the love affairs of nathaniel p. adelle waldman. (145)

 think i heard about "the love affairs of nathaniel p." via my friend julianna's goodreads.  it came up on her "to-read" list so i decided to check it out.  the cover looked cool and the title enticing.  it reminded me of a book i wanted to write in college called "the asshole diaries" (this would have been a great blog if blogs existed back then).  basically it would be a book about all the horrible guys my roommates and i met, dated, hooked up with etc.  though in the great irony of life, it would turned out that we were the crazy ones, well at least i was . . .

but back to the book.  as much as i am impressed that waldman, a female, was able to capture the male mind and perspective, this book did not really do it for me.  trust me i have loved my fair share of literary assholes, (see:  any male in a nick hornby book) but could not get on board with nate.  this could be a testament to waldman's writing, she made such a believable asshole of a guy that i couldn't see things from his perspective even when i saw things from his perspective.  and to get even deeper, it's because he was essentially an asshole that i spent my early twenties trying to get.  like nate, a guy that once admitted via a blog (this was when we were out of college) that he got bored with women once they were invested in him because there was no longer any chase.  (ok, my hate for nate is definitely due to this guy).

i must admit equally annoyed by the females in his life, primarily because they reminded me of myself.  i have hung out with the nate of my life and cried and hashed out why things never worked between us, like elias.  i tried to be the nonchalant girl, okay i'm fine with keeping things casual but not like juliet.  even been hannah, the i'm not that type of girl, girl.  

and the gender/sex politics discussed were kind of on pointe.  when relationship due end, men do focus on the why versus women focusing on the what could have changed to make it work.  i agree with nate's theory that its harder for a guy to say no to sex than a woman because men expect to get shot down but with women feelings get hurt.  (i know i have been shot down for sex, and my feelings were hurt!).  and the double standard about singlehood and maturity, it is true we do judge males as immature but this can not apply to women.  i found this little discussion and thoughts quite interesting.

i mean i probably would have gotten over nate's assholeness (i have forgiven the assholes in my life), but the thing that ruined this book for me were the #whitepeopleproblems.  i love the hbo series "girls" and never understood the critique about it being #whitegirlproblems.  as a girl of color, i could totally relate to what they encountered, granted i never had my parents support me completely after college but other than that never saw girls as a racist show.  this book on the other hand made me want to punch nate and his pretentious friends in the face.  and perhaps waldman discussion of class politics was critiquing brooklynites for their white man's burden guilt but people like this do exist and that is why i upset.  minorities have it bad enough without white people's pity. for example, when hannah shared her story about her ex and the hispanics doing work on his house and him being oblivious about their station in life made me want to dump her.  yes there is an imbalance in the world but her consciousness of this made her look like a snob.  manual labor may be beneath her but can be gratifying work for others.  that hispanic person was probably grateful for the work so he could have his paycheck.  and i know that nate was trying to critique this in his writing but he was essentially apart of the culture as well.  it was great, seeing nate and his friends bitch about injustice but no one doing anything to change it.

weldman did a great job of creating thequintessential male, but didn't blow me away this novel. 

ps had to share this little piece because i totally get aurit:

"the waitress scrolled and walked away.  aurit's nostrils flared.  bad service was a great source of frustration for her, an inerrant that might at any moment set her off, like science was for the medieval church."

i will add that aurit was eating an arugula prosciutto pizza which is my least favorite pizza because it got some annoyingly trendy.  i refuse to eat pizza with arugula on it.  i hope waldman was poking fun at it as well.

pss i get that this is probably one of those ironically being about whatever the hell is generation is called, well done but still annoying.