You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly. You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
"Lucianne and Carol began to refer to her [Ruth] by the equally admiring and mean-spirited nickname of Lily: "Because like the lily of the fields she toils not, neither does she spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory was not arranged so comfortably as she."" Matthew 6:28-29.
OH HOW INTERESTING.
Extra fine since if Mal installed "Lily" before actual Lily throupled into being, Mal had ample time to swap in Magdalen before sharing the manuscript around. But no. LOL. Still, a sleezy art teacher with dyed hair trying to steal husbands to fill her withering womb would have been even better. I am disappoint.
ETA - @monstrous bubo - She's long teased the first few paragraphs of content otherwise reserved for her paying subbies, even before moving to Substack. Like you, I have not bought in. Boredom kills.
Wonderland foster child - I started thinking that I might want to read the book myself, but realized that I've just been enjoying your recaps and I doubt the book itself is half as entertaining. You are a great writer!
All I want is to become well and truly humbled by my success this year.
I've already been humbled by my failures and ordinariness, so for this year, I think I would prefer only to be humbled by my success. I would be very humble about it. It would probably be the making of me.
"Have you noticed," people would say, "how much humbler Danny seems to have grown this year? And he was pretty humble already, I thought." And I would be all the humbler for my tremendous success. It would make me stop and appreciate all the simple things. Which I already do, being pretty humble to begin with, but now the things I appreciate are even simpler: Buttons, shoelaces, plain toast, cotton socks, generic facial tissues, lightbulbs, and so on.
Women's Hotel non-review
Chapter Fourteen: Wedding Season
At this stage in a novel, we should be hurtling towards the ending...but this is all going on at the same bland pace, ho hum. Also, there is only one wedding and it already took place.
"But she would not come back, they knew; the Biedermeier was not the kind of place where people came back. You either stayed on longer than you had ever intended to, or you left for good; it never hosted reunions. They had not come there on purpose, and they left it as often as they could. Perhaps this was why they had all tried so hard to make the party seem gay, as if they were all a bunch of great friends from childhood, who got married and got promoted at work and threw each other parties in turn, instead of a collection of mostly strangers who didn’t know what to do with themselves." Okay, so much for the camaraderie.
"They had quite a lot to drink; as far as refreshments were concerned it was an excellent party, although there had been nothing to eat but the Triscuits. Sadie sometimes called Carol during the first year of married life, but those calls dropped off eventually, as they so often do" - whoa, jarring shift in time frames there!
"There was a little further uptown a much more glamorous hotel, which resembled the Biedermeier only conceptually, set back in rose-pink brick, like a wedding cake, and brimming with models, actresses, novelists of promise, typists who worked for huge, successful companies where the secretarial pools worked in rooms the size of airplane hangars, with sleek matching covers that went over the machines at the end of the day— in this hotel, men were barred from going any higher than the lobby, and this prohibition was strictly kept, and the busiest hours came in the early morning, when the hotel resembled an immaculate beehive, and again during the cocktail hour, when the hotel resembled a slightly more glamorous beehive."
I wish like hell I were reading about that hotel instead.
I'm quoting this next part at length because WHY.
In truth, Dolly was more mannish than gentlemanly, because men are sometimes called gentlemanly, but never mannish, and a man cannot be mannish any more than a woman can be effeminate. In Pauline’s gentlemanliness, many men saw something of themselves that they already liked, profusely and distinctively arranged in a face and figure that were beautifully feminine. If she had been a few inches shorter, or skinny rather than vigorous, she might have been called gamine; as it was, she wasn’t. Pauline, who was already a success as a woman, had some of the better elements of maleness layered on top—it struck most people almost as an indicator of prosperity and good health. A generation earlier this sort of strapping androgyny had been a recognizable, even sometimes a very popular, type. Garbo and Hepburn and Dietrich were certainly the most well-known and recognizable members of this type, but it was not just a famous few, either: turn through your mother or grandmother’s old issues of Harper’s or Vogue and you will see page after page of woolen and flannel suits with broad lapels and broader shoulders, trousers of stout fabric with deep cuffs and straight-cut pockets, and a dozen snub-nosed models dressed like sailors, clubmen, and English schoolboys. Ask your mother and your grandmother to show you some of their old photo albums, and see how many of them you can spot. For a certain period — perhaps ten years after adolescence, perhaps fifteen — the world beams on girls like this. They are almost invariably and startlingly active, like schools of minnows; they sail and play tennis from sunup to sundown without flagging, if they live in the city; they tramp across country with Girl Guides; and they whittle and ride horses if they live in the country. (But they must always have money.) In later years they become either handsome matrons in long tweeds, or they retire gracefully, vanishing entirely into a sea of unremarkable-looking womanhood.
