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

[Dr. Butt]

I'd guess that it was included on the AVC's Best Of list because

She used to work for Gawker Media.

 

[monstrous bubo]

The review writer is Kristen McDermott, English lit prof at Central Michigan.

It's women lifting up other women.

The world of book reviews is fantastically and notoriously incestuous. With those who are the professional, actually paid to do it, there may not be outright conflicts of interest, but there will be a mesh of personal relationships and biases built up over time that skew reviews. The professional reviewers might try to preserve credibility, but it’s inevitable that their work will be influenced by those relationships.

When the reviewer doesn’t do this for a living… oh wow. Turn everything in the previous paragraph up to 11. Small journals like this one are a labour of love, and reviewers are paid a pittance, if at all. Reviewers’ reputation and livelihood won’t be hurt by their occasional book reviews, so they can be as bitchy or laudatory as they like. They’ll rarely be called on it, unless the author is crazy enough to lay bare a lot of personal, behind the scenes drama.

With that background: what’s the betting that one Michigan academic knows another Michigan academic, her baby daddy who is in her field and their unpaid babysitter?

 

[Anasa Tristis]

I've often muttered "What the fuck is this" over books I bought after reading a persuasive review and pondered whether (a) reviewers are mostly oddballs with astigmatic comprehension or (b) I have said affliction. The latter seemed the most likely. Until now.

They huff their own literary expert farts. And just love writing pretty prose themselves. Ya get the real dirt from Good Reads and Amazon. And most of the reviews are pretty ruthless there. A few of the ones that aren’t are clearly written by troons or pooners. You can just tell by the names and how vaguely complementary they are.

ETA: Ninja’d by Monstrous B! Kek.

 

[Friend of Dorothy Parker]

It's women lifting up other women. It happens, especially when it's a low-risk avenue ie small historical society that's not really about book reviews or a short blurb on an annual best of list on a site that doesn't really do book reviews. I guess it's sort of sweet that women still cape for Mall (for whatever reason, but even in this thread we see it occasionally).

Excuse me, sir. Daniel is a man.

They huff their own literary expert farts. And just love writing pretty prose themselves. Ya get the real dirt from Good Reads and Amazon. And most of the reviews are pretty ruthless there. A few of the ones that aren’t are clearly written by troons or pooners. You can just tell by the names and how vaguely complementary they are.

ETA: Ninja’d by Monstrous B! Kek.

Meh, not that dissimilar to about every scenario that involves...anything. Is the head of the dept or the student favorite always the best prof? Is the sr exec always better than her subordinates? Does the Oscar winner always turn in the very best performance/is the highest-paid/most liked actor always the best actor? No, no, no, no, and no.

Not defending mal's book - and I haven't read and have no interest in reading it, and this is certainly a kind favor or someone doing the reasonable professional thing and getting a review published - but it's silly to dismiss all literary critics and/or any possible "insider" to the author or the industry "bEcAuSe It'S aN iNcEsTuOuS rAcKeT," whether the review comes from a lit prof/ former Gawker writer or an oprah/Reese book promoter or Joe's mom*.

* no idea if his mother is alive, is connected with him, or has lit bona fides - but that's part of the point. ...Though now that I think of it, it would be fantastic if someone like Joe had a mom accomplished in the field who tore apart his precious, precious bloviation.

 

[Bookwork]

I am not entirely sure that all reviewers read the books they review. A couple of these billets-doux bring to mind reviews elsewhere that seem to have been executed after reading the publisher's promo and possibly someone else's review, plus thumbing through the review copy to make cursory observations.

If you're not writing for the New York Review of Books, maybe you limit the time you devote to it to, say, two hours start to finish?

Reviewgate: Ethics in book reviewing . . .

 

[Autistic Nonetheless]

I know academic women’s writing is its own thing , that I blissfully know very little about, but I’ve been looking through some best of the year lists and ‘A Women’s X’ is the most exhausting trend so far.

Spoiler: without googling

Women’s Hotel

The Women: A Novel

The Lion Women of Tehran

The Missing Thread: A Women's History of the Ancient World

Proper Women: Feminism and the Politics of Respectability in Iran

Gulf Women's Lives: Voice, Space, Place

Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism

Women in the Valley of the Kings

Egyptian Made: Women, Work, and the Promise of Liberation

Housewife: Why Women Still Do It All and What to Do Instead

Normal Women: Nine Hundred Years of Making History

All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today

Shakespeare's Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance

Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen

This is just this year. This just the stuff that won awards. Im sure there are dozens more.

 

[Bookwork]

Tard Baby's been posting random vapidity, so I'd wondered if Joe and Lily had left her behind for the holidays, but no, gotta have the nanny along at the hotel.

She's proving out to be an un-ironic Luigi fangurl. I mean fanboi.

 

[Bookwork]

It's throuple love time on the 5th anniversary of that awkward NYC wedding.

