FtttG
User ID: 1175
FtttG
4mo ago
every time I haven't liked someone immediately, tried to make up excuses for them in my head, thought and thought about it, tried to like them, it turned out that, no, we actually could not live or work together.
I would encourage you to decouple "person I dislike" from "person who could pose a threat to me personally", for the reasons I outlined here. I agree with you that when you take an instinctive snap dislike to someone, no amount of "evidence" is likely to dissuade you from said judgement. But I don't think that instinctive snap judgement offers much useful guidance on whether they're likely to pose a threat to you or bring you harm. There are people I consider morally upstanding individuals who I happen to personally dislike for reasons that have nothing to do with their moral character. Conversely, there is no shortage of people who are likeable on an interpersonal level but completely lacking in moral fibre (e.g. charming con artists who'll butter you up before absconding with your life savings).
I'm reminded of an article I read on Cracked years ago, in which one of their staff writers made a list of five concepts for which no word currently exists in the English language, but for which a word is required. He describes a scenario in which you meet someone and take an instant dislike to them for some trivial reason (annoying laugh, inability to correctly pronounce the word "specifically"), but you're aware that this is kind of silly. But then some time later, you learn something about them that proves they're a shitty person (cheated on his wife, assaulted someone), and you feel vindicated that your instinctive snap judgement of them steered you so well.
I must stress that I don't often find myself in a situation in which I would have a need for this word: to reiterate, there are plenty of people to whom I took an immediate dislike who have yet to give any indication of being anything other than honest, decent people. I think decoupling "I like him" and "he's a good guy" (and by extension, "he poses no threat to my wellbeing") is a sorely underpractised skill, and one which just about everyone would do well to better interrogate.
FtttG
4mo ago
I was asking in the context of advertisers redirecting their TikTok ad spend to competing social networks if TikTok is no longer a viable platform.
The Shawshank Redemption, one of the novellas in Different Seasons, is one of the rare cases in which I think the film adaptation of a book is vastly superior to the source material. It's remarkable how the two works use almost all of the same raw materials, but the effects produced could hardly be more different: the book is a disposable, vaguely trashy potboiler, while the film is justly acclaimed as one of the most powerful and moving dramas ever to come out of Hollywood.
Then, I looked up his bio and had an "oh shit, is this dude ok?" moment.
What specifically about Ellis's background?
Further research has revealed that a lot of the most loathsome Haute Literarti magazines really like this guy Tulathimutte.
It amazes me that he hasn't been declared persona non grata over his opinions. Sure, he's trying to hide his power level, but I don't think he's doing that good a job, and the last chapter seems to be him coming as close as he's going to get to laying his cards on the table and admitting that he's exactly as Problematic as you probably suspect. I follow him on Instagram and his Instagram stories are pretty much a nonstop stream of "man, Israel is just the worst huh?" (with an occasional "trans rights are human rights", for flavour), which maybe helps him to blend in.
Earlier this week I finished Tony Tulathimutte's second book Rejection. I have thoughts on it, and this seems like as good a place as any for a "review".
I first became aware of Tulathimutte when someone on the Motte (back in the Reddit era) shared his short story "The Feminist", which I loved and shared with everyone I knew. My sister bought me his first novel Private Citizens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Citizens_(novel)) for my birthday that year, which I adored, tearing through it in two days (unusually fast for me) and have repeatedly recommended. Naturally I was very excited for his second book, which is a collection of seven loosely connected short stories/novellas, of which (to bring it full circle) "The Feminist" is the first.
