Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"

[TheMeanOne]

They appear to be joined at the hip for the past six years. If anything some time away from each other would seem far more normal than taking him on a “book tour” that was all of four days away from home.

Especially given that he has a babymama on the side.

I feel like Joe knows if he lets Mallory out of his sight for very long someone will get to her. Mal got talked into being trans pretty easily she might get talked out pretty quickly too.

 

[one_time_user]

Do you think he's mentioning his own book to the audiences?

 

[Trianon]

I'm not saying you should have looked closely at the images to notice this because why would you, but just providing documentation of Joe's retardery: the pics have a watermark in the corner from generative AI model StyleGAN2:
View attachment 6560737
In previous years when attempting this same "argument", Joe used images from inferior AI models that had more noticeable artifacts.

For me it's noticable how smooth and symmetrical their faces are. Seeing one in isolation might make you think, "My, that is a very attractive person" because their features are almost mirrored perfectly from one side to the other. Seeing four in a group makes it easier to immediately flag them as just populated pixels. I love their soulless corporate smiles. "YOU wouldn't want to be transphobic, WOULD you, neighbor?"

 

[AirdropShitposts]

Joe Lavery at last bestirred himself here with:

Text: 'GC tradition does include lying, though. “We can always tell.”'

1. This isn't lying, it's "being wrong" and...
2. It's not an actual literal claim of absolute perfection that's disproven by a singular failure. Which is...
3. A standard Joe never applies to any of his claims because he believes he can always fall back on some more defensible bailey he can after the fact insist was what he always meant even as his renders his original bold proclamation to be either a tautology or irrelevant. But...
4. By contesting that they are lying (which implies intent), Joe is admitting he says things he knows are false for rhetorical purposes. Which is why he assumes GCs are doing the same, knowing deep down that they cannot tell 100% of the time and that their statement is not merely a slight exaggeration but a massive falsehood they are pushing to obtain power. Even if their real meaning with "always" is a slight exaggeration from being able to almost always do it and the claim is not relevant to anything anyway. (Even if all GC's had a 0% success rate at accurately determining sex, sex would still exist as it does. Notice that Joe assumes the truth of a position here that he otherwise denies the truth of (sex exists and is consistent) purely to argue against all GC truth claims, even though if Joe's actual position were true (sex is incoherently variable), GC's would only ever be right randomly. This places the baseline for the GC claim far below perfection if Joe's greater argument is to be true. He has self-defeated his own argument because he has no idea of how arguments are properly constructed.)

If I were to say "I always make it to the bathroom in time" Joe thinks he's debunked my entire worldview about control of my bladder if I ever peed myself even just a little. With my worldview in shambles, I am forced to accept any claim Joe makes even though he has yet to show the perfection of those claims. I must accept them because they are simply the only alternative left now that he has shown the imperfection of all others. Because Joe is a simpleton he believes he's placed me in a logical trap I cannot pirouette away from. But I don't have any need to pirouette: I can simply reject his premise since it is false.

edit: To put it another way: because Joe believes everything is defined purely relatively, by eliminating all other options he can "trap" me and therefore force me to accept his position. But I don't accept his premise that everything is solely relative so the "trap" is entirely worthless. It only works with people who already accept his rules of engagement. From just his interactions on Twitter you can see he doesn't understand this at all, complete randoms who aren't academics or anything close slip his "traps" all the time while his only means of slipping theirs is to lie about what he meant or said. Because he's always willing to be dishonest or otherwise act in bad faith he can always "pirouette" while convincing nobody else.

 

[Bookwork]

Mal's inspirators:

Spoiler: Text

A few of the inspirations for Women's Hotel: Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City," Barbara Pym's "Quartet in Autumn," Rachel Ferguson's "Evenfield" (one of my favorites from the Furrowed Middlebrow, an imprint of Dean Street Press that to my mind, never misses), Sybille Bedford's "A Favourite of the Gods," Marjorie Hillis' "Corned Beef and Caviar" (marvelous illustrations, absolutely terrible recipes), Dwight Garner's "The Upstairs Delicatessen," Maud Hart Lovelace' "Betsy Was A Junior," and Edna Ferber's "They Brought Their Women" (marvelous illustrations, no recipes). Not pictured, but ought to have been included: Rona Jaffe's "The Best of Everything", Mary McCarthy's "The Group," Sylvia Townsend Warner's "The Corner That Held Them."

Is there a Mrs. Madrigal in Women's Hotel?

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Do you think he's mentioning his own book to the audiences?

