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Paseando con hombres
En 1980, en Nueva York, Jane, una recién licenciada de Harvard, conoce a Neil, un problemático escritor veinte años mayor que ella. Los dos se convierten rápidamente en amantes y se mudan a un brownstone en el barrio neoyorquino de Chelsea. Neil le revela a la joven las reglas indispensables para vivir la vida: «Si te llevas las sobras de comida de un restaurante, no le comentes al camarero que se las darás al perro, dile que quieres los huesos para “un amigo que hace autopsias”». «Si no puedes hacer el pino (que sería lo preferible) aprende a dar volteretas.» «Haz el amor en los lavabos de los aviones.» «Vístete sólo con impermeables fabricados en Inglaterra.» Sin embargo, Jane descubre enseguida que detrás de las certezas de Neil sólo se ocultan sus propios fracasos y decepciones.
90 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
45 people are currently reading
2214 people want to read
About the author
Ann Beattie
141 books406 followersAnn Beattie (born September 8, 1947) is an American short story writer and novelist. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for excellence in the short story form. Her work has been compared to that of Alice Adams, J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, and John Updike. She holds an undergraduate degree from American University and a masters degree from the University of Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 303 reviews
April 30, 2013
what was meant to be profound. insightful. and romantic. turned out to be trite. infantile. and somber.
i am not fond of books that romanticize abusive relationships and abusive people.
i am not fond of books that romanticize abusive relationships and abusive people.
July 24, 2017
I added this to a Book Outlet order to get to $35 for free shipping; they were smartly selling them at less than $1 a piece. This is a book where nothing happens and it happens twice. Inexplicably some of the telling starts over halfway and it's already short. The female lets an older academic man treat her badly for no benefit and it's not even scintillating, it's somehow boring. Should have bailed.
May 13, 2011
This book is 102 pages long, and I thought it would never end. The main character is a pretty, Harvard-educated wunderkind who falls for a rich, manipulative man who speaks entirely in one-liners. Every plot twist is either ridiculously cliché () or totally bizarre (). To distract you from the trifle of a plot, Beattie attempts to wow you with supposedly clever dialogue and long, semi-philosophical diatribes about the nature of life and relationships. These distractions work but not in the way she expected. They distract you from the lame story by reminding you over and over again that the writing sucks.
March 23, 2013
If you've ever slept with or loved an asshole in spite of yourself, then this book is for you.
Many critics didn't like the narrator's detachment, or accused this book as romanticizing abuse. What they're missing is that when you are in your early twenties, detachment and romanticizing abuse (which pretty much go together) and being swept up and easily impressed by worldliness and style and bohemianism are often what it's all about, red flags be dammed. All of which frequently lead to sleeping with or being in love with men who are genuine asshats.
This book also beautifully captures the aftermath of that experience-- what happens when the infatuation wears off and the asinine sets in.
Minus one star for being a bit pretentious and New York. Not sure how much of that was part of the story, but at a certain point I don't care, it just makes me gag.
Many critics didn't like the narrator's detachment, or accused this book as romanticizing abuse. What they're missing is that when you are in your early twenties, detachment and romanticizing abuse (which pretty much go together) and being swept up and easily impressed by worldliness and style and bohemianism are often what it's all about, red flags be dammed. All of which frequently lead to sleeping with or being in love with men who are genuine asshats.
This book also beautifully captures the aftermath of that experience-- what happens when the infatuation wears off and the asinine sets in.
Minus one star for being a bit pretentious and New York. Not sure how much of that was part of the story, but at a certain point I don't care, it just makes me gag.
July 7, 2011
This was a total waste of my time. This book was so random and all over the place. There wasn't a storyline. Her "walks with men" were very dysfunctional and weird. I have so many unanswered questions. Where did her husband disappear to? The ashes? Ben and the train incident?? Her mother? Her relationship with her friends? I'm so confused. I'm just glad it's over and super glad it was only 102 pages long.
January 26, 2022
oh my god we get it, you went to college
January 26, 2019
Ann Beattie is an experimental artist. This novella is in a sense an expansion of her themes on narcissistic relationships. For this one, I would say her oh-so-delicate touch is a little too delicate. Still there is her subtle sense of humor and early expose of alternative relationships. But there just wasn't enough here to give me a feel of a literary experience. A novella should give more depth, and she says more in her short stories.
The title also was a stretch. "Walks with Men." Is she saying that a relationship is just a walk we are having with someone? That, like the Buddhists teach, all relationships are transient?
The title also was a stretch. "Walks with Men." Is she saying that a relationship is just a walk we are having with someone? That, like the Buddhists teach, all relationships are transient?
August 8, 2010
I felt like I shouldn't like this book but I did. I love novellas--this one's like a long and luxurious short story, and the ending did just what a good ending should: it felt both inevitable and surprising. (I think that's a Margaret Atwood rule for short story endings.)
