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Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
UWisc Madison?
Text: "some intimate portraits of Lily and Rocco in a hotel Sunday morning groove"
If it's Madison, it's looking like Spring Hill Suites (Marriott) off University Ave. Other options have dark furnishings.
Our man Dan was absent from intimate groove? Yep, making selfies of her newly thrifted student rejects.
Text: "I was born to wear the clothes they sell in Wisconsin"
Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery 19h
btw my first novel is out this week...it's called Women's Hotel and you should read it if you like
- small domestic details
- loving descriptions of old menus
- the problems of politeness
- women who live together but do not respect one another's values or wardrobes
kat @katwacht 17h
Just reserved it from the library and there’s a five week wait! Annoying for me but I’m happy for you!!
Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery 17h
I have a bunch of spare author copies if you want one in the meantime!
Daniel M. Lavery reposted Elizabzth van Ofs @misselizabetka 14h
Keeping a running tally of NYC churches that I've sung at that are name dropped in
@daniel_m_lavery's Women's Hotel and I'm up to four, which has delighted me to no end.
Elizabzth van Ofs @misselizabetka 14h
Anyway it's giving Barbara Pym in the best possible way and I'm enjoying very much.
Daniel M. Lavery @daniel_m_lavery 13h
this pleases me to no end!!
Holy O fuck. She looks like a dwarf homeless pedo Hunter S Thompson that just wriggled out of a Salvation Army Box. That's a cringe felt around the world, right there. FFS, Mal. There are better ways to distinguish yourself within the BPT. Find some dignity. (Or at least get a cigarette holder.)
That's part of why her obsession with Austen has always seemed so inauthentic to me--she just wants to ape the sometimes overwrought language from a 21st century perspective to be fucking TWEE
Amen. Austen was a late Georgian with a precarious grip on respectability because of her financial situation. She lived in a country that was at war for most of her life, Her cousin’s husband was guillotined. She cracked jokes about anal sex and dead babies. She did not write about toast, but about class, sex and money. Twee she was not. Anyone who takes inspiration from her to write tiresome, twee ruminations about breakfast, Dippin’ Dots and similar dull trivialities should be locked in a room and force-read J.G. Ballard.
Women's Hotel non-review
Chapter 3: “He saith among the trumpets, Ha ha”
Yes, another biblical reference, this time from Job.
I hope you didn't get too excited about those developing plots, because none of them are in chapter 3.
Mallory has no sense of structuring a chapter. Here's the opening paragraph: "That Sunday morning was Altheah Meachem’s turn at the lectern. The pleasant buzz of the Psalter recitation had been succeeded by the booming announcement, “Hear the Holy Scripture as it is written in the such-a-chapter of such-a-book,” in penetrating tones designed to return wandering minds to their appropriate attitude and to wake the dozing. Katherine was in no need of shepherding, but she valued the direction just the same; the Presbyterians knew how to manage shared time and attention."
Altheah (the lay reader) is female, by the way, so you will have to return your preacher daddy issue comments to their box.
Okay, we know who Katherine is, but...who is this preacher? Why are we suddenly in a church? Where is this church? Establishing shots exist for a reason. If I'm spending my time trying to figure out where I am, I'm taken out of the story. We eventually get this information, along with interminable thoughts about the Presbyterians. And the Baptists. And a lot of historical discussion about both which has nothing to do with women's hotels.
"Katherine did not choose to serve on either the nursery committee or the floral committee, nor did she attend the semiannual Young Person’s Pancake Breakfast, or the Presbyterian Women’s Wednesday circle, or the Presbyterian Women’s Sunday circle, for the Presbyterian women who worked on Wednesdays or had otherwise fallen out with the Wednesday crowd could no longer be trusted to sit through a meeting without resorting to spiritual violence." Could we not stick with the actual character and her motivations, rather than wandering off into vague remarks? I'm sure there's a joke behind "spiritual violence" just as there was with the girls in the Murphy beds, but jokes only work if other people get them.
"Now the pastorship was sensibly shared between two men, like the old Roman consuls, in order that the one might keep a check on the ambition of the other. They were both named John." ...okay, you can open that box now, except nothing happens with either John.
Eventually, we reach Katherine's motivations for attending church, and this is relevant and interesting (if still expository) and ties well into the phenomenon of the women who live in hotels. Why we have to slog through so much to reach it, I don't know:
"This would be followed by a worn-out, empty sort of evening, surrounded by a lot of boxes and things that now needed to be put away, feeling quite unequal to the task of even going to bed, and wondering why she hadn’t made plans to go out with someone, as she realized she hadn’t spoken to a soul aside from a sales clerk, nor seen a friendly face all day. Church was a remarkably useful place to organize her thoughts, not to mention an opportunity to be quiet and yet still remain part of a crowd. If she had no close friends among the congregation, still she could count on being welcomed by name, and hearing her hair or her shoes warmly remarked upon. In church she could speak in unison without having to initiate conversation, privately judge the sermon, be stirred during the voluntary, weep a little in public without fear, reflect without the morbidity of her bedroom, wear something slightly uncomfortable and yet becoming, and set herself apart from her largely nonchurchgoing friends, all the while feeling that she was pushing the dark and unpleasant disheveled figure of Monday a little further back into the wings."
