\u00a0Patrick Bateman<\/a>. I just watched\u00a0American Psycho, and the best part of that movie is when Christian Bale\u2019s going to restaurants and reciting \u201cthis restaurant has a crab pasta \u2026\u201d It truly sounds like that.<\/p>\n\n Comments\n <\/p>\n
1. More details about Elle\u2019s case emerge in this section, and we also see more of Smith and Elle as friends, roommates, and people. What did you make of their dynamic?<\/p>\n
2. How did Smith\u2019s dating history help you understand him as a character?<\/p>\n
3. What did you make of the contrasts and similarities between the two group sessions we see in this section?<\/p>\n
4. How does Franklin\u2019s prose style enhance or detract from the story for you?<\/p>\n
Sound off in the comments!<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0Smith describes food that he has enjoyed eating briefly, but with the aloofness that he\u2019s constantly affecting.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0Except that he hates fine dining!<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0Actually, I love when he watches his dad care about where the ingredients come from and thinks it\u2019s a grift.<\/p>\n
I also enjoyed when he wakes up in a guy\u2019s bed and doesn\u2019t know where he is and the guy rolls over and answers \u201cwith a word that Smith, in 2013, had never before heard but understood with a grim intuition: \u2018Bushwick.\u2019\u201d Sometimes the elaborate, almost mannered prose can be\u00a0very funny\u00a0that way, and other times it does feel like it\u2019s unclear whether it\u2019s poking fun at him or meant to be taken on the level.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0I had a similar response where I was immediately put off by the prose. I don\u2019t love the M.F.A. style of writing \u2014 it\u2019s a little overly descriptive, very few sentences cut through anything. But at the same time, by the end of this section I felt it was effective for this character because that\u2019s how he talks, using a barrage of adjectives that will make you acquiesce to believing that he\u2019s right.<\/p>\n
E.A.:\u00a0But it made his world feel kind of made-up. Because I can\u2019t imagine somebody in our world calling someone, for instance, \u201csozzled.\u201d Is he really out there saying these things, and are the people he\u2019s speaking to also talking this way?<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0I want to talk about one funny thing: Smith kind of engages in this \u201call Black people are friends\u201d situation when he meets the artist, Mona Ali, who is hostile toward his company but somehow sees Smith as a friendly face. Even though Mona seems to be astute in her reading of the tech company\u2019s intentions in trying to cannibalize her work, somehow it feels like Smith is friendly within that and can\u2019t be an agent of the state. Why is Mona just like, \u201cNigga, put on this headset\u201d? He\u2019s literally an employee of this company that wants to extract her value, and she knows that.<\/p>\n
A.P.D.:\u00a0Would you have been more interested in that scene if it had been a \u201cnot all skinfolk are kinfolk\u201d moment, where you see an oppositional energy between the two of them?<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0Smith is not giving kinfolk energy. I have more in common with the agent at TSA than I have with you, Smith. I just feel like you can\u2019t be kinfolk and a white darling simultaneously.<\/p>\n
A.P.D.:\u00a0Unless you\u2019re addressing your ability to code switch, right? Or the world that asks him to code switch. But to your earlier point, there really is no awareness of other Black people.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0At some point, he says Elle and her friend have \u201cballroom\u201d influence in their speech.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Is that the same scene with the Dominique Deveraux reference?<\/p>\n
A.P.D.:\u00a0What did that\u00a0mean? I couldn\u2019t figure out what that room looked like.<\/p>\n
E.A.:\u00a0When is this set, by the way?<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0I don\u2019t think it\u2019s clear. Do we ever get anything that ties it to a specific point in time?<\/p>\n
Knowing that this is based on the death of his friend in 2018, which is in the author\u2019s note, I think we can assume it\u2019s taking place then.\u00a0<\/p>\n
E.A.:\u00a0Can we also talk about how the random dude is just named The Bronx?<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0This is what I\u2019m talking about, right? I think that that\u2019s what really irritates me. One of my favorite books I\u2019ve read in the past five years is\u00a0Erasure\u00a0by Percival Everett, which does not shy away from having an upper-middle-class character who has open disdain for poor people. I feel like Smith starts to do that and then pulls back. How do you feel about these people? You can taxonomize everybody, but then, somehow, when it comes to people who are poor or people who are not like you in some way \u2026 Maybe he didn\u2019t want to punch down. But Rob is not Smith theoretically. If Smith has an opinion on everything else but this, it\u2019s very confusing.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0I like the brief flickers we get of people like, reading Smith to filth, like when his sister, Nia, tells him, \u201cYou always go for white guys who are going to disappoint you at some point so that you can feel superior.\u201d<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0The dating stuff is the closest we get to overt judgment from him. I don\u2019t find the self-loathing especially interesting; it felt like something I\u2019d read before. But when he talks about cringing at interracial couples where the Black partner is more attractive, I wished it had delved more into his idea of the sexual marketplace and how it has been formed for him with regard to race. But instead we go right from that observation directly into his own history in alphabetical order. Self-loathing is easier for the book to deal with than him making cringey or ugly observations about other people.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0And how does he figure into that? Is he the attractive partner with the ugly white partner? Has he always dated at his station or above?<\/p>\n
