Speedboat

by Renata Adler

I think a high tone of moral indignation, used too often, is an ugly thing.

It is strange to think that most of the children under six whom one knows and loves, gives presents to, whatever, are not going to remember most emotional events of those first years, on the couch, or in jail, or in a bank, wherever they may find themselves when they are twenty-five.

Dispersed as we all are, though, what we seem to have entirely in common is a time, a quality of meaning no harm, and a sense that among highly urban and ambitious people we are trying to lead some semblance of decent lives.

At 4 a.m., the phone rang about fifty times. I did not answer it. Aldo suggested that we remove it. I took three Valium. The whole night was sirens, then silence. The phone rang again. It is still ringing. The paper goes to press tomorrow. It is possible that I know who killed our landlord. So many things point in one direction. But too strong a case, I find, is often lost. It incurs doubts, suspicions. Perhaps I do not know. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. I think it does, though. When I wonder what it is that we are doing—in this brownstone, on this block, with this paper—the truth is probably that we are fighting for our lives.

This is one of the most pretentious books i have ever read.

While people tagged up on these public codes and incantations, baby talk took over private conversation—naughty and cranky, in particular.

This was the first chapter I was genuinely enjoying until she went off on this semantic tangent

In every city, at the same time, therapists earned their living by saying, “You’re too hard on yourself.”

In a public school in a run-down section of Brooklyn, Mrs. Cavell, under a grant for special projects, was conducting her kindergarten civics class. “What are you?” she would say to her little people, right after the bell each weekday morning. “I’m free,” they had learned to say, as one. On a particularly cold, bleak morning of midwinter, Mrs. Cavell tried a variation. “Today, we are going to say it in our individual voices,” she said. “When I call on you, I want you to stand and say it proudly. All right. Jefferson Adams, what are you?” Jefferson Adams got it. “I’m free,” he replied. “Right. What are you, Franklin Atell?” “I’m free,” Franklin Atell said. Mary Lou Jones had to be asked to speak up, but then she said it firmly, “I’m free.” Up and down the rows of carved and gum-stuck desks in the pre-school classroom, the words rang out, but Mrs. Cavell, a good soul, who had taught for thirty years in Brooklyn, saw a look of somehow disquieting resolution on Billy Martin’s face. “What are you, Billy Martin?” Mrs. Cavell asked. “I am four,” he said.

This is funny, but why is it here? Why any of this? And if that's the point - the disaffected, meaningless, random ennui - I don't need 200 pages of pretentious rambling to get it. She should've written a shitty poem and have been done with it.

What everyone dreaded was the birthday song. Anthems are sung in crowded halls. You can stand and mouthe. Carolers and singers from the Fireside Book are volunteers. You can stand and smile at them, or go away. But when the birthday song is imminent, the group is small. There is the possibility that everyone will mouthe. Someone begins firmly, quavers. Others chime in with a note or two, then look encouragingly, reprovingly, at the mouthing rest. The mouthers release a note or two. The reprovers lapse. The thing comes to a ragged, desperate end. If the birthday person’s name is Andrew or Doris, the syllables at least come out. Otherwise, you can get Dear Ma-ahrk, or Dear Bar-barasoo-ooh, or a complete parting of the ways—some singing Herbert, some Her-erb, some Herbie, and, if the generations and formalities are mixed enough, Herbert Francis, Uncle Herbles, and Mr. Di Santo Stefano. The song is just so awful, anyway. I cannot imagine, though, from what the double shyness about singing, about being seen not to sing derives. There seems to be no early trauma that would account for it. Someone may accuse a small child of being unable to carry a tune, although I’ve never heard of this; but surely no one then insists that the poor child be seen to mouthe. Then, then, just when the song has faltered to its abysmal close, the birthday person inhales somewhere near the candles of that hideous pastel cake, inhales, perhaps singes his mustache or gets frosting on his tie, gets wax o...

Holy cow this is tedious in the extreme. It's like a Literature prof's failed attempt at stand-up

I had begun to believe that a story line was a conceit like any other.

Obviously, you smug twit

Maybe there are stories, even, like solitaire or canasta; they are shuffled and dealt, then they do or they do not come out. Or the deck falls on the floor. Or a piece of country music, a quartet, a parade, the flag—all the things one ought by now to be too old for—touch, whatever it is.

Note: they do not. At least in this case. What exhausting twaddle this "book" is.

“I find it very nearly impossible to read a contemporary novel that presents itself unselfconsciously as a novel, since it’s not clear to me how such a book could convey what it feels like to be alive right now,” the novelist David Shields, who heaped praise on Speedboat, once wrote.

Eye roll. Spare me. The idea that novel should convey such a thing is absurd. Who needs a book to tell them what life is like right now? And if so, if life is torturously boring, exactly what is gained by conveying that via a torturously boring book? This is pretentious intelligentsia in the extreme.

The elegance, the enduring freshness of Speedboat is no mystery when you consider it a novel that not infrequently calls into question the moral of the story and, often enough, the story itself.

Ha ha. How cleverly the nonsensical has dressed itself as Important and Meaningful and not an Obvious Waste of Time. A story that questions the existence or need for stories. Why not just a book with one page on which is a drawing of the author disappearing into her own navel?