Joe's posted a tribute to waggly-bodied Mallory. "He loves me exceedingly well," because Joe's the main character and the loved one. He doesn't get around to saying he loves Mallory - or Lily, or Rocco, who is "gorgeous and brilliant." They are accessories to his belovedness.

Spoiler: Text

five years of marriage! to the most extraordinary man I have ever met. he is brilliant, abundant, the very horn of plenty itself; he has the broadest arms for holding and the longest vision for seeing. he loves me exceedingly well, and his waggly body is ever my joy and my home. our family has grown with two puppies, a perfect baby, and a gorgeous and brilliant Lily, and every day I thank the divine for the man who roots, anchors, and enables everything that is rootable or possible: my gorgeous, brilliant, extraordinary husband Daniel. everything is ours babe xoxoxo

Mallory doesn't mention Lily but does include her and Rocco in the used bookstore pic in which Mal does not have to fight her way into the frame for a change.

Spoiler: Text

five years ago today Grace and I got married and now look at everybody...I called my mother the day I met Grace and said "I've met someone," which I never did before or since. And now we are married, just as I wanted us to be since right away, and always will be, which is the absolute best idea, the idea that makes all other ideas possible, and fills my family now with good sound bigness. I really did meet someone.

And the crowd cheers:

Text: "bigqueerpubquiz: 'Happy anniversary, you glorious beasts!' "

And Lily? Nothing yet.

 

[Potatis Salad]

Lily chimed in on Tard Baby's Insta post with a "happy anniversary" comment that sounds like something a random chick you went to high school with and haven't seen in 15+ years might write:

I wonder if they have some inside joke around the word "brilliant" or if Joe and Lily just can't be arsed to think of anything different?

Lily just posted twice in a row on Instagram, tagging one "Colorado" and one "Paris". She was probably on her way to Paris a while back when she posted that photo over Reykjavik and is already home. And maybe she's in Colorado now for Xmas? I think her mom lives somewhere in the western US.

Tag says "Colorado"


Tag says "Paris, France"

 

[Bookwork]

Product placement.

Shouldn't Lil be holding a can of Logan Paul's Prime bev? The glimpse of landscape beyond the windows says yes to Colorado or similar.

ETA: Lily's added more Paris pix to that collection.

https://imginn.com/p/DD7MBg4Rq6u/

Well-attended! Thronged, even.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

Lily just posted twice in a row on Instagram, tagging one "Colorado" and one "Paris".

That Colorado photograph is unnerving. Like that's the last thing you'd see before the rockslide crashes into the house.

five years ago today Grace and I got married and now look at everybody...I called my mother the day I met Grace and said "I've met someone," which I never did before or since. And now we are married, just as I wanted us to be since right away, and always will be, which is the absolute best idea, the idea that makes all other ideas possible, and fills my family now with good sound bigness. I really did meet someone.

Typical Mal run on borderline gibberish. Gotta double down on "since", "married" and "idea"!

Yep Mal, ya really did "meet someone" there, alright. Reading that I was oddly reminded of Count Dracula's famous greeting to Mr. Harker: "Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"

How is your Ma, Mal? Have ya talked to her lately?

And who knew that 1+1 marriage to that special someone would equal 4 in five short years? A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and thou... and my mistress and my bastard! Getting married a few days before Christmas was an odd choice. But those Lavery iconoclasts, they defy bourgeois conventions from Day One. From Day One of their brilliant and gorgeous union(s)!

 

[IglyUglyOh]

I'd also like to thank Joe from the "fOoD iNsEcUrItY" community (read, too retarded to spend money on nice things instead of opiates).

Ahh the food desert people. I lived in NYC, had two jobs and did catering on the side. You can get a job that will feed you. The good catering jobs were record labels, when they booked you the assistants would tell you ‘bring Tupperware.’ You can buy giant bags of only slightly more expensive than the grocery store rice and beans at every single bodega. The church on our block had a line out the door one day a week. Once I stopped in to ask what was happening. It was for the food bank. Almost every single church, synagogue etc has one. If you are ‘food insecure’ in America right now you got kicked off the food stamps rolls permanently for committing some kind of serious fraud. And also banned from the church food banks for causing a disturbance. No one in this country is actually that hungry unless they tunneled out through the floorboards. It’s impossible to ‘fall through the cracks.’

I'm just now noticing the weird notching at the end of his nose. This is common among humans?

The baby fat is dropping off. Someone I went to HS with recently developed a cleft chin after all the fat dropped off with age.

I called my mother the day I met Grace and said "I've met someone,"

Yeah he love bombed you . My sister had a romance with an unemployed actor that started off like that. Once she didn’t have time to drive him to auditions and buy him McDonalds he mysteriously moved on. Joe is going to make a shocking! hurtful! to Mal - but obvious to everyone else - exit some day soon.

 

[Bookwork]

The throuple's on a 10-day road trip - three adults, one baby, two dogs in Lily's car.

