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[...] At orientation he sweatily lurked by snack bowls with an escape-ready smile. [...]
I love this. reminds me of DFW, Franzen, even Nick Hornby
"[...] You hate anyone who's not as smart as you aspire to be. Because you can manipulate them, or because they don't try hard enough to see through you. Even worse is that you both resent men and live for their attention, and your attention-getting makes other girls either despise or lose respect for you. Basically, you're lonely, and exploit desperate guys for validation, being sure to make them suffer so that you're not technically serving them. But ironically that makes you, like, metaneedy--you need their need. And finally you inflate this loneliness to existential proportions, convince yourself it's more than just self-manufactured twenty-something drama. But that's all it is: drama. Sorry I'm rushing this; I had more to say."
this valid critique is spoiled by the fact that it's being preached at Linda by another character (Baptist) and thus just feels needlessly artificial
This hag has not left Will's apartment in 3 weeks. It's your basic hardwood-&-whitewash affair, screaming realtor from every sconce & track light. Big round glass table, daybed, lounge chair so overstuffed it leans you forward. Huge flat-screen on the wall where portraits of ancestors might have once hung.
side note, on Linda's epistolary section: her voice sometimes veers too far away from real-and-funny territory and into the so-paralytically-and-pointlessly-introspective-you-want-to-slap-the author. try to avoid for the intern diary ...
[...] "These are just horoscopes for people who went to college."
"You're actually right," Vanya said. "Horoscopes get you thinking."
Vanya went quiet as she worked toward inbox zero, leaving Will to quietly process the everyday aggressions of the word actually.
the last line is great (on Myers-Briggs and shit)
[...] she moved her soap, pillow, blanket, and toothbrush to the office. At this stage, she would not let the scale of her concerns be diminished by piddling twenty-something drama. Only sacrifice mattered now.
so sad
inspiration for MC who throws himself into his work briefly as a way of finding salvation? or maybe intern?
[...] The sense of Asian men was of conspicuous arbitrariness in a culture of the special. Whose social modes of being had been enshrined in national policy: internment and exclusion. Conforming yet abnormal. Another and an Other. [...]
i just like the titular phrase
Will tipped the girl thirty dollars to make up for his hysterical crying, and left the salon [...]
after his thought monologue about the position of Asian men in society. i like this literary technique (not sure what it's called ... not quite minimalism but close)
She paused often to fight low blood sugar, and in lengthening blinks she dreamed of an afterlife in which the turfy fire blanket on her head was brushed out into a blade of satin and she had a big scary wardrobe and hit Pilates every day until she'd burned off the paradoxical melancholy of feeling worthless and underappreciated, of doing work that was frivolous and insurmountable.
this paragraph (Cory's) is way too melodramatic but the idea of Pilates as a way of burning off resentment is interesting
I also like "big scary wardrobe" as a way of revealing her hope that she can upgrade herself mentally by upgrading herself physically
[...] He knows she's out to transgress, but she also has a puritanical streak that makes her wary of fun qua fun; everything must be a step toward metamorphosis. [...]
I can relate
"Power users! I don't just want uniques or impressions, eyeballs are cheap! I want young, cool, engaged, legitimately disabled influencers who'll bring in other active registered goddamn users!"She slapped her armrest and glowered at her glowering screen. "We only get one launch."
hello there drift