It goes on about Dolly, androgyny, the gay bar she's a bartender in, her jerk of a manager who keeps kicking people out of the bar, Nicola's job at the department store (Nicola is the other lesbian), and their cheerful insulting arguments.
Then Carol and Bryan are having a picnic in a park, talking about how weird Ruth is. She's trying to get Bryan to take her out (casual dating was a big thing in this era, but still). She's the sort of person people instinctively dislike, and she brute forces her way towards friendships only to get rebuffed, at which point she tries again. If any of this had been set up earlier, there could have been some seriously creepy tension underlying the rest of the plots. Alas.
This is so true of mals writing.
Little turns of phrase like "as it was, she wasn't"
It makes me feel like she's farted right in my face saying teeheehee have you heard of pg wodehouse? Have you smelt that?
I nearly vomited reading the words "little ladling". The baby stuff is so particularly painful because squeeing over the baby allows her to go full whack with the twee, and gets warped into a singularity of self satisfaction because by being twee and gushing about the baby as a true and honest man she's reinventing gender and basically saving the world and is maybe jesus christ, who's to say?
She sucks so hard.
My baby is gonna be a sore memory in a very small handful of years and then what? And she'll deserve it, if for nothing else, crimes against writing.
“[The book] is trying to have it both ways: it’s right that they’re gone because they didn’t work, but oh, how beautifully they didn’t work, and wouldn’t we like to imagine what that was like,” Lavery tells AD. “There’s a sense in the book that these characters are living in a place that would have been cool to live in 30 years earlier. And some of them did live there 30 years earlier! And some of them [live there] because it’s easy and cheap and easier than figuring out what else they would rather do.”
“You could really make a lot of your social life and errands-running within the building for less than you might pay for an apartment in a similar neighborhood,” Lavery marvels.
Accidentally explaining her own domestic arrangements
Anecdotally, both Lavery and I exchanged stories of our friend groups, joking (except not really) about buying an apartment building with communal conveniences such as a personal chef so we can have our own spaces but share the costs of living.
“It’s a fine line: When people don’t have enough independence, they want independence; and when they have too much independence, they want less of it,” Lavery says. “That question of how much do I want to share in the lives of others versus how much do I want to be left to my own devices.”
But Mal, you also told us not everyone likes independence, evil capitalism has killed communal living like women’s hotels, and millennials and zoomers fantasise about such arrangements.
Here’s a thought: perhaps the author or Tard Baby could have explored the thoughts above re community. If people are crying out for it, they could have discussed how contemporary architecture could, or fails to, foster it without sacrificing privacy, whether a co-ed model based on women’s hotels could work for today’s low paid and alienated twentysomethings, the sustainability argument for communal living, or a bunch of things more stimulating and connected to architecture. Instead, our big takeaway is Mal’s ambivalence about adulthood. AD is shallow wank, and Tard Baby can’t answer those questions sensibly anyway, so it’s probably for the best. How shallow? No photo of the scruffy author in her unglamorous home, or even the faux-naive book cover. Ouch! This ain’t gonna shift more units.
Yeah, it's more like she used the hotel as nothing more than a device to hold her paperdoll characters together since she can't bring herself to focus on relationships.
In that podcast, she says she likes Grand Hotel. Maybe she'll next write about paperdolls on a cruise, a tedious swipe at Ship of Fools in which the core conflicts are the buffet shutting down early and the social director lying about how pleased she is to help the guests, who by the way, don't plan to visit one another once on shore the way passengers on luxury liners do.
It's hard to call her writing escapist since the term assumes it's the readers who escape into it. Mallory is the escapist.
I want to know how the women living at a residency hotel aren’t independent? They weren’t living in their family’s home and were supporting themselves, how is that not independent?