Also: why don\u2019t you like Black men, Smith? Let\u2019s discuss it. He does not interrogate his seemingly natural relationship to an affinity for whiteness. He treats it as natural. You don\u2019t have any resentment toward the very system that has crafted the circumstances in which you exist. Or any awareness of that. The only reason we have respectability politics among Black people is because there is a standard against which we\u2019re fighting. To not examine whiteness in any way for 147 pages \u2014 your relationship to it and your desire to be with white men \u2014 is scary to me.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0When he talks about the queer sexual marketplace, it really threw into relief how devoid of technology this book is. You met all your boyfriends in person? A through N, and you didn\u2019t meet any of them on Grindr? That\u2019s so unrealistic to me in this era. There is a lack of interest in technology in a way that is kind of fascinating to me. It obviously exists in the world of the book, because he gets phone alerts about tabloid reporting on Elle. Would there also be speculation in Reddit threads? I was wondering if anyone else felt that.<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0There\u2019s one section where he briefly mentions sex via apps, but mostly with the idea of it\u2019s unsexy because you\u2019ve already negotiated what\u2019s going to happen.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0It feels like Rob as an author is almost wanting the book to be read in a hundred years, which I think is a problem.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Yes, I think there is a way that timelessness gets fetishized in a lot of contemporary writing that speaks to our earlier discussion about perspective and chilliness and prose style. It defangs the emotional stakes because you\u2019re writing for posterity in a way that prevents you from really putting some meat on the bones of whatever time you\u2019re living through. It\u2019s easy to lose sight of whatever social totality you\u2019re trying to capture. But at the same time, I\u2019m sympathetic to the approach to social media here because that is such a difficult needle to thread. And there\u2019s a whole other conversation about internet novels and how you reconcile social media with the formal constraints of the novel.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0But Smith is so obsessed with how he comes off that I\u2019m like,\u00a0What does your Instagram look like?<\/p>\n
E.A.:\u00a0There are people I follow on social media who will only ever post a video of swaying grass in the breeze on their Story \u2014 that\u2019s how I imagine his.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0This man is absolutely butt cheeks spread open in the Hamptons but is posting pictures of, like, the food that he ate.<\/p>\n
Aperol Spritzes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0He would see it as too thirsty to post pictures with high-profile friends. Even though he is so aware of status, I feel like he wouldn\u2019t want the appearance of wanting it too much.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0I wish there was some more desperation in this novel. For all of its desire to get away from Black respectability politics, I wish that we just were honest about the desperation for white approval, because that\u2019s really what we\u2019re looking at. As a Black reader, I see it very clearly in a way that I don\u2019t know that readers who are not Black would notice. He paints them as almost raceless in a way that feels very visible to me.<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0That was on my mind with the A through N of his past relationships, especially that last one, when he finally gets the aggression or microaggression that he\u2019s always waiting for. It gives you a glimpse into his anger and insecurity, but it\u2019s not the introspection that I was really wanting. Why do you crave this so much that you need to hurl yourself into this pattern of needing to be desired by the same type of white guy again and again but also seek out that moment of them breaking things?<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0We\u2019re so close to the character it feels like we can\u2019t invite that kind of analysis because Smith would have to have that analysis. Since we don\u2019t have varying perspectives, we can\u2019t even know if Rob Franklin is aware, because Smith and Rob are twinned and we don\u2019t have that pullback.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0Something else I was curious about: How gay do you think Smith comes off? Like, are you faggy? That\u2019s a way that you move through the world; it would affect how you are, especially in these places. But he doesn\u2019t say he\u2019s straight-presenting or that it\u2019s an intentional thing. His mom says that he seems straight when he comes out, but it is not necessarily relevant to how he would be now in a party setting. I don\u2019t know how he dresses, really.<\/p>\n
Vintage Marni.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0How he navigates the world in terms of queerness and fagginess is not ever something that comes up. I was hoping that when we met Elle\u2019s gay friend, Dre, that we would get a sense of them interacting, which never happens. You introduce our first gay Black man who isn\u2019t you into this book and then you don\u2019t talk.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0There can only be one. With Elle and Carolyn, he\u2019s like,\u00a0What if Elle supplants me as the one Black friend?\u00a0Are white readers seeing this competition?<\/p>\n