When I started reading it, I was glad that my eager anticipation wasn't misplaced: "The Feminist" was just as good on a second (or fourth or fifth, most likely) read, although it's been lightly edited from its original publication, namely by extending out the description of the protagonist's Tinder bio. This felt a bit like over-egging the pudding a smidge, but hardly a fatal misstep. The second story is even better, a masterpiece of cringe comedy drama which I found almost physically painful to read as its hapless protagonist digs herself into ever deeper holes, and was by far the strongest in the collection. It was the third story where I started to have some doubts. Its opening is very strong, with a sympathetic portrayal of the kind of private hell experienced by a man whose fetishes are so warped that they are not merely difficult but physically impossible to accomplish (I've never felt more grateful to be so vanilla in my appetites) and a description of the difference between embarrassment and shame that stopped me in my tracks. Unfortunately, it concludes with an extended sequence of gross-out humour which is, without exaggeration, the most disgusted I've felt reading a work of fiction since either American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis or (a much less flattering comparison) Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. There were a few gross bits in Private Citizens, but they were used in moderation for context and flavour in a largely funny, perceptive and empathetic novel, and didn't outstay their welcome (such that I didn't feel uncomfortable lending the book to my mum). But this sequence goes on far longer than needed for the joke to land, and just felt like Tulathimutte trying to be shocking and puerile for no good reason. It could have been half as long (or one quarter) and lost nothing.
The fourth story is framed as an Am I the Asshole? post on Reddit and is narrated by a tech bro protagonist who, like Tulathimutte, spends far too much time online, communicating entirely through a dizzying range of Internet slang - not for nothing does the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_(short_story_collection)) refer to it as a "terminally online... brainrot" novel (although people in glass houses: the fact that I was able to understand the entire thing without once consulting Urban Dictionary is probably a red flag that I need to cut down on my social media consumption). It's an amusing once-off gag, but I couldn't help but feel that it disrupted the verisimilitude: the protagonist just feels like too broad a parody to exist in the same universe as the other more grounded characters, and the story's dénouement too overtly farcical. (As Chris Jesu Lee pointed out, in 2024, a satirical joke story taking aim at tech bros for being cod-visionary and obliviously sociopathic seems a bit behind the times - by this stage we're practically drowning in arrogant, deluded Elon Musk expies.) The rest of the book consists largely of meta postmodern navel-gazing, culminating in a final chapter which is framed as an excessively detailed rejection (ha ha) letter from a publisher for the book you are currently reading. Here, the fictional publisher deconstructs the creepy subtext for all of the preceding stories, bluntly asserting that Tulathimutte's attempts to mask his own neuroses, paraphilias and worldview by putting them in the mouths of fictional characters who are unlike him on one or more identity axes is blindingly transparent and fooling no one. This chapter essentially comes off as Tulathimutte attempting to head off criticism about the book, to which the reader might reasonably ask - if you know it's bad, why are you doing it?
It's still a good book, primarily on the strength of the first two-and-a-half stories, and like Private Citizens I read the whole thing in two days, but I do think it's a step down from the debut. One thing I found particularly disconcerting about the book was its Bukowski-esque disgust for human bodies and the corporeal form, its "relaxed contempt for the flesh" (to quote Gibson). Offhand I can think of only one actual character in the whole book who isn't described as being in some way physically repulsive, unclean or similar - so of course she's a superficial airheaded bimbo who comes in for ire for misspelling and misusing the word "négligée". It doesn't surprise me at all that Tulathimutte is an outspoken advocate for trans rights - he doesn't merely believe that some people are born in the wrong bodies, but that everyone is born in the wrong body: the wrong body is any human body which actually exists, and the Internet, porn and video games are wonderful inventions in large part because they enable us to distract ourselves from the horrific reality of being embodied within these nauseating mechanistic flesh prisons. This is one of the most Gnostic books I've ever read without even trying to be.
Hand in hand with this is the book's profound, omnidirectional misanthropy. I don't believe that every novel needs to have likeable and/or morally upstanding characters: there have been good books in which every character was amoral, unlikeable or both. But the sheer visceral contempt for everyone evinced by Rejection is quite unsettling, leaving an acrid taste in one's mouth, and it's conspicuous by its novelty relative to Private Citizens. No matter how scathing, satirical and acerbic that book was, Tulathimutte's affection for his characters was palpable on every page, and we shared in it even when they made mistakes or behaved shittily - and some of those characters weren't just likeable jerks, but actually did come off as well-meaning people sincerely trying to do their best. Meanwhile, Rejection is not a book about misanthropy, but a misanthropic book - essentially every character is a shitty, unlikeable, narcissistic, pretentious, emotionally manipulative asshole. (Offhand I can only think of one major character who seems even a little bit likeable and basically decent, and they aren't the protagonist of any of the stories.) Given that most of them are so similar along other axes too (generally lonely, too online, never exercise, physically unattractive and know it), the colour and variety from Private Citizens is also rather lacking. It's not a monotonous read, but pentatonic where Private Citizens was chromatic and modal.
