

Hand in hand with this is the book's profound, omnidirectional misanthropy. I don't believe that every novel needs to have likeable and/or morally upstanding characters: there have been good books in which every character was amoral, unlikeable or both. But the sheer visceral contempt for everyone evinced by Rejection is quite unsettling, leaving an acrid taste in one's mouth, and it's conspicuous by its novelty relative to Private Citizens. No matter how scathing, satirical and acerbic that book was, Tulathimutte's affection for his characters was palpable on every page, and we shared in it even when they made mistakes or behaved shittily - and some of those characters weren't just likeable jerks, but actually did come off as well-meaning people sincerely trying to do their best. Meanwhile, Rejection is not a book about misanthropy, but a misanthropic book - essentially every character is a shitty, unlikeable, narcissistic, pretentious, emotionally manipulative asshole. (Offhand I can only think of one major character who seems even a little bit likeable and basically decent, and they aren't the protagonist of any of the stories.) Given that most of them are so similar along other axes too (generally lonely, too online, never exercise, physically unattractive and know it), the colour and variety from Private Citizens is also rather lacking. It's not a monotonous read, but pentatonic where Private Citizens was chromatic and modal.

Here's what I took from it. However he might try to ironize and joke about his lifestyle and shortcomings, I sincerely believe the following:

  1. Tulathimutte agrees with every word The Feminist says, although he'd never admit it. When The Feminist went on a rant about how women have stolen incels' lives by selfishly defecting from the social contract, Tulathimutte was not bravely delving into the psychology of a character with whom he disagreed, attempting to express what that character thinks in such a way that it would pass the intellectual Turing test: he was simply using a fictional character as a mouthpiece for his own opinions. The event which concludes "The Feminist" is intended as plausible deniability for Tulathimutte by having his unsettlingly reasonable-seeming character jump off the slippery slope.
  2. Repeated romantic rejection has hardened Tulathimutte's spirit, filling him with rage and bitterness towards anyone and everyone, but especially the happily coupled. This misanthropic streak was detectable as subtext in Private Citizens but kept somewhat in check (there's nothing particularly unusual about being unmarried in your early thirties, as he was at the time of publication); but having entered his fourth decade still going stag, Tulathimutte has essentially gone mad from the isolation, and lonely people are the bitterest of all (to quote Nick Hornby).
  3. Asian women who date white men fill Tulathimutte with murderous rage, which he knows is wrong and yet cannot even begin to suppress or talk himself out of: there's a near-constant subtext that said women are contemptible, duplicitous and lacking in self-respect for some reason that Tulathimutte refuses to explicitly articulate, not even by using one of his numerous unsympathetic characters as a mouthpiece for it. (The closest we get is a white character who, after being rejected by a white man in favour of an Asian woman, cattily accuses him of racial fetishism, for which she is widely criticised; the fact that she gets so much pushback struck me as a bit of a fig leaf.) I've read two reviews of this book by Asian-American men who barely touched on this aspect of the book, and I strongly suspect it's because they feel the same way but, like Tulathimutte, are perceptive enough to realise it's not polite to just come out and say so. If I was an Asian woman who'd dated one or more white men, I imagine I'd find this already intentionally discomfiting book even more uncomfortable than the average reader would - but then Jia Tolentino loved it, so what do I know.
  4. Many years of excessive porn consumption have imbued Tulathimutte with unrealistic expectations about sex (to put it mildly): a set of fetishes no human woman could ever hope to meet. His ideal woman has a neotonous face, impossibly large breasts, impossibly smooth skin, not a single follicle of hair below the eyelashes, never talks back, is always on hand to fulfil any sexual demand he might make of her (without being too slutty about things), and never farts, belches, menstruates, pees or poos. He's spent so long in the virtual world of Bang Bros that even perfectly normal women (even women who are above average in attractiveness) probably fill him with disgust and loathing.

If you liked Private Citizens, pick it up. If you haven't read anything by him, please read Private Citizens first, as it's superior in every way that matters.

With all that off my chest, to directly answer the original question - I'm currently about a third of the way through Magda Szabo's novel Katalin Street, which I went into more or less blind. For some reason I'm having far more difficulty keeping track of which character is which than any other novel I've read in the past few years. Seems decent so far.

I do agree that story #2 was an achievement. The entire bit with the raven filled me with such dread that it took me 3 attempts to get through those last pages. I disagree on #3, the escalation of depravity was funny throughout for me. The juxtaposition between the fictional protagonist dominating the porn star and the obsequious caveats about managing said porn shoot was perfect. And that it expressed a new angle on the themes of identity-as-prison... Also, you can’t tell me you didn’t chuckle at the global warming solution.

I like these longer book reviews that turn into a kind of discussion about the meta-themes and the authors themselves. Thank you.

Transgressive and satirical fiction is always a double mind fuck - even moreso if its good. I read American Psycho and was blown away by how perceptive Ellis was as an author. Then, I looked up his bio and had an "oh shit, is this dude ok?" moment.

According to my quick search on Tulathimutte, he has a double Stanford degree in something called symbolic systems. He appears to have been a tech bro who became disillusioned with tech bro'ing and so started writing. That you tell us a lot of his writing is about misanthropic tech bro stuff (and, you know, porn) makes so much sense as to be a second-hand "oh shit, is this dude ok?" moment for me.

EDIT: Further research has revealed that a lot of the most loathsome Haute Literarti magazines really like this guy Tulathimutte. My concern for him has waned considerably.

Then, I looked up his bio and had an "oh shit, is this dude ok?" moment.

What specifically about Ellis's background?

Further research has revealed that a lot of the most loathsome Haute Literarti magazines really like this guy Tulathimutte.

It amazes me that he hasn't been declared persona non grata over his opinions. Sure, he's trying to hide his power level, but I don't think he's doing that good a job, and the last chapter seems to be him coming as close as he's going to get to laying his cards on the table and admitting that he's exactly as Problematic as you probably suspect. I follow him on Instagram and his Instagram stories are pretty much a nonstop stream of "man, Israel is just the worst huh?" (with an occasional "trans rights are human rights", for flavour), which maybe helps him to blend in.

Thank you, just downloaded Private Citizens to check out!

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