He absolutely did, probably when Mal was discussing “her process” or anything to do with her writing, he would pipe in about something similar when he was writing HIS book. Prob lots of banter about two writers living together and all those adorable idiosyncratic anecdotes about Grace.

I’d bet Mal would mention his book, or purposely direct her answers to open the door to talking about his book. She is his handmaiden, err I mean fist eater, after all.

Mal really is the extreme avatar of the confused millennial “feminist” once the rubber met the road after college. Mallory just got more creative with the way she dealt with self-loathing and her desire to be submissive to a man. Ironically I think women in her dad’s social milieu get far more respect and equality than the tranny handmaidens. I’d bet good money if Rev Ortberg asked his wife if he could put her fist in her mouth, fuck her up the ass and fuck other women, she’d feel no pressure to acquiesce to his desires.

Subjugation to dictates of men in dresses seems as bad as subjugation to fundamentalist southern baptist, Mormon or Muslim patriarchy.

 

[Allo Vera]

OT but still one of my fave troon pics of all time:
View attachment 6560990

Derailing to say that this one looks like a brick shithouse standing next to a man too.

 

[Aunt Carol]

Subjugation to dictates of men in dresses

Hey, cool it with the anti-Catholic remarks.

 

[Wonderland foster child]

Women's Hotel non-review
Chapter Seven: Dressing to Match

"Lucianne, who was easily fluent in the language of clothes, found the idea that a person would move to New York City and keep dressing like a person who never expected to be looked at completely baffling. It seemed to her antisocial, and very nearly rude, especially since on any given day in the city it was possible that as many as half a million people might look at you, and that degree of exposure ought to have counted for something."

I think the author knows SOMEONE who dressed to impress in NYC!

"“Tell us about the new girls,” Lucianne said to Katherine".

The...new girls? *thinks* OH YES. Those new girls we first heard about FIVE CHAPTERS AGO. Gosh, yes, what about them? (They don't actually appear until the next chapter.)

"how closed off so many young people still are to anything further left than the DAR"

Period details are good: I'm happy to see Bonwit Teller mentioned. But context anchors it for readers who don't know the references. In this case, they not only have to know what the DAR is, but get the joke, which involves (presumably) how conservative it is. There are plenty of ways authors can work in those sorts of details so as to provide the necessary context, and I wish Mallory (who has no qualms about infodumping backstory) could have found one, rather than just chuckling at her own in-joke. Okay, there's a subsequent reference to Rockefeller Republicans, but that doesn't help much.

Katherine and Lucianne and Pauline attend the anarchists' poetry reading and struggle session. A young man is wearing a tie with a daisy pattern. A slightly older man, Tobias, has stolen as many sandwiches as Lucianne has, so she will not consider dating him because he is A Poor. Pauline is working for two rival anarchist publications at once and must flee when both her rival bosses turn out to be present. It's more interesting than backstory, even with the jokes only Mallory gets, but I still have no idea where any of this is going, even though I am exactly halfway through this book.

 

[WalterWhitesTidyWhities]

I still have no idea where any of this is going, even though I am exactly halfway through this book

I think this is the crux of why Mallory strikes me as a genuinely bad writer; having some haphazard historical research, a tenuous grasp on contemporary social mores, or a stream of consciousness style narration that occasionally results in clunky sentences is something the vast majority of readers can probably look past, to an extent. However, something about reading these excerpts is making my brain itch, because I can't figure out what her goal with writing this was (apart from the faintest fart of a hope that it was some get out of Joe free card ). I saw many users a few pages ago say they had hope for WH because they like vignette-style writing, and while I agree, I'm struggling to see these excerpts as "vignettes" in a formal sense and more so just episodes of "people bumbling around with no distinctive inner voice have mundane things happen to them."

IMO this seems absolutely dreadful, but also like Mal doesn't want to be a novelist writing a 60s period piece; rather she longs deep down to be a lo-fi mumblecore director of shitty indie movies, but is 20 years behind the curve on that one. I think it comes down to her lack of a cogent authorial voice; she is "well-read," sure, but she comes across as a person who has had very few life experiences, or someone who at least has no idea how to use these experiences to inspire her writing. You can write a great novel as a hermetic recluse, sure, but you'll have to let your emotions and living situation fuel your passion for writing; I get no verve and genuine hunger for the written word from Mal, like she was probably a verbally gifted kid and her teachers gave that bullshit de facto "ooh you're a good writer" spiel and she just...never questioned it or came up with an interest of her own. Everything about her literary persona seems like a manufactured hand me down from someone else, as opposed to playful pastiche, and IMO that's why her writing seems so laborious to get through.