Here's what I took from it. However he might try to ironize and joke about his lifestyle and shortcomings, I sincerely believe the following:
- Tulathimutte agrees with every word The Feminist says, although he'd never admit it. When The Feminist went on a rant about how women have stolen incels' lives by selfishly defecting from the social contract, Tulathimutte was not bravely delving into the psychology of a character with whom he disagreed, attempting to express what that character thinks in such a way that it would pass the intellectual Turing test: he was simply using a fictional character as a mouthpiece for his own opinions. The event which concludes "The Feminist" is intended as plausible deniability for Tulathimutte by having his unsettlingly reasonable-seeming character jump off the slippery slope.
- Repeated romantic rejection has hardened Tulathimutte's spirit, filling him with rage and bitterness towards anyone and everyone, but especially the happily coupled. This misanthropic streak was detectable as subtext in Private Citizens but kept somewhat in check (there's nothing particularly unusual about being unmarried in your early thirties, as he was at the time of publication); but having entered his fourth decade still going stag, Tulathimutte has essentially gone mad from the isolation, and lonely people are the bitterest of all (to quote Nick Hornby).
- Asian women who date white men fill Tulathimutte with murderous rage, which he knows is wrong and yet cannot even begin to suppress or talk himself out of: there's a near-constant subtext that said women are contemptible, duplicitous and lacking in self-respect for some reason that Tulathimutte refuses to explicitly articulate, not even by using one of his numerous unsympathetic characters as a mouthpiece for it. (The closest we get is a white character who, after being rejected by a white man in favour of an Asian woman, cattily accuses him of racial fetishism, for which she is widely criticised; the fact that she gets so much pushback struck me as a bit of a fig leaf.) I've read two reviews of this book by Asian-American men who barely touched on this aspect of the book, and I strongly suspect it's because they feel the same way but, like Tulathimutte, are perceptive enough to realise it's not polite to just come out and say so. If I was an Asian woman who'd dated one or more white men, I imagine I'd find this already intentionally discomfiting book even more uncomfortable than the average reader would - but then Jia Tolentino loved it, so what do I know.
- Many years of excessive porn consumption have imbued Tulathimutte with unrealistic expectations about sex (to put it mildly): a set of fetishes no human woman could ever hope to meet. His ideal woman has a neotonous face, impossibly large breasts, impossibly smooth skin, not a single follicle of hair below the eyelashes, never talks back, is always on hand to fulfil any sexual demand he might make of her (without being too slutty about things), and never farts, belches, menstruates, pees or poos. He's spent so long in the virtual world of Bang Bros that even perfectly normal women (even women who are above average in attractiveness) probably fill him with disgust and loathing.
If you liked Private Citizens, pick it up. If you haven't read anything by him, please read Private Citizens first, as it's superior in every way that matters.
With all that off my chest, to directly answer the original question - I'm currently about a third of the way through Magda Szabo's novel Katalin Street, which I went into more or less blind. For some reason I'm having far more difficulty keeping track of which character is which than any other novel I've read in the past few years. Seems decent so far.
I also do not accept for a moment that Ronan Farrow is Woody Allen's biological son, when Mia Farrow was known to have been close and physically intimate with Frank Sinatra for years following their divorce.
FtttG
4mo ago
TBH fire-lighting seems like very low-risk, high-return terrorism
I heard that the Japanese tried starting forest fires in the continental US during the war, but it didn't pan out.
FtttG
4mo ago
Additionally, a ton of books could have been an interesting blog post series but they've been puffed up and watered down to fill a 300 page book with a dumb title.
The death toll in the Holodomor was in the same ballpark (i.e. seven figures) to the death toll in the Holocaust. Compare how many political prisoners were imprisoned in concentration camps vs. gulags (over a million people died in the latter). As expected in dictatorships of all kinds there was the usual suppression of the free press, assassination of political opponents, military expansionism and so on.
