In Praise of Messy Lives

August 6, 2012
As feminist cultural critic Roiphe (Uncommon Arrangements) reminds readers in the introduction to her first essay collection: “There are an unusual number of people who ‘hate’ my writing.” This may be because she is an “uncomfortablist”—“drawn to subjects or ways of looking at things that make people, and sometimes even me, uncomfortable.” In “Part I: Life and Times,” she takes on the moral disapproval surrounding her divorce and single motherhood. In “Part II: Books,” her idiosyncratic tone is sometimes infuriating even when one agrees with her. In “Part III: The Way We Live Now,” she analyzes the success of Mad Men, the appeal of sadomasochistic fantasy to the contemporary American working woman, and is exasperated by Maureen Dowd’s failure to “use her threatening intelligence to unearth the deeper complexities of her subject.” She takes on Hillary Clinton haters, readers of celebrity profiles, overinvolved parents, and private schools—easy and somewhat dated targets. “Part IV: The Internet, Etc.” is timely, but her thinking about today’s communication addictions proves thin. However, when she unravels her own youthful betrayal of a friend in the deeply felt essay “Beautiful Boy, Warm Night,” she is as demanding of herself as she is of her reader. Roiphe’s writing is prickly and provocative, frequently annoying, sometimes courageous, and most welcome when it cuts deep. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME.

August 1, 2012
Of-the-moment essays about popular culture, literature and the author's unconventional life. Critic and novelist Roiphe (Journalism/New York Univ.; Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Portraits of Married Life in London Literary Circles 1910-1939, 2007, etc.) presents a collection of personal essays and cultural and literary criticism, most of which have been previously published in Harper's, the New York Times Book Review and other venues. The book's title is adapted from the headline of the author's New York Times article, "The Allure of Messy Lives," which unpacks the hedonistic appeal of the TV show Mad Men and current cultural obsession with healthiness and productivity. "Perhaps part of what is so appealing, so fascinating about [the show]," she writes, "is the flight from bourgeois ordinariness, the struggle against it, in all of its poetic and mundane forms." In a different essay, Roiphe describes her single motherhood and the pervasive negative judgment she perceives as existing toward women who choose to have children on their own. The book is divided into four sections: "Life and Times," essays about her life; "Books," pieces of literary criticism; "The Way We Live Now," cultural writing; and "The Internet, Etc.," personal essays offering scathing critiques of the "angry Internet commenter" and sites such as Gawker. Roiphe's searing polemics are notorious for sparking controversy and sometimes drawing ire, and certain pieces included here are sure to do the same. In one essay, she argues that "incest has become our latest literary vogue"; in another, she bemoans the sex scenes written by the "Great Male Novelists of the last century." Whether readers agree with her opinions or not, Roiphe is a fine, serious writer. Her essays are surprising, interesting and sharp and occasionally fall somewhere between thought-provoking and downright aggravating, but her voice is confident and consistent. Mostly fascinating, lively writings on a spectrum of topics relevant to women and men with a literary bent.

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September 15, 2012
In her latest essay collection, controversy-magnet Roiphe (Uncommon Arrangements, 2007) addresses a felicitous assortment of subjects, from travels in Asia to Jane Austen. The book's enticing title stems from her analysis of the enormous popularity of the television series Mad Men and its cigarette-smoke-laced, alcohol-fueled interpretation of the glamour of spectacularly messy, self-destructive behavior. What's most interesting is how Roiphe turns the camera, so to speak, on the socially correct, health-obsessed habits of today's new puritanism, and on her feminist writer mother, Anne Roiphe, whose memoir, Art and Madness (2011) records her experiences during the Mad Men era. Roiphe is equally bracingand hilariousin her dissection of the Fifty Shades of Grey craze. Roiphe writes with an archer's aim and a bullfighter's bravado. While it's true that the world she dissects is an elite one, it is also highly influential. And her cultural soundings do run deep, whether she's critiquing incest in literature; sex scenes in Roth, Mailer, and Updike versus Franzen, Chabon, and Wallace; or, from a more personal stance, entrenched attitudes toward divorce and single mothers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)