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This discussion originally appeared in\u00a0Beach Read Book Club, a limited-run newsletter where\u00a0New York\u00a0staff discuss the season\u2019s buzziest books alongside our readers. To be the first to join the conversation,\u00a0sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s\u00a0Beach Read Book Club\u00a0is presented by Madewell. Time to wrap it up! This is\u00a0Beach Read Book Club\u2019s final discussion of the summer. Our readers are talking about chapters 19 through 28 of\u00a0Great Black Hope, Smith\u2019s return to the city, and where they predict he might go from here. (And if you\u2019re still catching up, here are sections\u00a0one<\/a>,\u00a0two<\/a>, and\u00a0three<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Should we start with O? What role do you think they are meant to play in the book?\u00a0<\/p>\n Tembe Denton-Hurst:\u00a0All Smith needed was the expansiveness of gender to really unlock whatever was deep within him. There is a little bit of a magical-Negro element with O.<\/p>\n Allison P. Davis:\u00a0\u201cManic pixie dream Negro\u201d is what I kept saying in my head.<\/p>\n Jason P. Frank:\u00a0It\u2019s giving\u00a0fairy\u00a0godmother.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0He found O randomly and they were like, \u201cCome with me, my child. I\u2019ll make all your dreams come true.\u201d<\/p>\n A.P.D.:\u00a0I got stuck on that image of Smith arriving with the bottle of wine and O being like, \u201cNo, that\u2019s not what we do here.\u201d<\/p>\n Alison Willmore:\u00a0\u201cWe go to the streets and do harm-reduction services.\u201d<\/p>\n Brandon Sanchez:\u00a0Not to be, like, Guy Who\u2019s Only Read\u00a0The Corrections<\/a>,\u00a0but the introduction of O reminded me of a section in that book where the matriarch of the Lambert family meets a woman who unloads all of her family drama, and the interaction ends up being a fun-house mirror and the contrast tells you a lot. That\u2019s what I thought it was going to be with O. I like the contrast with O because they let Smith reflect a little bit. Smith calls himself a \u201cchild of Barack, weaned on the myth of linear progress\u201d and contrasts that with O\u2019s upbringing under a different kind of progressivism. I was interested in the dynamic that was being set up.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0There\u2019s still never any moment where you understand why these characters want to hang out with Smith. Smith just slides into this radical friend group without issue, aside from Tia. The general lack of friction reminds me a bit of Elle\u2019s friend group in the beginning \u2014 who disappear right after. You never understand why everyone takes Smith in because Smith is also a bit of an absence. Especially in this case, where these characters have values they are trying to act on. I have no idea what Smith\u2019s politics are.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0We understand the value of Smith in the white groups. But the cool Black groups are notoriously hard to get into \u2014 and I\u2019ll tell you from experience. They\u2019re not inviting me to their cookout.<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0That\u2019s why I think O needs to maybe be horny. They sleep in bed together and O is like, \u201cHow nice! We didn\u2019t touch!\u201d Make the twink horny!<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0I am still confused about why they bring him in because the time for wanting to help the Black kid who is still hanging out with white people in a way that feels concerning \u2014 there\u2019s a cutoff for that. Nobody has time for that.<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0O was raised in New York with lesbian moms \u2026 I think this person has a friend group.<\/p>\n Are we meant to believe they get together at the end?<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0That\u2019s why Smith is the host of the party at the end; they\u2019re coupled off in some way. But you don\u2019t get to be first lady of a party where you aren\u2019t fucking. That\u2019s not how it works.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0Smith keeps saying he doesn\u2019t know if he\u2019s attracted to O or to the idea of O.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0How much time has passed when they go from lying in bed looking at each other longingly to Smith being given tasks to chop things? Also, he\u2019s met this new person, but he\u2019s still not close to them. He doesn\u2019t talk to them about the arrest or Carolyn or Elle. It\u2019s empty even if it looks different and it\u2019s exciting to him.<\/p>\n I would have liked O\u2019s presence to be a more complicating factor earlier on in the book because they offer so much contrast. What does this look like in six months? Even if O likes Smith, how long does this last when it\u2019s clear that O\u2019s friend group has a very articulated sense of values and Smith seems to not? That\u2019s a really compelling space for conflict to arise.