Comparisons between X and Nazi Germany are a dime a dozen, but I think that the comparison is much more warranted in the case of the Soviet Union than in most cases it's trotted out.
FtttG
4mo ago
I actually remember reading your one-paragraph review of Yellowface, several times this year I've pointed it out to my girlfriend and said "there's a guy on the Motte who said that book was shite".
FtttG
4mo ago
I want to read more science fiction, I haven't been able to get into the genre in a while.
Highly recommend Ted Chiang. I assume you've read Ender's Game, but if you haven't I'd recommend it.
FtttG
4mo ago
there was little acknowledgement about the kinds of things communism did right
Ought there to have been?
a demonization of Russia as the land of evil-totalitarianism equivalent to Nazi Germany
Is that characterisation unfair?
FtttG
4mo ago
I want to get around to some more of the recommendations people made here for graphic novels.
My recommendations. Charles Burns who wrote Black Hole has a new book out last year called Final Cut which, while not quite as good as Black Hole, is still excellent and hits some of the same beats (seventies nostalgia, adolescence, heartache), minus the body horror.
The Good Soldier Svejk
What a coincidence, I was looking to get my hands on a copy of this but I couldn't find it in any of the bookshops I went to.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Another bizarre coincidence, I finished reading it on Monday. Loved it.
My Brilliant Friend
Finished it in December and enjoyed it, although I'm not as eager to read the sequels as you are. My mum lent me the second one.
From Hell Great book. Boy is Alan Moore weird. I keep meaning to look more into the theory behind it.
Did your copy include the annotations with Moore's research at the back? I found these extremely absorbing. My understanding is that Moore doesn't think the Stephen Knight theory really has any factual basis, but it was a cracking yarn.
I set a goal of reading 26 books last year, or approximately one every two weeks.
I set myself exactly the same target for this year. Good to know that I have someone's example to follow and motivate mys-
I did not meet that goal.
Oh.
FtttG
4mo ago
That's funny, I just finished The Unbearable Lightness of Being two days ago, and I'm 20 pages from the end of Rejection. Earlier today I re-read this article by the author of INCEL about Rejection. Is it worth picking up?
I loved Ted Chiang's second collection Exhalation, I must pick up Story of Your Life.
I've never read The Handmaid's Tale, what did you think of it?
I mentioned to my girlfriend that the book I'm currently reading contains the first example I've seen of the word "pornsick" in print.
She thought it was analogous to "homesick" i.e. when you haven't watched your favourite porn for awhile and you start getting nostalgic for it.
FtttG
4mo ago
Nominated for AAQC.
I keep thinking of this observation I once saw that when you're drunk, you don't realise how drunk you are (but it's instantly obvious to everyone else), but when you're high on weed, you become paranoid that everyone around you will notice (but in reality most people don't).
FtttG
4mo ago
I'm very sorry for your loss. Everyone processes grief differently, it probably hasn't really hit you yet. Don't let anyone tell you you're doing it wrong, my cousins gave me a complex about that when I was six or seven years old and it sent me on a shame spiral for years.
FtttG
4mo ago
- YMS, and specifically his watch-along videos: either by himself (last night my girlfriend and I watched the highlights of him watching The Weeknd's vanity project The Idol and laughed ourselves silly) or with his pals (their watch-along of seasons 3 and 4 of 13 Reasons Why was great comfort telly during Covid and I watched the whole thing several times).
- Errant Signal. His long rambling videos about video games are very comfy watches, even if his woke left opinions occasionally disrupt the vibe. I've watched his System Shock 2 review two or three times.
- Super Bunnyhop, as above (but without any wokeness or leftism). I've watched his reviews of Resident Evil 4 and the RE 1 remake more times than I can count.
- The Internet Historian. I've watched The Cost of Concordia at least ten times.
The first one that comes to mind is François de La Rochefoucauld, whose discomfiting aphorisms about the human condition seem just as relevant in the social media era as ever:
Will reply when I think of two more.
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