How does the depiction of his grief for Elle then land for you?\u00a0<\/p>\n
T.D.H.: I believe in that. I just think that a lot of things are happening at once. I think he loves Elle as a person, but you can see his hackles rise when there\u2019s another interesting Black person around. He wants to be the most interesting, coolest. Maybe it\u2019s a money anxiety \u2014 I don\u2019t know. But it\u2019s just very weird to me that never shall the two Black people meet and have a conversation on the page.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Really quick on the Gay Question. 2018 adds a fascinating wrinkle to it, because this is a pre-\u201dRush\u201d by Troye Sivan world where the gay guys in these circles maybe are not wearing camo hats and long jorts. He\u2019s very slim-fit suit to me.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0The question of gayness as something physically embodied gets totally ignored. I really do think that it would affect how he\u2019s navigating his relationship with these two girls, two divas that are the central relationships of this novel, and we don\u2019t get any sense for how he as a gay man interacts with them. Obviously Carolyn wants to be friends with him because he\u2019s Black and because he\u2019s gay. But there\u2019s no sense of the sexual politic of those friendships at all.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Do you think this is also tied to a question of how masc or how queeny he comes off?<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0We know that he\u2019s tall. We otherwise get very little about what he looks like.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0I think that he left characterization by the wayside so he can say things like \u201cDementorial.\u201d I don\u2019t know, though, if he thinks that he\u2019s being clever by doing that. Is he actually like, \u201cI want you the reader to cast all of your assumptions upon this character\u00a0for you\u00a0to fill in the blanks\u00a0for you\u00a0to confront your white privilege and consider what the Black gay man means\u00a0to you\u00a0\u2014 I have a dream!\u201d I don\u2019t know if he thinks that he\u2019s doing something challenging by doing that.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Did you guys catch a Langston Hughes reference? He mentions a dream deferred at some point.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0Where\u2019s Bayard Rustin? We might as well pull them all out the closet.<\/p>\n
J.P.F.:\u00a0James Baldwin comes up as someone the white guys have read.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0And James Baldwin is famously a lover of white men \u2026 ? What\u2019s happening here?<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0To circle us back around, the desperation does come through to me, and that terrible hunger for white acceptance and being desired by white people. But the big question is whether Smith or whether Rob thinks of that as something that is inevitable and in the atmosphere and that you can\u2019t help as opposed to something that he has any kind of agency over. I feel like for Smith, it is more convenient to think of it as something that he has no agency over. That this was what he was raised in and therefore he can\u2019t help himself.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0I\u2019m excited for us to discuss the \u201cDown South\u201d chapter to look at the world in which he was raised. I do think that that complicates this idea of choice and the contrast between the life he\u2019s living now and the life that he was raised within.<\/p>\n
Where do you think Elle was interning?<\/p>\n
E.A.:\u00a0Wait, was it a beauty website or something?<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0It was a kind of cool but feminist-leaning photo-heavy fashion magazine.<\/p>\n
E.A.:\u00a0The sad swag made me laugh, I have to admit. When he goes into Elle\u2019s room, there\u2019s a pile of makeup that\u2019s been sitting out.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0There are a few options. It can\u2019t be Refinery29 because that was digital. It could be like an amalgamation of things. If it\u2019s 2018, it could have been a\u00a0Nylon\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n
A.P.D.:\u00a0Was\u00a0Jane\u00a0dead?\u00a0Jane\u00a0was long dead, and it was also cooler. So never mind.<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0What about\u00a0Paper? It\u2019s not really feminist.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0It feels like it would be edgier if he were to write about it. Definitely not\u00a0Marie Claire\u00a0or\u00a0Glamour.<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0He also mentions that the mom of the white intern who gets hired is on the board. Which implies it\u2019s not a kind of traditional mag. It\u2019s attached to some kind of foundation or something.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0Teen Vogue?<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Because they had that political turn around that time too, right?<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0I thought it might be something cooler. But if she\u2019s hoping for a staff position, a lot of these places wouldn\u2019t have the budget.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0Teen Vogue\u00a0was so cool at that time. Is she unpaid?<\/p>\n
A.W.:\u00a0It\u2019s a stipend.<\/p>\n
T.D.H.:\u00a0That\u2019s around the lawsuit time when here they had to start paying them girls. We\u2019ve cracked it.<\/p>\n
B.S.:\u00a0Case closed.<\/p>\n
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