(2024) Rejection
2024-09-17
A collection of inter-related stories about rejection, online dating, social media, and perversion.
There are some novel and particularly striking caricatures of social figures. The self-flagellating male feminist, the bizarrely online, etc. The accuracy of these characters is both fascinating and disturbing. And it's interesting to see the terminally online depicted with such frankness in print. It's rare to see the online world as the subject of fiction, and the oddities of that translation are handled well here.
The writing style is deeply characterized. The stories are written in the first person, and so tied up in the character they're about that often the protagonist's dialogue will feature directly in the text, while their interlocutors are in quotes. This is an odd stylistic choice at first, but it does create a kind of intensity which works with the piece.
One downside of this style is that reading the book gave me a profound feeling of, well, cringe. It's legitimately difficult to read at times, out of embarrassment for the fictional narrator. I would say this is a positive for the author, and commend them for the ability to make me feel this way. However, there is one passage in particular which is so vile, making J.G. Ballard's Crash (for example) seem like a children's book in comparison, to the point of being unreadable.
In general, there's a pervasive kind of online-know-it-all voice in the undertones of the writing, which comes in part from the characters, but also in part from the style the author is employing. This is a tricky voice to do well. On one hand, this kind of cynical brainy style can be very good at creating color and providing a sharp criticism of the world, but on the other, it can feel more like a self-pleasuring exercise for the author, making them seem more fascinated by their technical prowess than in deploying it to an actual artistic end. In general, I've found that authors like David Foster Wallace---instrumental in establishing the style---were safely on the right side of this line, imitators have tended to lead themselves quite astray. Tulathimutte is on the safe side of the line, but inches uncomfortably close, only getting away with it because of the personal point of view his stories are based on. If they weren't trying to be written as if penned by their subjects, then this style would not have been pulled off. At times, this feels like a bit of a crutch to patch up shortcomings in the style, rather than using the style to complement the choice of voicing.
A puzzling element of the novel is its metafictional ending. It contains a fake rejection letter for the novel itself. This was executed well, but felt frivolous, like something you'd write as a creative exercise. I don't think it improved the book much at all, and felt like a bit of a shield against criticism. I would much rather have had the book try and justify itself on its own.
That said, I still think this is worth a read, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend all of the book.