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0Instead, it feels like this is just the latest scene Smith has dropped into and may drift out of later. In one sense, here is a possible future: a more legitimate or value-driven life. Yet Smith hasn\u2019t told O anything about these enormous incidents shaping his life. He still just has one foot in this.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0Everybody seems to be babying Smith in this section, even though he\u2019s supposed to be the one being helpful. At one point, he\u2019s thinking about the trial and O is like, \u201cAre you okay?\u201d It says, \u201cSmith nodded, and they took over for him in dicing the grape tomatoes. The blade slid without effort through the taut, ripe bodies. And as Smith admired the brutal and elegant act\u201d \u2014 I\u2019ve never known cutting a tomato to be brutal, but that\u2019s fine \u2014 \u201crounding the counter for a better view, O saw he\u2019d been left without a task and nodded to their phone on the counter.\u201d Why would the person whose birthday it is be consistently babysitting you in this way? Are you helpful or are you helpless?<\/p>\n Also, typing in Tia\u2019s name after seeing the photo on the phone! In what world would that not create conflict? This is grounds for fighting in any other context. If I curated a room where you don\u2019t even know anybody \u2014 you are literally relegated to the galley kitchen, you\u2019re chopping tomatoes \u2014 and you say, \u201cEven though you had a very specific idea for your birthday, know what I\u2019m going to do? Edit the guest list.\u201d<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0They\u2019re not even hooking up. And it works out!<\/p>\n A.P.D.:\u00a0Jason, would you say that\u2019s the biggest offense to you in this novel?<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0The level of unhorniness this gay guy has is so shocking to me. He doesn\u2019t have sexual urges. Is he even attracted to these white men? There\u2019s no sense of horniness in his attraction in that A-to-N section. Yet the asexuality is also not explored. And to put him in orbit of another queer person where they are in bed together and then neither of them has any kind of complicating horniness makes me think Rob Franklin didn\u2019t want to write about it. There\u2019s a lot of queer people here, and none of them wants to have sex. That\u2019s not my experience of the queer community.<\/p>\n Emma Alpern:\u00a0There is something weird about the scenes with O, Tia, and Mona. From the beginning, we have this highly critical protagonist who is judging everybody, seeing through everybody\u2019s bullshit, and then all of a sudden we\u2019re plopped into this world where there\u2019s none of that. All these people are just good. They\u2019re not horny. They\u2019re not doing drugs, other than their special church-club thing, which was also so on the nose, this utopian ideal of partying that Smith didn\u2019t know about. This scene is a solution the book is offering up that I don\u2019t know fits in with the tenor of this novel.<\/p>\n Smith drinks a few times in this section, seemingly with no consequences. I\u2019m wondering to what extent you read this book as a morality tale. And let\u2019s talk about Carolyn\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0The most interesting thing is Smith\u2019s kind of unhinged observation where he envies Carolyn and how she\u2019s a rich girl who is going to be cushioned in her addictions and there\u2019s something romantic about that. He says,<\/p>\n For to be seen to have a problem struck him as a luxury, one that would give her the space and time to negotiate on her terms, to learn over decades its contours. It was a harrowing burden, and yet, yes, a luxury afforded to few. And with his envy came a wave of overwhelming resentment for which he saw no easy resolve.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m like,\u00a0What are you envious of?<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0Whiteness, no accountability. This is the contemporary-novel problem: using identity as a trapdoor to escape accountability and this notion that intersectionality only exists as a sliding scale of how much people are able to behave badly and get away with it. In shows like\u00a0White Lotus\u00a0and\u00a0Succession, people can be wealthy and horrible while the people right beneath them desire the same thing their identity markers lock them out of. It\u2019s the most frustrating and sycophantic line of art-making. This just feels like hegemonic production. The rich get to continue getting away with it, and the people beneath them get to be sad that they are not that. It\u2019s a deification of the white maleness everyone claims to abhor but then secretly wants access to. If we\u2019re boiling it down to the Hobbesian idea of life and the rich get richer, what is the point? That everybody should be able to treat people badly and be liked afterward?