#laterv

[latevictorian]

Saturday.

[latevictorian]

the Goldfinch is a hot mess

As someone who adored The Secret History I am astounded at just how much is wrong with The Goldfinch. I was taken in by the first 250 pages or so, right up until things went off the rails in Las Vegas and the novel loses its footing only to spend 600+ pages never finding it again. (spoilers under the cut)

Theo as a kid is easy to sympathize with. Even though he’s a bad kid whose been dealt a crappy hand, you get the sense that he can still have an okay life. He’s smart, he likes reading, he appreciates art, he loves his mom. Unfortunately he grows up to be a thoroughly unlikeable and irredeemable sleaze-bag who makes nothing but bad decisions and betrays the one person in the world who actually cares about him. So why does he face no consequences for these bad decisions? I was utterly baffled when Theo confesses his terrible deeds to Hobie -- an anxiety-inducing moment built up for 400+ pages -- just for Hobie to essentially go “Okay whatever lol” and start bloviating about Rembrandt. Theo’s “relationship” with Kitsey and her family is unchanged and they all still tolerate him and have him round at dinner. Boris (who, let’s be real, would never have survived to adulthood) remains Theo’s best bud, gives him a pile of money, and administers a lecture on Dostoyevsky. Aside from his boring and repetitive psychological torment, Theo never faces any actual consequences for the art theft or the murder (also, do security cameras not exist? He and Boris should have been apprehended in 0.004 seconds). He doesn’t even care that he’s spiraled into someone way worse than his father -- his dad was also a drug addict who got mixed up in the criminal world, but he never shot and killed anyone. Oh, but he cares (a lot) that he’s starting to resemble his father in the face. The horror. Additionally, Theo barely faces consequences for being a drug addict, he’s able to meticulously keep his habit in check and hide it from the people he lives with, and he doesn’t even suffer a headache when he ODs -- he simply splashes some water on his face and he’s off to sell antiques! Wow, lucky him! Does Manic Pixie Pippa in her cocoon of 95 scarves ever berate Theo or give him an unkind word for his creepy behavior or inappropriate gift? Nope, not a chance. Theo finishes college and -- despite being a willful underachiever who can barely do the work -- starts up a book club with Pippa, muses about Henry David Thoreau with Boris (when they’re not hungover and huffing glue) and quotes Nietzsche. Does Theo at least suffer from being deeply closeted and trapped in a passionless marriage to someone he doesn’t even like? Of course not. Also, why would anyone -- let alone an old money daughter of NYC socialites -- want to marry such an uncharismatic loser, who doesn’t even commit to getting his own apartment (despite making hundreds of thousands of dollars with his antiques racket) because dear sweet Hobie lets him squat upstairs for pennies? Seriously, this was nauseating. 

The scenes in NYC were so bad and nonsensical. I promise New York isn’t as tawdry as the novel might have one believe. Theo and his mom are poor --digging in the sofa for loose change poor -- but they eat out all the time and take taxis?? Why don’t they live in a rat-infested flatshare in Washington Heights or the Bronx if they’re so poor they can barely afford to take the subway? And how are they budgeting for a housekeeper (!!!) and a two-bedroom (!!) Seventh Avenue apartment building?  Also, even in the nicest NYC high rises you’re lucky if there’s a doorman at all, let alone a soccer team full of them who tend to you like personal butlers. Why are ‘club kids’ hanging out in a diner at 5am, is this 1983? Why do all the Puerto Ricans have to speak Spanglish? Why is Theo’s engagement party regarded as some high society debutante ball when he’s a nobody from nowhere with nothing to offer his bride-to-be? Wouldn’t there be tons of people dissuading Kitsey from marrying this guy, trying to set her up with some aging billionaire? Why couldn’t she at least have been average-looking or slightly ugly (you know, like Andy?) which might have explained why she felt the need to settle for Theo? Why does Mrs. Barbour like Theo so much? It was pretty apparent that she regarded him as little more than a pet and a charitable tax writeoff back when she considered "keeping” him. Why does Mrs. Barbour age 120 years by the end, shrinking into a bedridden shriveled half-starved husk, but Hobie doesn’t age at all? And are we really supposed to believe that criminals and junkies nodding off in a heroin den would be erudite eloquent art history scholars waxing poetic for dozens of pages about the minutiae of oil and gesso? 

Those last 10 pages were so bad it hurt. It gave me palpable second-hand embarrassment to consider that someone with actual, demonstrable Pulitzer-winning talent wrote this and not only thought it was publishable, but said to themselves, “Yes, this is what I want to spend 1,000 pages getting at: a tepid fortune-cookie platitude about Being Yourself and Love Setting You Free.” In the most tone-deaf, presumptuous bloated mass of writing I have ever endured, the text actually begins explaining to us what we should take away and how we should feel about it, before smugly praising its own self-established brilliance and grabbing us by the collar to demand that we discuss its fabulous characters and their fabulous character arcs in our fabulous reading groups: “Should we be more like dear sweet manic pixie Pippa, or rather more like Boris, the anarchist revolutionary polyglot who pours vodka in his cornflakes, recites Chekhov in his sleep, and is allergic to soap? Is Kitsey (who barely even qualifies as a character) right about...whatever she is right about?” And, of course, there just had to be some not-so-meta whinging about how “nobody will ever read this book”... what? Seriously, can someone explain what was going on in those last few pages? Why did the writing -- usually good, albeit winded -- suddenly and inexplicably devolve into a half-baked college entrance essay? The book should have been 400 pages and ended with Theo taking his own life at the hotel or turning himself in. That’s the person he was shaping up to be (sadly), a carbon copy of his father, not a corny, cringey pseudo-intellectual boring a-hole flitting about Antwerp and Nice ~finding himself~ and pontificating to us plebeians about how Lady Gaga and Disney are the ultimate beacons of the human endeavor. Seriously, oof.