Spoiler: Text

‪Danny Lavery‬ ‪@dannymlavery.bsky.social‬
19h
I cannot possibly describe to you the byzantine maneuverings that are required to keep my dogs from throwing up in the car, five days into a ten-day cross-country road trip

‪Danny Lavery‬ ‪@dannymlavery.bsky.social‬
19h
they have to eat something every two hours lest they vomit from hunger, but they can’t eat very much due to carsickness. so every two hours i have to pull over and give them each a fingertip of plain yogurt or 1/8th of a boiled egg, and they look at me with such reproach as i do it

‪Danny Lavery‬ ‪@dannymlavery.bsky.social‬
19h
also they no longer love and respect me, due to always bundling them into the hated car, so like Captain Aubrey in the Ionian Mission I have lost the faithful admiration of my men. I have to pick them up to get them to do anything now

When Joe says Mal has a "waggly" body, what is he telling us? Urban Dictionary doesn't know, though it does know that a bunch of penises is a "waggle" like a bunch of sheep is a "herd." "flock."

 

[Anasa Tristis]

The throuple's on a 10-day road trip - three adults, one baby, two dogs in Lily's car.

And you can just imagine it too: Mal cheerfully driving in insane holiday traffic with one eye on the dogs and baby in the front while Lala and Joe snuggle and coo at each other in the back. "Sorry you guys! We gotta stop again!"

 

[Dick Johnson]

Never heard of the 'waggle', but I associate the word 'waggly' with enthusiastically happy dogs. Like when a dog wags so hard that it's not merely whipping its tail back and forth, but wagging its entire body.

Putting aside the connotations of referring to a human using dog-centered language (and hey, maybe it's just me who thinks that), Mal doesn't seem energetic enough to have a body that could be considered 'waggly'.

 

[IglyUglyOh]

And you can just imagine it too: Mal cheerfully driving in insane holiday traffic with one eye on the dogs and baby in the front while Lala and Joe snuggle and coo at each other in the back. "Sorry you guys! We gotta stop again!"

I’m sure the dogs love being cooped up in the car instead of running around at home.

Just pay a responsible high schooler $50/day to hang with the dogs! People think their pets are exactly like them…no, let your dog be a dog not an accessory for you

 

[monstrous bubo]

The throuple's on a 10-day road trip - three adults, one baby, two dogs in Lily's car.

Apart from cross-country, do we know where they’re off to? It would be amusing if they were going to California and Joe didn’t manage to drop in on his employer. Presumably he’s still on parental leave but that ends in a few months. At some stage Berkeley is going to require some work from him, or at least proof of life.

 

[Bookwork]

Apart from cross-country, do we know where they’re off to? It would be amusing if they were going to California and Joe didn’t manage to drop in on his employer. Presumably he’s still on parental leave but that ends in a few months. At some stage Berkeley is going to require some work from him, or at least proof of life.

The only clue so far is the Rockies scenery in Lily's IG pix.

East Lansing to the Denver area: About 17 hours on the road each way with stops for dogs and baby. Breaking the drive in two, if not three, seems likely, giving them four to six days of driving and two to four days in Colorado if that was the endpoint, a reasonable visit with Momma Woodruff.

East Lansing to Berkeley: About 35 hours on the road each way, over the Rockies, in winter. The car would be crammed with their own stuff, stuff for Rocco, and stuff for the dogs, so loading up with stuff from Joe's office would require a U-Haul eastbound, over the Rockies, in winter. The Donner Party Cookbook a possible outcome.

Or they could pack his precious to ship and don't want anyone else doing it because Joe has, umm, *special* memorabilia. Hella cheaper for Joe to just fly out to do that, but a narc without an entourage in a You're Fired scenario might be as impossible as Joe's apologizing for being an arrogant creep.

 

[Anasa Tristis]

The only clue so far is the Rockies scenery in Lily's IG pix.

East Lansing to the Denver area: About 17 hours on the road each way with stops for dogs and baby. Breaking the drive in two, if not three, seems likely, giving them four to six days of driving and two to four days in Colorado if that was the endpoint, a reasonable visit with Momma Woodruff.

East Lansing to Berkeley: About 35 hours on the road each way, over the Rockies, in winter. The car would be crammed with their own stuff, stuff for Rocco, and stuff for the dogs, so loading up with stuff from Joe's office would require a U-Haul eastbound, over the Rockies, in winter. The Donner Party Cookbook a possible outcome.

Or they could pack his precious to ship and don't want anyone else doing it because Joe has, umm, *special* memorabilia. Hella cheaper for Joe to just fly out to do that, but a narc without an entourage in a You're Fired scenario might be as impossible as Joe's apologizing for being an arrogant creep.

Road trips, even at the best of times with welcome and easygoing companions, are stress tests. It'll be interesting to see if the BPT comes out at the other end of this unscathed.

 

[Free the Pedos]

"All the joy of the season to everyone willing to take up arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them," concludes Joe, who sits in his mistress's house dreaming up new ways of giving people food poisoning because he is unemployable.

Did he just encourage suicide?