Then interminable thoughts around inequalities in treating other people to lunch etc. when they do not treat in kind. Very feminine thought processes on display here.
Then comments about social interactions after the church service which I'm sure are all entirely fictional.
Then we learn Katherine is an alcoholic, and how she has come to New York, and her family background...zzzzz....
"The Heaps were an old family, at least by Midwestern reckoning, having established a branch in Westerville by the time of its incorporation in 1858. But even the very oldest families rarely outlive three oaks." What??? What am I missing here? It's not in the book as there are no other references to oaks.
Here is the rest of that paragraph.
"Certainly neither of Katherine’s parents ever seemed conscious of having to steward anything like a family character outside of what was generally owed to children by right of birth. Like most parents of their era, they hoped for the dispersal, rather than the consolidation, of their legacy, mentally settling their offspring in every far-flung corner of the country. The Westerville Heaps were by and large a dry family. Even a careful examination of their lineage, traced as far back as it was possible to go, would have produced no more than two or three suspected drunkards, none of them after the nineteenth century, and the last of whom, a bachelor uncle graciously donated to the railroad in the 1880s, had turned into a remarkably steady citizen upon his removal to Arizona, where he was in later years elected twice to local government. Those Heaps who remained in Westerville practiced a mild form of religion, some worshipping at the Church of the United Brethren in Christ and others with the Methodists. In neither case was their attendance regular, and both sides were eccentrically born high-minded Victorian atheists, of the sort who tirelessly cataloged the whole world from top to bottom during that most frenetic and middle-class of centuries, who became botanists, geologists, and ornithologists, and delighted in any scientific pursuit that required one to go about with a logbook and a miniature hammer. The family had more regularly produced at first orchardists, who cultivated excellent apple trees of golden Pippins (which they valued all the more highly for having once drawn the ire of the visiting Johnny Appleseed, who as a Swedenborgian objected to grafting on the grounds that it hurt the trees, which the Heaps at once dismissed as religious quackery and enjoyed as notice from a celebrity), and later schoolteachers, principals, and headmasters, and especially prided itself on the education of its women."
And finally...why is Katherine suddenly an alcoholic at age 17?
...because. That's pretty much it. Every possible external reason is dismissed.
What the fuck is she trying to do? "Look you guys, I'm David Foster Wallace and Jane Austen AT THE SAME TIME!" Put down the pen and just go read The Aleph like a normal person, Mallory.
This literally means they were born in an eccentric manner, not that they were eccentrics from birth. She should stop copying Joe’s breathless gish gallop prose style and actually consider each word. And write shorter sentences. She isn’t Proust.
"The Heaps were an old family, at least by Midwestern reckoning, having established a branch in Westerville by the time of its incorporation in 1858. But even the very oldest families rarely outlive three oaks." What??? What am I missing here? It's not in the book as there are no other references to oaks.
For that matter, why do midwestern families go extinct? That also makes no goddamn sense. Is she slipping in a reference to Buddenbrooks? A swipe at her neighbours, too simple to survive? Or is Tard Baby just being retarded?
Back to oaks. Oaks can live up to 1,000 years, so yes this makes no goddamn sense. It turns out however that there is a town in Michigan called Three Oaks:
The village was first settled by Henry Chamberlain in 1850 and became a village in 1867. The village was originally called Chamberlain's Siding but was changed to Three Oaks. These oak trees were a guidepoint for train engineers. None of the original three oak trees remain today; the last was cut down nearly 100 years ago.
This could be some sort of inside throuple joke, incomprehensible to the rest of humanity, so of course Mal thinks it’s clever to slip it into her novel.
They tend not to in practice, come on now. She's just trying to sound old-timey and possibly get points for ingenius tree imagery re: families, generations, zzzz
However, because of the relentless promotion and inflated reviews in prestigious publications, I'm starting to think Mallory actually had sex with someone recently. That's nice for her.
Yes, but by using a stupid tree image. Old-timey people would know oak was a symbol of longevity and strength because they easily live for centuries. This isn’t a pissing match over tree life spans BTW - it is about how good a writer she is, and that requires (among other things) assessing sentence structure, power and accuracy of analogies and metaphors etc. It’s obvious what she was trying to do. It is also obvious that she did do in a stupid way and thus failed in her aim, because she is not a careful thinker, writer, or editor of her own work.
However, because of the relentless promotion and inflated reviews in prestigious publications, I'm starting to think Mallory actually had sex with someone recently. That's nice for her.
