renata adler

i'm not even a quarter of the way through speedboat but i'm itching to start a thread

... "It's not my age, is it?" he said, earnestly. He was seventy-four. "No, no," I said, "I guess I'm just neurotic." That seemed all right. We became friends. At one point, he thought I might be the girl for his son, another film producer. It was awkward for the son and me, at Trader Vic's, trying to be a generation. The son said he had three files of projects: one marked A through Z; one A prime through Z prime; and one marked Miscellaneous. He said that only since his analysis had he come to realize how much he had to offer.

when i was only a few pages in i said to someone that, this book so far is just a series of vignettes, perfectly observed, and that i was going to let the congeries cohere on its own. i'm not so sure about that now, that this is merely expert journalism applied to the life experienced outside of newspapers. at times, an episode will seem almost moralistic, or maybe the failure to extract a moral is itself the effort.

i think the strongest overlay i am hearing while reading is the ghost of kurt vonnegut. i am almost afraid to google 'renata adler' and 'kurt vonnegut', for fear that other people have made the same connection. perhaps it's not fair to renata. also i didn't realize that vonnegut died. i mean i knew, but i can't accept it. i think his death is something that i will find out about multiple times in my life.

my friend wrote this about her, which you should all read: http://observer.com/2013/03/no-longer-gone-after-20-years-renata-adler-is-back-in-print/

I often wonder about the people who linger over trash baskets at the corners of the city's sidewalks. One sees them day and night, young and old, well dressed, in rags--often with shopping bags--picking over the trash. They pick out newspapers, envelopes. They discard things. I often wonder who they are and what they're after. I approach and cannot ask them. Anyway, they scurry off. Sometimes I think they are writers who do not write. That "writers write" is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

Need to reread this. Didn't really like them the first time around, way back when, but I think I was too callow, not tough enough. Also didn't really like the guy who recommended them to me, but we have since made our peace, like two elder statesmen, such as Lou Reed and Frank Zappa, when Lou was still on his first liver and Frank had only recently passed.

on the back of my copy there's a pull quote that says "Nobody writes better prose than Renata Adler" and i was describing my affection for this book to a friend because she was such a good stylist, i can forgive anything if it's said with a certain grace. but then i thought, i don't want to be a dirty aesthete... i must find new reasons

i read 'speedboat' a month or so ago, it was a nice book to read feverishly and then not think very much about or least not exactly, specifically. i liked it a little less than i liked that joan didion story that i read the summer before about new york in the 60s but it shared a lot of the same mood, this waspish uncertainty.

just read pitch dark and while i thought some moments were really fantastic, like i think she's insanely good at observation and the abuse of punctuation to break up dialogue to comic effect ("all of it was brahms. all, every. eight. things. of brahms") and just conveying the pervasive hesitancy of inner dialogue, but idk i found it a bit conservative in a weird way?? and yeah intensely waspish. her dinner with a "radical lawyer" with whom she disagreed about everything, contempt for the irish, i don't know i guess it was the 80's? can't tell if she's genuinely interested in investigating her own evasiveness ("whose voice is this? not mine. not mine. not mine.") or just using it to further distance herself from the text?

but then i thought, i don't want to be a dirty aesthete... i must find new reasons

― 乒乓, Thursday, June 20, 2013 10:08 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

feeling this

gotta say though i really have nothing to complain about. a couple parts bored me, and the relationship was a pretty thin premise, but on the whole so many of the little page-long scenes were just really evocative. there's this one where a raccoon crawls into her cottage (fsr she's always either alone in cottages or having unpleasant dinner with rich important people) and she feeds it then calls animal control who comes and reassures her he won't kill it but it's obvious he will that was just heartbreaking

really want to read her pauline kael takedown now

how is spark's intro, when is spark's into from, wait is spark even still alive

it's an afterword, it's awful, and she died in 2006

well not awful but like, idk if i were a college english prof i would give it like a B. no close reading or insight, gets kind of hung up on this one instance where adler interchanges her own name with the purportedly fictional character's and spends 2/3 of it wondering whether she's renata adler or a fictional character

