Title: The Love
Affairs of Nathaniel P.
Copyright:
2013
Genre: Contemporary
Literature
Publisher: Henry Holt and
Company, LLC
Relationships are a confusing maze; sometimes you get to the
cheese and sometimes you don’t.
Nathaniel (Nate) Pivens claims he doesn't care about the
cheese, yet he stumbles awkwardly in and out of relationships. He’s thirty, living
in Brooklyn, and is a writer on the rise. His social circle lines their
bookshelves with works by Borges, Sevvo, and Bulgakov. They are the literati. The
striving and not-so-striving writers who work for publishers, write for
magazines, and in their free time hope to become the next great novelist. It’s
from the literati herd that Nate hunts for his romantic relationships. Most of
the women in the group are as well read as his Harvard self or at least pretend
to be and that’s good enough for him. Pity is needed for the women who see Nate
as a catch.
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P by Adelle Waldman opens with
a scene that equates to a chalk outline of all the relationships Nate has
failed at and will fail at. Nate’s self-talk is cringe-worthy. He describes
dating as treading on women’s weaknesses and dismisses their feelings when they
stray from
logic in the least degree.
He believes women, like men, “were as capable of rational thought; they just
didn't appear to be interested in it.”
Children are expert rationalizers, especially, anytime they
do something wrong like accidentally punch
their brother. One reason after another explains their innocent actions. Nate reminds me of a child. He’s an imaginative rationalizer.
When his relationships flounder, he always has a logical reason that recants his bad behavior.
Nate’s the jerk with no self-awareness who is also your best
friend. Fortunately, most of my male friends who used to fall into this
category have changed their ways after becoming fathers of daughters (karma?). For my friends, the
realization that some jerk may treat or think about their daughters the way
they used to act toward women set them on the path of atonement.
But Nate’s not a daddy yet and at his rate of failed
relationships may never become one. His most healthy relationship with a woman
is with Aurit, who’s a platonic friend and a respected fellow writer. She
disembowels his rationalizations, not in a therapist way, but in a calling him
on his BS way.
Nate’s thoughts are frustratingly too honest and simultaneously
endearing which makes him hard to hate. His take on dating, like several of his
thoughts, states a quiet communal truth:
It’s
meritocracy applied to personal life, but there’s no accountability. We submit
ourselves to these intimate inspections and simultaneously inflict them on
others and try to keep our psyches intact – to keep from becoming cold and
callous – and we hope that at the end of it we wind up happier than our
grandparents, who didn’t spend this vast period of their lives, these prime
years, so thoroughly alone, cold and explicitly anatomized again and again.
It’s these kind of thoughts that smooth Nate’s mildly
misogynist edge and uncloaks his insecurities. The psychic walk through Nate’s
brain reveals that he’s spent most of his life on the fringe of popularity. The
upcoming publishing of his book has ameliorated his popularity with women and
within the literati. But most of his memories echo a sadness that stems from not
always understanding social mores and from his deep desire to fit in. His
frequent reference to his parents’ immigrant status hints at the duality of identity
that children of immigrants often express as a result of straddling two
cultures – one at home, a different one at school.
I rated the book four out of five stars on
Goodreads. The
writing is excellent and has a siren quality to it. The rating is also
supported by my being fooled. I was convinced that the story was written by a
man until my finger swiped to the author bio. I like stories that expose
fissures in my assumptions about myself and the world. The fact that Waldman is
a woman erupted my belief that I was mature enough to
not buy into the
Mars versus Venus argument. Apparently, I’m the mental age of a thirteen year
old.
Am I a sexist? Most of my life, the male species has
surrounded me. I have three brothers, no sisters. My cousins are mostly male. I
spent twelve years working in the male-dominated tech field. I've been so
thoroughly schooled in the male world that when I birthed a son, a dear friend
responded, “Thank goodness, what would you do with a girl?” She wasn't being
sarcastic. If it wasn't for being in a sorority in college, I may have never
applied mascara or learned how to balance a checkbook.
If a guy had written the book, my guilt wouldn't be so
heavy. I've been married for over a decade and never questioned that my husband
would want anything different from our relationship than what I do – love and
support. I couldn't imagine him ever having the thoughts that Nate does; yet, I
easily found the thoughts believable of any other
guy. Believing in Nate’s character is like thinking that every packet of sugar,
but the one you’re eating tastes sour.
So, I’ll dismiss my sexist lapse
by taking the Nate way out and rationalize. Waldman's debut is an incredible
study of character, not only of Nate, but almost everyone Nate comes into
contact with. As Nate delves into his past or examines his current girlfriends,
each word pieces pixels together into a detailed image of a person. Each
person’s description in turn further builds Nate’s character. The
rationalization is that Nate was very believable so much so that by the end of
the novel, I knew enough about Nate to cringe again when his thoughts foreshadowed one more potential plunge off
the failed-relationship-cliff.
