My God what a fearless woman! I thought the article was pure genius. She is willing to stand under the magnifying glass and dance. Whatever her personal foibles the article stands as a stream of consciousness work of art spilling into the world like an overstuffed closet of memories when the door is opened. Peeling back layer after layer she is real and she is revealed.
God! The post-coital conversations you could have with a woman like that!
Maybe one.
Good grief. Was there a book review in there anywhere?
If you’re going to be unashamedly stupid and narcissistic, at least have the good graces to be smoking hot. You’re not, Ms Loh.
The Scylla* of Tsing Loh’s airless fluff not to your liking? You would perhaps prefer the Charybdis of an *actual *discussion of fellow snooch-gazer Ayelet Waldman’s self-indulgent puke?
Frankly, I could go either way.
The problem is, she doesn’t like sex or men that much. Well, except for that one guy that led to her cheating. Her husband’s no Michael Chabon or anything, you know.
Reading between the lines, I’m not sure she cheated on her husband with a man.
Yeah, she might have done the fashionable female-midlife-crisis thing: finding the nearest lez bar, throwing herself at the most obviously dykey looking one and calling it a Moment of Discovery if anything happens.
I don’t mean to trash people finding their sexuality, really, but you’d think they’d fall for another married/divorced chick once in awhile. Maybe that lacks drama.
Considering that she seemed to spew out every other detail that came to mind, including how her deep “depression” actually - gasp - led her to turn off her cell phone and put it in the trunk of the car* … well, I would question why she managed to restrain herself at that moment and leave out any detail from how she challenged the traditional structure of glorifying marriage above all else and how she’s fighting the patriarchy or some bullshit like that.
Then again, she might not be ready for a Really Big Fess-Up. This sometimes leads people to tell you everything BUT the lead story, in hopes you’ll be thrown off.
You know, some of her NPR commentary has incited me to pull over because I’m laughing so hard (in particular, I’m thinking of the one about her dad Freeganing his way through Malibu and bringing her “gently used” garbage to eat) but her Atlantic articles are generally disappointing. I think her whole stream-of-consciousness neuroticising is better suited to her short NPR pieces or a blog. She’s good at mocking the LA creative class parent lifestyle but that’s about it. It gets repetitive for me to read about it. I’m still on the hunt for Depth takes a Holiday, though.
OTOH, the last two articles in the Atlantic have been trainwrecks. I didn’t think it could get worse than the video of her sleeping in her storage unit (I’m pretty certain Atlantic took it down, but it was associated with her anti-marriage rantifesto) but this one really did take the cake. At the same time, she sounds profoundly depressed and kind of like “f*ck it, I’ll mine it for material.” But just…there are no words. The part about her gypsy children being “okay” with all of this…whatever, I guess.
However, thank ye gods she didn’t bother to go through Ayelet Waldman’s smug-married tome on how she’s a bad mother. This is what, the 7th f*cking iteration of her telling the world at large how she’s married to Michael Chabon and loves him more than her children? Ayelet, we get it. You’re married to a hot literary sex god, and you like blowing him better than hanging out with your kids. There are 17 articles in the New York Times style section about your hipster marriage already. Give it a rest.
And in general, I agree with Loh about the earnest “oh, I’m a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad mom” navelgazing of modern mommyblogging and mommy memoirs. I mean, she misses the point by spending the rest of the time on her own narcisstic navelgazing but it’s a fair point. This whole “bad mother” phenomenon always involves these really upper middle-class white women who left their jobs and are now superbored so they’re always on the internet bleating about how society tortures them for not breastfeeding. Or something. They’re reclaiming “bad” y’all, by supplementing with formula and refusing to sign with their kids. It’s a niche market. Dooce is pretty much the Queen of PPD, Suburban Bliss is the Baroness of “Drinking Playdate” mom and then there’s Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother, who is possibly the most pretentious one of the lot (hilariously bad prose coupled with fervent reminders that she read Derrida 17 year ago). They write books about how their lives are incredibly difficult and then go on the Today show to talk about how their plight parallels the shrinking of the polar ice caps and the homelessness of polar bears. I’m more disappointed in Loh for not taking the book review opportunity to mock the phenomenon rather than telling us about her failed marriage. Again.
The Atlantic is actually a terrific magazine. Their core audience is probably northeastern numerate centrist liberals, but they make a point of publishing conservative tracts and slushier book reviews at the end of the mag. By European standards, the mag is right of center.
You want serious though? James Fallows is worth a bookmark. They also have 3 conservative bloggers, 4 if you include Andrew Sullivan. Their most liberal blogger is Ta-Nehisi Coates.
I wonder if her friends gave her permission to spill the details of their problems to the entire world.
There were alot of words in that article and I don’t think any of them were directed towards a review of a book.
Crap like that sells because it makes other people feel better about their messed up lives.
Somewhere, Roissy is laughing.
Perfect summary. I find Tsing Loh and Waldman just about equally annoying.
I have to listen to some similar whiny assed rants at the bus stop each morning.
Dear lady after telling us that you didn’t vote for Obama because your poor husband with the 300k salary would be taxed into oblivion don’t whine that you’re living paycheck to paycheck. Or you with the oh boo hoo hoo I have four little kid birthday parties to attend this week. Or Ms. Life Sucks because my husband works too much.
Yeah, but you got to admit, the Atlantic has slipped in the past few years. It’s cheeze ratio has increased ever so slightly.
“You should have seen the Atlantic Ocean back then. It was really something.”
Doubtless the other man is a smooth talking alpha with a lot of game. More alpha than her hubby anyway.
Cheese is fine when it subsidizes the stuff that I like. So I am generally tolerant of the NYT’s Sunday Smiles section.
The Atlantic used to have reviews of empirical studies in the beginning of the mag, illustrated with interesting graphics. Alas, that disappeared in the latest redesign. I still subscribe though. By way of comparison, I dropped my subscription to Scientific American some years back, after it dropped to a notch too low.