Hawt and sexxxay Mal's getting favorable treatment because she fucked somebody who then controlled what reviewers wrote in prestigious publications owned by different companies?
It's time then to demand ethics in book reviewing.
lol, I'd probably put it down to token minority writes a book that's sort of passable and not a complete fetish wank fodder like Please Miss or Manhunt.
Women's Hotel non-review
Chapter Four: Incomprehensible Demoralization
I feel seen!
"Mr. and Mrs. Heap, we have already said"
STOP IT.
This entire chapter is extended backstory about Katherine's alcoholism and family life, including the decision to keep booze in the house so Katherine can drink safely at home instead of repeatedly breaking her foot during drinking blackouts.
"Equally mystifying, Katherine, who had never been melancholic as a child, who gently enjoyed the company of other children, who tolerated the instinctive hero worship of her much younger sisters (and being very young herself at the death of their second child, did not take it especially hard), who had suffered no mistreatment at school, no serious injustice or interference from strangers, no trespass on her rights by the world, yet now seemed to bear life a grudge better suited to one who had been orphaned by war and privation."
....you don't say, Mallory. You don't say.
"And did you miss me terribly, darling? I missed you. Today you shall have whatever you like, even unto half my kingdom, by way of consolation.” - Mark 6:23, Esther 5:3.
I am so bored. Where is the hotel? Where is the semblance of a plot?
Did Mallory say she'd been an alcoholic in college? We know Joe has an extensive history (all respect to his ongoing sobriety). Is this chapter about any of that???
Did we know that Joe wrote a novel about the Cornish independence movement? Well, now we do. Also, right now he's writing an eco horror about the West Midlands.
Next up:
- a biography of the dishes he left in the sink
- a stageplay about the Nando's in Cribbs Mall
- a telenovela script set in Dorset
- a monolog where he pretends anyone liked Please Miss
- an indie horror game where you play as his parents - how jealous he is of the baby as explained through Edwardian tatted lace
"Equally mystifying, Katherine, who had never been melancholic as a child, who gently enjoyed the company of other children, who tolerated the instinctive hero worship of her much younger sisters (and being very young herself at the death of their second child, did not take it especially hard), who had suffered no mistreatment at school, no serious injustice or interference from strangers, no trespass on her rights by the world, yet now seemed to bear life a grudge better suited to one who had been orphaned by war and privation."
You know, when James Joyce did his whole "stream-of-consciousness" thing there was a point about it being inside the head of someone and how quickly and random thoughts can float in and out. That is just bad writing and hard to read. There's no reason why she can't use proper punctuation.
Anal sex = Mansfield Park, where Maria Crawford says:
“Certainly, my home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”
Dead babies = letter to her sister Cassandra about a tragedy which befell their neighbours
“Mrs. Hall of Sherbourn was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, oweing to a fright.—I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband.”
Not to earnest-post, but I do kinda hope you end up liking the book. It’d be a nice surprise, for one, and part of me is rooting for Mal. I still believe Joe is The Main Villain here and I hope one day she can escape (and make amends for all the terrible things she’s done). I will accept my rainbows now.
Mallory has fully abdicated responsibility for her life. This would not have been such a catastrophically bad thing if she'd found herself an asexual man who put a baby in her once, or maybe a lesbian who was looking to take on a masculine role in a non-patriarchal relationship. But she married a performative weirdo who can hold a job as well as he can stay within the traditional marriage bounds, and is playing second fiddle in her own marriage. Mallory is exactly the person that people who are fans of traditional gender roles point to when they wish to illustrate their position.
I think it would be a lot of fun if Women's Hotel got some real legs and brought back that Toast audience. Maybe even reached a wider audience, though I doubt it will. She's maybe been absorbing some of Joe's writing tendencies as her increasingly long sentences are showing. She needs to read some Hemingway and Elmore Leonard to pull back on 'every clause is wonderful, it'll all fit in somehow'. Maybe even work in a few that could be considered 'terse'.
I say that as someone who isn't her target audience, but can appreciate her ability to turn a phrase. She can get a sensible chuckle out of me even if I'm not interested in sitting down to read Texts From Jane Eyre, and I still think about 'test drive the idea of calling people boss' from a blogpost back when she was looking at a butcher shop job before they left NYC. I read some pieces from Something That May Shock and DIscredit You and while it's not really my bag I can see how her writing would be someone else's.
Behold the most feminine tweet ever twote! All lower case, starts with “btw” as in “I don’t want to be a bother but by the way, if you have time…”, and then of course each bullet point is something only women, or maybe the gayest of gay men, would ever want to read about. All of which would be fine coming from quirky Millenial woman Mallory, but is hilarious coming from “Danny” the scruffy lil dood. Like yeah bro I love domestic details bruh, the smaller the better my dude!
FTMs are if anything often more femme than the average woman, much less a tomboy.
