“My first year of college, I attempted suicide and was promptly hastened home by an ominously smiling administrator.” (p. 98)
“…I first navigated to Rachel’s profile, knowing that she was the person for whom Adam had left me.” (p. 139).
Becca Rothfeld doesn’t hold anything back in her collection of essays, All Things Are Too Small (2024). She writes about her suicide attempt, she writes about her online stalking the woman who Adam left her for.
And then there’s sex. “Most sex is mediocre, and the measure of its mediocrity is that it leaves us unaffected.” (p. 75). Rothfeld ruminates on relationships, marriage, infidelity, and pornography.
Yet, my favorite chapter in All Things Are Too Small is “Murder on the Installment Plan,” a deep dive into Rothfeld’s interest in murder. She starts the chapter with Hannibal Lecter and moves on to Poe and “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” She defends Wilkie Collins from T. S. Eliot’s criticisms. Rothfeld likes W. H. Auden’s “A Guilty Vicarage.” She quibbles with S. S. Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” But her greatest admiration is for Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder” (1950). “Chandler’s novels are among my favorites, but I recall almost nothing about their plots.” (p. 95)
I came away from All Things Are Too Small with a sense that Becca Rothfeld is a very complicated person who needs to consider cutting back on her excesses. GRADE: B–
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
All things are too small — 1
More is more — 12
Ladies in waiting — 41
The flesh, it makes you crazy — 56
Murder on the installment plan — 82
Wherever you go, you could leave — 98
Other people’s loves — 139
Having a cake and eating it, too — 151
Only mercy : sex after consent — 168
Normal novels — 228
Two lives, simultaneous and perfect — 241
Our true entertainment was arguing — 253
Acknowledgements — 283
I’m a run-of-the-mill plod. and not a great fan of excess. I don’t think she and I could ever have a lasting relationship of any kind.
Jerry, Becca is very bright, but her views on Life conflict with mine…and yours.
These books can be fun. I like Sloane Crosley’s essays for instance. But the writer can also be annoying, which I guess Rothfield was.
Patti, I’ve read some of Sloane Crosley clever books. Sloane is a bit more happy than Becca. Sloane Crosley asks online: “I’m a catless ladychild, do I get a vote?”
Down to the author photo, she does seem to be mining debility and preciousness. Ah, well, gets her published.
By definition, if not connotation, the most of most things is mediocre. I must admit that sex with the women I’ve been most in tune with has rarely been so, but I’ve been lucky in many ways. (One would have to ask them for their side of that experience, of course.)
I think this is a pass. I like Sloane Crossley too, Patti.
George, you mean Donald Trump’s pal, “the late great Hannibal Lecter”? He seems to believe he was a real person.
Jeff, between Trump’s ruminations on Hannibal Lecter and sharks you have to wonder why more critics aren’t questioning Trump’s mental faculties the way they do to Biden.
The media continues to give Trump a pass. The news clips always show his staged “crowds” (Dogpatch meets Nero’s arena audience) but we rarely hear his deranged ramblings except on Colbert or Kimmel.
The unhinged nature of Drumpf is so obvious to most that it’s Old News (and why he’s never managed to win a popular vote outside of the RP primaries), and thus does not drive the Clicks and Views that are the “lifeblood” (or something) of corporate newsoid. It has not gone unnoticed by most that DT’s drifting off in the middle of sentences to mumbles and groans is not reassuring of a man fully in control of himself, if he could ever be mistaken for one, and the degree to which his fanbase prefers resentment to thought. There are definite reasons to take issue with Harris as a politician, but, frankly, even a full-fledged hack such as Haley or a resentful and self-righteous one such as Chris Christie is a little closer (at very least) to competence in governance than DT could possibly ever be.
Beyond those whose whole being is devoted resentment, only those who just want to hold on for longed-for tax cuts and choose to ignore everything else fantasize that he will not do anything to hurt them, as well. Otherwise, they would probably more sensible vote Libertairian.
Todd, with our 2-party system, voting Green or Libertarian will not make a difference. And, Trump doesn’t have to win the Popular Vote…just the key Electoral states.
Or sensibly, as I should’ve typed.
I’m all too aware of that last, George, hence my desire, not hidden at all, to remove the Electoral College affliction from us. Voting Libertarian and Green infrequently helps elect one of these folks to (usually, when it happens) some local position. This can be a good thing.
My point was that someone who really just wants to pay less taxes should consider voting Libertarian, unless their hatred is as free-flowing as Drumpf’s is.
Even down to her author photo, does seem to be mining preciousness and debility. But, it gets her published.
By definition, if not connotation, the most of most things is mediocre. (I’ve been lucky enough that most of my sexual encounters have been rather better, and, I certainly hope and gather, had some charm at least for my partners.)
Todd, Becca is bright, but her outlooks on Life and Sex…problematic.
Sex with the random person, or even nearly so, is (probably/usually?) more likely to be at least problematic (unless, of course, one is involved with someone genuinely incompatible or worse, or becoming worse over time), at least a good (or not-good) part of the time. My (happily very) limited experience in awkward mornings after seemed to confirm that (and I was Very lucky in the women I even got remotely serious with). Of course, AIDS had just rolled in when I came of age, and of course hets weren’t spared, and non-nihilists had it at back of mind, even if some tried to pretend it was the Gay(-Only) Cancer (and opportunists, with the antilogic one might expect, somehow decided the lesbian community was also a major “cause” of this and therefore Objectively Wrong, Just As God Said).
(This one on here twice because our house network went wonky just as I sent it and I couldn’t see it had gotten through. If you delete the slightly worse 6:55 am version, it won’t hurt my feelings.)
As Mike Horvat says, “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.!” But this chick sounds like a flake, and you can have her!