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

many users a few pages ago say they had hope for WH because they like vignette-style writing, and while I agree, I'm struggling to see these excerpts as "vignettes" in a formal sense and more so just episodes of "people bumbling around with no distinctive inner voice have mundane things happen to them."

IMO this seems absolutely dreadful, but also like Mal doesn't want to be a novelist writing a 60s period piece; rather she longs deep down to be a lo-fi mumblecore director of shitty indie movies, but is 20 years behind the curve on that one. I think it comes down to her lack of a cogent authorial voice; she is "well-read," sure, but she comes across as a person who has had very few life experiences, or someone who at least has no idea how to use these experiences to inspire her writing. You can write a great novel as a hermetic recluse, sure, but you'll have to let your emotions and living

I think she is far too self-focused type to create characters of any real depth. It reads like a character sketch writing excercise thus far. Mallory is fixated on being unique and extraordinary so her trying write about “everyday women” of another era feels tedious and inauthentic. Obviously I’m just basing it on what’s being posted here, but I find it dry and boring.

What characters she does create that aren’t just versions of her own psyche seem to be drawn from books she’s read, not her own observations or insight of people.

I found it very strange that all the books she cited as inspiration appear to be other novels. Fiction inspired by fiction? If you are attempting to write about women of another era non-fiction period books, magazines, letters to the editor of women’s mags, etc… would give you insight to how the living, breathing individuals spoke and thought, rather than another author’s imagination creating them.

Anyway, I have two recommendations if anyone enjoys vignettes and is looking for some interesting reading.

Spoiler

this one is kind of obvious, but “The Girl with Curious Hair” by DF Wallace was so enjoyable to read.

One that I found incredibly interesting is non-fiction and has vignettes in it. “The Inman Dairy” written by a sort of crazy man who shut himself up in an apt in Boston from 1919-1963 and kept a diary. He was afflicted with hypergraphia and possibly a neurological disorder. He was a rich only child from a wealthy southern family, but at 22 suddenly couldn’t tolerate noise and other odd things and became a total recluse. He got so bored in his room he put out classified ads in the paper offering to pay people with interesting lives to tell him stories about themselves. He ended up recording some very interesting and off beat stories from everyday people in 1930’s and 40’s America. This only makes up a portion of the diary, but I enjoyed it the most. From Inman himself you get to hear an interesting, unfiltered stream of consciousness from an odd man from a long ago era. He was also a virulent right wing type and listening to a guy rage about politics involving long dead WW2 figures, as if it happening right now, was oddly interesting. Boy did he hate Roosevelt.

I think only an edited two volume set of diary exists for sale, which is what I bought and read. During the 1980’s the lovely Harvard prof Daniel Aaron went through all 155 volumes!!!! to publish some abridged reading of it. Someone created an opera about Inman too that I’ve heard good things about.

 

[Bookwork]

Lucianne, who was easily fluent in the language of clothes

Eway areway eakingspay ethay anguagelay ofway ashionfay

 

[Dick Johnson]

Especially given that he has a babymama on the side.

I feel like Joe knows if he lets Mallory out of his sight for very long someone will get to her. Mal got talked into being trans pretty easily she might get talked out pretty quickly too.

That particular possibility is behind a troonshield. Even if Women's Hotel really gets traction and Mal does a bunch more talks and signings, meeting people at industry stuff and book festivals, she's still in an environment where people are 'accepting'. So they're going to think 'I need to work on my internalized cisheteronormativity' when they think to themselves 'you live in the attic above your spouse and their girlfriend, and take care of the baby they had while you were married...that's fucked up'. They're going to consciously push out the thoughts that they'd otherwise express if no one in the Power Throuple were trans.

And just the general effects of the T and surgeries and Mal's consciously unappealing fashion sense means that there's zero potential interest for someone inclined to be a Captain Save-A-Ho. Usually troonshields help protect the transgendered from the consequences of their bad decisions, in this case they're protecting Mal from getting any help with her bad decisions.

"Lucianne, who was easily fluent in the language of clothes, found the idea that a person would move to New York City and keep dressing like a person who never expected to be looked at completely baffling. It seemed to her antisocial, and very nearly rude, especially since on any given day in the city it was possible that as many as half a million people might look at you, and that degree of exposure ought to have counted for something."

I think the author knows SOMEONE who dressed to impress in NYC!

Possibly a swipe at Lily, who would wear the ugly designer shit that Joe bought for her, but otherwise continued to dress like the Subaru Forester owner from Michigan that she is. (IDK if that's what she actually drives, but she looks like it is.)

