David Sheilds describes Renata Adler's tone in Speedboat as panic that is 'beautifully modulated' and bittersweet. I recently read it and I wonder. Is the affect, that stubbornly cool hyper-style that makes a character from observations about events that cohere in no meaningful way, really moving? I felt like I was looking at a Tumblr feed reading the book. Pacific image after pacific image and a nervous current of posturing under it all. I've read a slew of women writers lately and I'm a bit panicked myself, really, to think that panic lies at the heart of so many (celebrated) women's creative endeavors. A friend mentioned Girls and Lena Dunham as a kind of analog to Speedboat, eg voices of a generation, and both disaffected in different ways/ most affected by interior life. What way out? Another friend recommends Virgina Woolf as antidote.
Also read: Emily Carter's Glory Goes and Gets Some (unfinished, not an antidote); Barbara Browning's The Correspondence Artist; Teddy Wayne's Kapitoil; Cara Hoffman's so much pretty.
Am casting about for the next great read...
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