<\/p>\n A.P.D.:\u00a0When Smith was talking to his mother about his drug addiction in the last section, I didn\u2019t understand what was going on there until now. He wishes he had the coddling Carolyn addiction. Was he looking for his mom to treat him like a white socialite daughter instead of leading with respectability politics? I thought that exchange was so strange because I was like,\u00a0I didn\u2019t really know you had a problem. I thought you got caught doing blow.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0But he also imagines this false warmth. We never hear about Carolyn\u2019s parents. All of these things she undertakes are totally solo projects. So what does Smith want? More removed parents who don\u2019t fly up when they hear you\u2019re in trouble? Smith is in a situation where he has a safety net \u2014 his family. Are you saying you want to continue to spiral out in a bunch of rooms of people who don\u2019t care about you? That you don\u2019t value community, even if the community is imperfect?<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0Should we talk about the scene with Elle\u2019s mom?<\/p>\n E.A.:\u00a0The photo negatives are another thread that gets totally dropped. When Smith discovered them and was like, \u201cI\u2019m going to find the guy who did this,\u201d I was like,\u00a0Okay, here comes the rest of the mystery engine of this book.\u00a0I don\u2019t want to say this book should be something it\u2019s not, but it is weird to me to put that in and set it up and then just let it wilt.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0When books get edited, there\u2019s an impulse to add a certain level of narrative propulsion. There\u2019s marketing around this book being a thriller even though it reads more to me like a grief novel. There\u2019s a very real and heartbreaking thing here: A white girl gets to party and ends up being fine, and Elle leaves a club one night after doing functionally the same thing and ends up dead under a bridge. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s that neat of a dichotomy \u2014 I don\u2019t even think we needed a Carolyn character. I think it\u2019s about how life is unfair and the way people treat this story and character is racialized. We can meditate on that really deeply without having photo negatives, especially if we\u2019re not following it through to an end. It can just be sad.<\/p>\n You see the mother of your best friend who has passed away \u2014 if anything, that was the moment for a dam to break. This is a person you can kind of commiserate with, but she lost a daughter and you lost a friend. I could see that being a really complicated emotional moment. Instead, it was ruminating on whether she was on tour to pay her debts and basking in her celebrity.<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0I liked having a scene where Smith has to contend with someone else\u2019s grief. But I wanted them to hash out some uglier emotions. Conversations in this book are very short on dialogue and then every short sentence gets narrated on. This conversation takes up a few pages but not because it says a lot. It would have been helpful to let the dialogue really speak for itself. I wanted to hear how she spoke. This is someone contending with the same thing as Smith but in a different way. The situation was well set up, but I wanted a conversation rather than a bullet-point analysis.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0Smith does all this legwork and goes through another montage of running through the streets of New York, arms pumping, to find Carolyn, only to be upset when she\u2019s alive. Why chase after your friend if you\u2019re going to be like, \u201cI\u2019ll never speak to you again.\u201d As if this is aberrant behavior. Who are you angry at? Are you angry at the system that allowed her to be alive? I didn\u2019t understand what I was looking at in that scene.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0She basically tells him that he likes her because she\u2019s a chaos monster who makes trouble. I agree that there doesn\u2019t need to be a Carolyn. I don\u2019t want to wish this book into something else, but it doesn\u2019t knit together Smith\u2019s story with the grief and Elle. Despite there being a real incident that inspired the book, Elle and her situation almost exist within a bubble within the rest of the story. I would love to delve more into that. Some of the stuff Carolyn does is maybe related to Elle, that idea of wanting to glom on to someone who is this larger-than-life nightlife star. I feel like that character gets split into these two different women, one of whom is an absence.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0It would have been interesting if Smith had said to her, \u201cI\u2019m angry that you\u2019re here and she\u2019s not.