/:

So I bought Pitch Dark the other day having never read anything by here (can never find Speedboat in the shops/library, always forget about it if I'm on amazon and have the cash to splash)...I'm only 20pp in so don't really have the hang of it yet...without raining spoilers down (though feel free because I don't ever really mind knowing how a book ends before I've got there) does it remain a series of weird little vignettes that contain almost-corny bits of OMG WOW THAT IS WHAT LIFE/LOVE/PEOPLE ARE LIKE?

lol uh it gets less like that, there are like 2 or 3 longish moreorless continuous "scenes"

i can't remember if pitch dark is supposed to be good or not

but if you don't have an appetite for weird little vignettes w/ almost-corny bits, then maybe renata adler is not for you!

Will delve in properly tonight (got engrossed in Lee Mack's autobiography LOL) and report back.

Do ppl fuck with her nonfiction? I've read a couple things:

1. Her book about the New Yorker, Gone, which I found hugely entertaining, sort of like a really good and really long NYer piece, actually. I didn't think her indictment of the NYer was convincing, but I have thought about it recently in light of the recent (and terrible!) NYer redesign.

2. Her famous piece about Pauline Kael, which is very insightful and nicely written but goes over the top, I think, in the cruelty dept.

My overall impression from the little I've read is that she is a huge snob. This seems to extend to her prose too, which is good for ppl who are snobs about prose (i.e. who like good prose). I didn't read Speedboat but this thread makes me want to...

Her collection Canaries in the Coalmine has some of my favorite political writing of the last 25 years.

How did everyone 'read' Speedboat? I'm struggling to take in more than 10 pages at a time...

I'm reading Speedboat now, something feels very try-hard and dated about it. I don't find her observations half as sharp as she seems to think they are. Every vignette is dripping with self regard.

i am v confused by dwight yorke's description of 'pitch dark' above

i might reread speedboat, idk

I love Speedboat and Pitch Dark but have read none of her actual journalism, incl. Pauline Kael piece.

Should I? I don't want my high opinion of her to come tumbling

I loved Speedboat when I read it last year. Funnily enough, tried Elizabeth Hardwick's vaguely similar Sleepless Nights (possibly inspired by Wayne Koestenbaum's essay, or Jenny Offil's Dept of Speculation) recently and "every vignette is dripping with self regard" was pretty much my thoughts on that.

Adler's Kael essay seems driven by some deep personal animus. Read somewhere - here? - recently that it was driven by Adler's resentment that Kael didn't have to follow New Yorker house style?

I never got past the first 20 pages of Pitch Dark so I share your confusion, Thomp.

Gave up on Speedboat too.

i really liked speedboat. keep meaning to pick up pitch dark. i think she's a very good writer, and smart too.

I have a long post to make about Renata and why I think she's more than bucolic observations about life but I'll wait until a sleepless night to get it all down

i reread 'speedboat'. i liked it more, this time

like the narratorial position in both books seems deeply unhappy and aware of a lack, it seems a long way away from 'bucolic', i don't know how one would get that impression

Holy moly, a long interview with Adler on Longform's podcast. She's difficult, but it's a compelling conversation.

sounds interesting

did anyone get the collected essays/journalism volume?

idk that she's at all difficult in that interview ????????????????

i read a lil of the collected, not enough, & kinda wasn't loving the diagnostic political stuff, it was sorta pedantic compared to didion's forensic

In Speedboat I loved the description of making meals twice, aware of the limitations and allowances of the times, and of the injuries sustained at boarding schools, and the poison ivy.

did anyone get the collected essays/journalism volume?

― ♛ LIL UNIT ♛ (thomp),

Big fan of Canaries in the Mindshaft. Read her Bork and Clinton impeachment essays.