Does Mallory think living in your own private shoebox apartment in a building is more independent than a smaller shoebox room in a building? Working women chose places like the Barbizon because it was safe and apartments with that level of safety usually required a doorman and lots of money. It also gave you a good excuse to get away from creepy dates at the end of the night and people who were aware of your plans for the evening.
I wonder if Mallory bothered to talk to a single woman who ever lived at these hotels? Maybe even read some of the books that were written about the actual hotels and interviewed former residents?
A relative of mine got a job at network in NYC as a copy editor for the evening news broadcast in the very early 1960’s. She was in her early 20’s and engaged, her fiancé returning from the naval academy for their planned wedding in a year. Her nickname was “Saint (her name)” because she refused to go out with all men in the office. They didn’t care she was engaged because most of them were married. She said the fact she still lived at home with her parents saved her a lot of trouble and why she continued to do so untill the wedding. Any of the women her age with apartments (usually shared with other women) were considered to be in play, because the men knew they could stay out at night. She could have easily had a Manhattan apartment but wanted the excuse of her parents awaiting her return before 9 pm. I figure women without family in the NYC Burroughs liked women’s residency hotels for much the same reason. You had to be very careful of the male ego when turning them down back then and if there was any hint you weren’t a “saint,” you were going to be hounded and hassled. Not having anyone expecting you in the door at a certain time could make things exceedingly uncomfortable and difficult. Harassing and hounding office girls was an approved sport of the brass and there was no one to complain to about it. The fact family, or hotel staff, were expecting you in at a certain hour every night was a welcome excuse to have.
Any woman who wanted to stay out and have sex with a paramour she desired could easily do so, the problem was dealing with all the men she had no interest in sleeping with or needed help putting off a man she was interested in until they were married. Staying a virgin until marriage was actually important to most women back then. This was why it was easier to have affairs with married women than the young unmarried ones.
But, you see, I'd like some UNhealthy perspectives to derive from that. Nope. At least not in this decade. She's too tra-la-lah about attic life to write the truth about any human connections -- or to lie about them beyond uncomprehending mommy blogging.
She's not just a bad writer, she's a bad bad writer, which does not transform her into a good writer, just a blah writer.
Women's Hotel non-review
Chapter Fifteen: Belling the Cat
Final chapter!
Katherine and Tobias go on a date but when he asks her if she's actually interested, she can't tell him about her alcoholism, so they just stay pals. This is infuriating and proves Mallory has no idea how to stick the landing. Katherine is the most developed of the characters (this is not saying much) and could have had an ending which brought her alcoholism into play with her estranged relationships and an attempt to redeem her life and give herself a future...even NOT telling him, but starting a relationship, would have been interesting, but nope, just a blah fizzling out.
A stray cat who one of the residents quasi-adopted continues to come by, and the resident is enthralled.
Ruth still has no job, is something of a hoarder, tries to make friends with people in parks (they throw things at her but she never gets the message), and obsesses about Bryan.
"Happiness wasn’t supposed to be private, but people were always shutting Ruth out of theirs." Ruth could have been the horror story of the entire hotel, but there are only 15 pages left.
Gia gets married to her mother's ex, quietly at the courthouse. Lucianne and Ruth attend as witnesses. "The four of them got cocktails afterward, but nothing to eat besides bar nuts, and as soon as they had ordered a second round Douglas said they had to go, and they vanished almost immediately, so Ruth and Lucianne finished their drinks for them." As nondescript as everything else in this book.
Okay, here's the ending.
It's 107 degrees. The cat hasn't been around in days but the resident is sure she hears him meowing. Pauline thinks it's coming from Ruth's room so several people go in. Ruth's room is disgusting - containing, among other things, Katherine's hair trimmings and random shoes and cigarette butts and apple cores and dead moths - and then it turns out Ruth is hiding under the bed. The cat is in a basket on the fire escape. Bryan rescues it, after which Ruth shoves him and they both fall out the window. But it's only the second floor, so they both survive, as does the cat.
Did no one edit this??:
"crying over and over, “Oh, what an awful thing—what an awful thing—why awful—awful, awful, awful!”
Ruth’s eyes were wide and awful."
Sigh.