 

[AfghanBlue]

Eway areway eakingspay ethay anguagelay ofway ashionfay
View attachment 6567560

Oh That's what it is.
They all had to troop along because who the fuck else but Mal was gonna look after the baby for those 4 days?
It's mother and father? Lol

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

Eway areway eakingspay ethay anguagelay ofway ashionfay
View attachment 6567560

And again...Joe and Lily taking a couple/couple & baby photo, with Mal off to the side like a brother of the groom, beaming and ignored by the other two.

 

[Wonderland foster child]

Women's Hotel non-review
Chapter Eight: A Haircut for Katherine

The new girls are Gia, a ballet dancer who arrives with a taxiful of clothing and has come to New York intending to marry the recently-widowed man who once dated her mother, and Ruth, who insists on washing and setting Katherine's hair even though it's very late at night, and then cuts her hair which turns into a Great Disaster, but she doesn't get the place she wanted at the hairdressing salon so the practice was all for naught.

There's more interaction between the hotel residents than in most chapters to date (Lucianne quotes O. Henry's short story "The Gift of the Magi" liberally to Katherine), so we are finally getting somewhere with that, but there is also a three-page interlude about a college student who interprets people's dreams, the point of which was to show that Gia reminded Katherine of that college girl, which is the clunkiest method of characterisation I have read in many a day.

I still have no idea why I should care about any of these characters.

The Goodreads overall star rating crept up into the 3.4 zone but is currently back at 3.37. From the most recent reviews:

"I do not have much to say about it because there is not much to it."

"So not funny."

"Not really a lot of plot happening. Mostly it’s just characters vibing, which sometimes works but I was hoping for more from this book."

Me too, kid. Me too.

 

[monstrous bubo]

Me too, kid. Me too.

The pang of literary disappointment is so sharp.

Now that you’re so far in, is is fair to say the characters are basically white, middle class, straight and of Anglo-Celtic background? Your recaps IIRC haven’t mentioned women residents who are eg working class but on the make. Or is Ruth that character? I’m genuinely curious how much Tard Baby exploits the potential for conflict or development from different types of people interacting with each other.

 

[Bookwork]

Mal's featured on the Ordinary Unhappiness "podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now, featuring Abby Kluchin & Patrick Blanchfield."

Apple | Spotify | Overcast

Episode 75: "Psychosocial Realism feat. Daniel Lavery" is described thusly [line breaks added for readibility]:

Abby and Patrick welcome writer Daniel Lavery to talk about his superb new book Women’s Hotel. Lavery’s novel conjures a now-vanished institution (low cost, long term residential communities for working women) in a since-disappeared landscape (midcentury New York City) and populates it with a cast of memorable characters whose entanglements, solidarities, and mixed fortunes dramatize the very contingencies of family, community, and human life itself.

Abby and Patrick talk with Daniel about how he came to conceive of the project, his influences and inspiration, his method for producing such rich characterizations, the question of style, and more.

It’s also a chance for the three to explore the psychoanalytically rich themes and topics the book takes up, from the desire for recognition to anxieties over conflicting social mores to substance abuse to family estrangement to religious preference and much, much more.

1 hour 17 minutes

Kluchin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies Coordinator, Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, Ursinus College

Blanchfield, freelance writer and instructor, PhD in comparative lit from Emory and four years of coursework in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice

 

[MirnaMinkoff]

Mal's featured on the Ordinary Unhappiness "podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now, featuring Abby Kluchin & Patrick Blanchfield."

Apple | Spotify | Overcast

Episode 75: "Psychosocial Realism feat. Daniel Lavery" is described thusly [line breaks added for readibility]:


1 hour 17 minutes

Kluchin, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies Coordinator, Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, Ursinus College

Blanchfield, freelance writer and instructor, PhD in comparative lit from Emory and four years of coursework in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice

Oh, I bet Joe is seething he didn’t join Mallory on this.

I’m sure he told Mallory to ask the hosts about booking her wonderful wife and “be sure to mention I’m x hours away from being a psychoanalyst” too.

 

[Wonderland foster child]

Now that you’re so far in, is is fair to say the characters are basically white, middle class, straight and of Anglo-Celtic background? Your recaps IIRC haven’t mentioned women residents who are eg working class but on the make. Or is Ruth that character? I’m genuinely curious how much Tard Baby exploits the potential for conflict or development from different types of people interacting with each other.

There's very little diversity. I had thought Stephen the elevator guy might be Black, but he's not. He's gay (or bi, since he sleeps with at least one woman), and two women residents are lesbians. There's not even a token Jewish girl, and the poor women are shabby genteel rather than from the working class. Two residents are in their 70s so there's some age range going on, but really that's all.

Ruth is pretty much just insane.