Rivka Galchen and the New Identity Crisis

I promised long ago that I would not write about literature anymore. What brought on this sudden decision were some temporary, contemporary conditions, such as depression and incestual temptation. But those are all over now. These problems, I'm happy to say, are tropes of the past. And now I am concerned with a book.

A week ago I was at a writers' banquet with some other members of the current post-Lacanian literati. There was Benjamin Kunkel fiddling with the karoake (?) machine so he could sing the Beatles' classic rock song "I'm Looking Through You, You're not Insane" (appropriate, appropriate). In a corner somewhere, Tao Lin lectured on psychic exchange between New Orleans Katrina deceased and Lil' Wayne's current masterpiece, and how the voices of the dead trail through sexualized beats like robots on the verge of seizure ("This is what angels sound like," he said, "in our modern age.") Zadie Smith had just stepped off the stage after giving a repeat lecture on applying Lacan's I-R-S triad to the identities of a blogger who works during the day at a Barnes & Noble and masturbates at night with an Abu-hood on his head to symbolize nothing to no one (disturbing and eloquent, nothing if not relevant). Then Lil' Badiou (Keith Gessen), who was accompanied by a thin woman in heavy masscarra, with not two, but three engagement rings on her fingers! asked me if I had read a new book by an unknown, entitled Atmospheric Disturbances. The unknown who wrote the book is an ex-med student named Rivka Galchen. There is a new ideological perspective that can be applied to her work. I call it "Lovelessness (S/a)"

Atmospheric Disturbances Synopsis: Welcom to the 27th Century. The sky has turned the color of a bruised peach. Our husbands and wives slog through their work lives, stopping in the restroom to spit in the sink or pretending to urinate, only to avoid their duties. Our protagonist, a doctor named Ladislaw, has become obsessed with Pynchon's novel Against the Day, particularly the anarchist faction of the cast. And he has become convinced his wife is something of a mine owner, except she is a house wife, she owns nothing, plus she has only read Slow Learner, which Ladislaw believes does not count as a Pynchon book. A supplement, he calls it. Most of the novel passes in a blur, like traffic. What sticks out are the countless scenes in which the protagonist hides small explosives all over their house, blowing up the oven, the empty bird cage ("the canary's memory was more poignant now than its chirps ever could have been"), the herb garden. Then he beats her repeatedly with his belt. Why I think this book is a masterpiece, despite its stylistic dependency on Pynchon himself, it ends happily. As a matter of fact, the last line of the novel: "Ladislaw wrapped his arm around her, kissed her cheek and told her never to mention the name Scarsdale Vibe again. That name was a force, true, but they would never see that face, and this was their saving grace."

Lovelessness (S/a) is an ideology I'd like to discuss in greater detail in the future. Perhaps tomorrow, or the day after. But I have a platonic dinner date with an old friend tonight and have to shave. I don't mean to drop names, but Bryce Tenderfoot is already waiting for me at Teabag, where we will discuss the legacy of one Sophie Kinsella and her documentation of "marriage" in the "free" world.

Until next time, my dears. Remember: You are not what you think you are; your neighbor is.