The hotel limps along for another year and then becomes an ordinary hotel. Boring things happen to the residents. Mallory cannot be bothered to give Ruth an actual ending; this is lazy writing personified: "When Ruth was released from state care a little more than a decade later, there was nowhere left in the city where she could afford to live, so she was forced to go and live elsewhere. Whatever else might be said about her, she never again pushed anyone else out a window, and she never stole another cat."
Final paragraph:
"As for the others, they lived as long as they could, and many of them went on to be useful to each other. The odd and inadequate establishment that for so many decades had housed them was itself broken up shortly thereafter. Its remnants can be found almost anywhere one cares to look. The building itself remains standing, and has survived more than one attempted remodeling. As Mrs. Mossler said to herself by way of consolation, "It’s a pity the Automats are gone, but after all people still eat meals all over the city.""
(This is a callback to her regrets about automats closing waaaaaay back at the start.)
What does this even mean? That one of the women should have started a restaurant or wholefoods store? Work at the register at an incoming big supermarket?
So, nothing lasts, times change, but food is forever? O...kay? What a weird, random message to end the book on.
When Ruth was released from state care a little more than a decade later, there was nowhere left in the city where she could afford to live, so she was forced to go and live elsewhere.
I think the idea is that X continues even when a traditional source of X disappears. But what was the X the women’s hotel provided? In her AD interview, Tard Baby suggests it’s community, and presumably the line about “many of them went on to be useful to each other” gestures to that. But what sort of community was this establishment? The characters, based on the descriptions provided by @Wonderland foster child, seem thin and shallow. Does one character have a breakthrough where they truly see another in a new way? Is there a moment of intimacy? Is the support more than a sort of social performance, such as being witnesses and sole guests at a sad, embarrassed little wedding? Genuinely curious to know the answers as I am not about to read this.
In her AD interview, Tard Baby suggests it’s community, and presumably the line about “many of them went on to be useful to each other” gestures to that. But what sort of community was this establishment?
The issue is that she never really seems to have developed any of these relationships, nevertheless the characters, so it gives us no idea how - or why - these characters would be useful to each other after the hotel folded. Wouldn't the more obvious thing that likely would happen that these people would just drift apart? I get the feeling she liked the time period and the setting, but really didn't think through beyond what story she wanted to tell.
If you're going to tell a story where few things happen and essentially a "slice of life" it needs to dig deep into these characters. But then you'd have to start to connect with your own feelings and if you're a Pooner with a transbian "wife" who just had a baby with his side piece while you've annihilated yourself from your family, you're probably better off writing page-to-page action without much character study.
Pardon me for a second for my tone, Ms. Foster Child, as I am going to directly shout to the author:
WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT DRY FART OF A BOOK ABOUT
I want to fucking fistfight Mallory in a Wal*mart parking lot, with a bootleg purse and a small dog that isn't supposed to be there in my dinky shoping cart like the Florida Woman I am. For FUCK'S sake Daniel! What is this?! Fuck you, that was a waste of time and could have been spent reading any number of good or even trashy stories worth reading. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Does one character have a breakthrough where they truly see another in a new way? Is there a moment of intimacy? Is the support more than a sort of social performance, such as being witnesses and sole guests at a sad, embarrassed little wedding? Genuinely curious to know the answers as I am not about to read this.
I'm terrified that this is how Mal either sees other people (and looks at them like ants from her ivory tower of intellect) or that this is how she sees relationships herself.
It's like she sketched out some notes for what might go into a final chapter and never bothered to write the damn chapter. Too busy attacking family, being trendy, and fluffing Joe's ego? Too bored with her boring writing?
But her first novel got published nonetheless. An accomplishment of a lifetime few manage. I will applaud that if only with a sentence fragment. Were Daniel a penis-haver, though, he'd be getting knocked for not knowing much about women's realities.
I want to fucking fistfight Mallory in a Wal*mart parking lot, with a bootleg purse and a small dog that isn't supposed to be there in my dinky shoping cart like the Florida Woman I am.
Ruth still has no job, is something of a hoarder, tries to make friends with people in parks (they throw things at her but she never gets the message), and obsesses about Bryan.
"Happiness wasn’t supposed to be private, but people were always shutting Ruth out of theirs." Ruth could have been the horror story of the entire hotel, but there are only 15 pages left.