[latevictorian]

‘November reverie’ playlist

Golden Light - STRFKR (x)

The Gospel of John Hurt - alt-J (x)

You’re so cool - Jonathan Bree (x)

Arrival of the Birds - The Cinematic Orchestra (x)

Tom’s Diner (Live Acapella) - Suzanne Vega (x)

Milord - Edith Piaf (x)

La Follia - Antonio Vivaldi (x)

Mon Amie la Rose - Françoise Hardy (x)

No More Home, No More Love - SoKo (x)

Quedate Luna - Devendra Banhart (x)

[latevictorian]

guys i went to germany and i loved it so much like wow it was so clean and civilized. i ate a ton of wieners and they were so amazing. i also went to austria but i liked germany way more.

[latevictorian]

guys wouldn't it be really funny if i started working in PE? that's like literally a thing that could happen rn

[latevictorian]

"strong opinions, loosely held"

I never want to be known as the person who works all the time. Work is slavery. Unless you’re the founder of the company (NOT the ceo; ceos are trained circus monkeys), then bragging about work sounds like you’re bragging about being a slave. It sounds like a fetish to me. "I like being told what to do. I like making other people rich. I like sacrificing my nights and weekends to increase shareholder value. I like going to networking events so I can hopefully meet other slaves slightly higher up on the food chain so that I can leech off them and beg for favors." Even at higher levels it’s still an obvious humilation ritual, I mean just look at the constant humiliation and indignity endured by anyone below the board of directors. At the last major tech company I worked for they literally fired the ceo during the earnings call and humiliated him. Everything about having a job is humiliating. Even if you make “a lot” of money it sucks. Yes it’s fun to flex on the other wagecucks and fly business class to Japan (lol that was peak) but you’re doing all of that at the courtesy of some other cuck who calls himself your boss. Having a boss is the ultimate humiliation. There’s a random person, usually some mid white guy, who thinks he’s better than you because of a bullshit job title that means nothing and is made up (nobody in tech has real skills. None can survive without bullshit jobs) and who is the biggest brown nosing suck up and biggest snitch on the planet and is proud to be. Bosses are pathetic. You’re a glorified babysitter but you babysit adults with graduate degrees, most of whom are probably smarter than you. LOL, how does one stomach the humiliation? Because you’re willing to debase yourself to bump the stock by 5%? This is such an obvious fetish. It’s prostitution. It’s shameful and embarrassing. If you work in tech you should be embarrassed because you very likely have a fake job and no skills and you’re only in that position due to brown nosing and expert pretending. I know this from experience. Most tech workers try to look busy all day and “create work” for themselves. Basically none of them are contributing in any meaningful way, they're patiently waiting for the day to end and running in circles to justify their bloated paychecks. Job interviews have always been the most extreme form of humiliation imaginable but now they’ve gone COMPLETELY off the rails. My last interview lasted 6 hours. I had to speak to 6 people and give an hour long presentation with slides that I made specifically for that job interview. So that’s essentially an entire day of work...for free. Can you imagine a greater level of insult and humiliation? Also pretty soon you'll have to pay to apply to jobs. Or put down a deposit. Can you imagine? I can count on one hand the amount of times I've been paid for work I did as part of an interview process (two times out of 1,000+). Wow, I kind of want to just fuck off to my family’s country of origin and live like a king. I think about that a lot lately. The hustle isn’t worth it at all. No matter how much money I make I feel humiliated and broke. I think I need to sell my property and move to the third world. I'm being priced out of my own existence.

[latevictorian]

remote working

I know I'm on this huge antiwork kick rn but like lol i don't understand anyone who takes remote working seriously?? like if i'm at home my priority is whatever the hell I want to do at home. I can't believe some people actually bother to get dressed, put on makeup, make a home office and be "present" while they're working from home like what? If I'm working from home I expect to essentially get paid to pretend to work, which is a Herculean effort in itself. If I'm working from home I'm literally in bed with my eyes closed at 9:00am with my camera off in the meeting and getting annoyed if anyone dares to address me lol. Then when I'm actually up and out of bed I'm doing my own thing. I'm making breakfast, I'm watching my shows, I'm working on my novel and catching up on my reading and when I feel like it I'll check my Teams app...maybe... like working from home is such an amazing privilege so it baffles me that people try to replicate the office experience at home. If I'm at home my priority is being at home unbothered and undisturbed. I'm usually pretty good ar LARPing that I'm working but at my last job I was so abysmally bad at it that it felt like a comedy sketch. People would message me like "what are you working on rn?" and I would just copy and paste someone else's takeaways from some other meeting LOL

[latevictorian]

also would like to take a moment and give myself props for nearly doubling my salary every time i take another job. i'm so goddamn cool and unstoppable