\u201d Smith is angry. There\u2019s this low-simmering rage, but it never goes anywhere and feels nonspecific. Someone like James Baldwin was very specific about what was making him angry. Is this anger inherited? Does Blackness not allow us to behave badly? Or is it a trap, and wealth helps us get closer to freedom but not all the way there? I\u2019m okay with nonspecific anger, but I need it to manifest.<\/p>\n B.S.:\u00a0I read the Carolyn wild-goose chase cynically because it comes on the heels of this court date where nothing happens. He gets off free, as we expected. And now, since this is a thriller, we need to go chase down Carolyn. It\u2019s a plot device that gives us at least a little bit of a twist before the ending with O at the dinner party.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also an excuse to write about\u00a0China Chalet<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n B.S.:\u00a0I really loved the China Chalet set piece, the descriptions, and the fight with the blunt bottle.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0Yeah, \u201cYou took my Gucci loafers.\u201d That\u2019s some classic circles-of-hell New York nightlife literature. That was fun.<\/p>\n E.A.:\u00a0Do we know who Franklin reads? I\u2019m curious about whom he\u2019s trying to write like because in a strange way Ben Lerner popped into my head. Maybe that explains some of the plotlessness.<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0The most fun parts of the circles of nightlife hell remind me a little bit of\u00a0Rent Boy<\/a>, by Gary Indiana, where nightlife is a limbo hell that you\u2019re conscripted to. Everybody knows one another, and it\u2019s all a mess, and you are commenting on it and participating in it \u2014 and other people are commenting on you.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0I took Franklin on\u00a0a book date<\/a>. The books he mentioned were\u00a0Just Kids<\/a>, by Patti Smith;\u00a0Open City<\/a>, by Teju Cole;\u00a0Negroland<\/a>, by Margo Jefferson; and\u00a0White Girls<\/a>,\u00a0by Hilton Als. He likes Rachel Cusk.<\/p>\n A.P.D.:\u00a0I don\u2019t need an engine \u2014 I love a vibe. But by the end of it, I felt like,\u00a0I\u2019m tired of being in your head \u2014 kind of.\u00a0I\u2019m not even really fully in your head.\u00a0<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0Can I ask a random question? Is Smith hot?<\/p>\n J.P.F.:\u00a0Smith thinks he\u2019s hot.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0I think Smith is hot to a very specific group of people. At Everyday People, he is a four. At the Surf Club in Montauk, he\u2019s a stone-cold nine. With Mona\u2019s crew, I think he\u2019s a solid six. But we didn\u2019t get any sense of what they looked like. \u201cYoung, gifted, and Black\u201d is not a description.<\/p>\n A.P.D.:\u00a0What was that one section about the spiritual children of Solange or something? I knew what\u00a0that\u00a0looked like.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0You could get more specific: \u201cThey caught every Black show at the Guggenheim.\u201d There are a lot of Solange\u2019s children running around Bed-Stuy who spend their days sitting outside of Sincerely, Tommy.<\/p>\n As journalists, how did you feel about the\u00a0Vanity Fair\u00a0story about Elle?<\/p>\n E.A.:\u00a0I definitely laughed at the idea of a reporter sending out her entire story to people who weren\u2019t even in it. And then there\u2019s no reason I could think of for it to be sent out ahead of time in the book. It could have just come out and he could have read it.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0He never warned anybody. That would have been a good excuse for Smith to talk to Dre. Grief sometimes separates people, but I found it interesting that the article comes out and everyone\u2019s just texting\u00a0him. He didn\u2019t talk to anybody else.<\/p>\n A.W.:\u00a0Like everything else, it seems as if it should lead to conflict, but then it doesn\u2019t. You\u2019re like,\u00a0Oh, there\u2019s going to be something in this that implicates him in some way that he feels is unfair, and he\u2019s going to talk to this person,\u00a0or something like that. I kept waiting for him to reply ill-advisedly to this journalist.<\/p>\n T.D.H.:\u00a0There\u2019s something realistic about big things happening that don\u2019t fundamentally change our day-to-day. But I do think that\u2019s hard if we don\u2019t have a lot of connection to Smith\u2019s interiority. Not only does he not respond to the email, we don\u2019t necessarily get a sense of how it affects him. But it was interesting, this idea that everyone\u2019s ground up into fodder to be taxonomized \u2014 the thing he does to everybody.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Beach Read Book Club<\/p>\n Read Rob Franklin\u2019s Great Black Hope with our editors and writers.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n
Made for Summer. Meant for the Beach.<\/p>\n