July 13, 2010
7/9/2010: This is a mystifying story...either I'm too old for its charms or require too much explanation in my fiction, but when I finished it I was so busy scratching my head trying to figure out what happened that I might have missed the point. Anyway, the writing is wonderful, and the tone is perfect. Many images will stick in my mind for a long time: the white robe pooling on the floor; the impossibility of sliding out of a diner banquette after a piece of bad news has been delivered; the ex-wife sitting on the steps of the building; the time capsule stuck in the tree. Beattie really nails the moment. But the story wanders. Barbara might have said it best, and she says she's quoting Beattie herself--that this really should have been a short story, it just got too long. As a short story, the disparate elements that never get tied together are more acceptable, I think. Also, Michael's point was helpful: this story will appeal to young women who may be or want to be in a situation like this. It's a fantasy, as such, and makes more sense that way than as a true nostalgic memoir.
April 18, 2017
Ann Beattie is such a fine writer. I enjoyed this for her voice and her wit. The central relationship in the novella is an exaggerated version of one that's familiar to me. I think some women willingly stay in relationships where they're just being led around by the nose (even if they're terribly intelligent and sophisticated women who can argue to themselves and everyone else that it's not like that). I can see how the novella seems pretentious to some readers, but I feel like that's intentional--sort of a part of the joke/irony. While I don't need to be spoon fed, I do wish this were a little less disjointed. There's quite a lot of jumping around. A little bit more of an arrow pointing me somewhere as a reader would have been welcome.
June 20, 2019
I rarely check reviews of books that I am considering reading unless the author is completely unknown to me. Then I might try to safeguard my time and cheat a little. But since this was a book by the nonpareil (or only a few "pareils") Ann Beattie, I figured I'd be safe. I knew nothing of what anyone else thought about this book.
Actually, I was already reading and deeply engaged by two other books (the earliest Capote and the most well-known Krakauer) but somehow this book displaced them for two days, because I was enjoying it so much and wanted to know where this little novella would ultimately deposit me at the end of the journey.
So, I finished Walks with Men (a Wortspiel on Dances with Wolves?) this morning and felt like a kid on Christmas morning, eager to read the reviews on Goodreads and see what others saw in this book. I was surprised the reviews were so harsh, but then I guess I should have considered that people (both men and women) are probably a little tired of the "woman in thrall to a man" narrative. Time's up on a lot of tropes. But this is a rather funny take on that thrall. Maybe it deserves an exemption stamp?
The protagonist, a young writer recently fledged from Harvard, begins an idealistic farm life up in New England with her Julliard boyfriend, has to go to New York for just one day, where she meets a suave but creepy, much older New York Svengali (the p.'s word) and ends up doing a total 180 from the dropout ethos, adopts a New York lifestyle and never again leaves, never again sins against New York. Later, some characters are snatched up by the invisible arms of not one but two dei ex machina.
Wow, now that I read the paragraph directly above, I can see where reviewers might open up a bottle of snark earlier in the day for the special occasion.
But I gave it five stars. Why? Because for me, this was a seduction by wise language. It was a story made up of really beautiful sentences and paragraphs and dialogue. I didn't believe the characters were real and had just accidentally wandered onto the page. While this is not a work of magical realism, it's not that far off the genre.
Other reviewers have commented on how narcissistic most of the people who populate this novel are, but the protagonist tells us that very early in the book. She knows you're going to roll your eyes. Perhaps Beattie is using this study in narcissism to highlight the emptiness of the gambit. Because narcissism is nothing more than a gambit. Sometimes the strategy works and sometimes the strategy immolates people. And, even though we intuit that the main characters in here (with the exception of the almost token Goodness ne Ben) are major narcissists, the full extent of their narcissism is not really shown. Well, "Svengali" (Neil) is an exception. He is rightly excoriated, but manages to preserve some of his magic and mystery in the end. He gets a special dispensation.
The narrator might be unreliable. Because she has to be a shark, even in her fairy tale world. Or at least a little sharky. But her ambition is hidden, never on display in these pages, and she presents herself as a paragon of passivity, with only a few rare moments of total self-assertion. Everything good or great that happens to her is serendipity. That doesn't sound like real New York. That sounds like fairy tale New York. But I don't have a problem with this being a dark fairy tale. Books come in all shape, sizes and flavors.
If you are a story junkie, don't read this book. This book is more pleasantly invested in omphaloskepsis. I'm not using that word in the pejorative sense, the typical sense. A novel filled with characters staring at their navels is actually blackly humorous. I enjoyed the artistic effect and I enjoyed the protagonist's anti-hubristic stance. I think she wants us to see how deeply flawed everyone is, but how they may still be cherished (some might deserve cut-rate cherishing, but still...).
This is pretty much a dark fairy tale set in New York at the dawn of the eighties. A fairy tale with grit in its eye. But there is a princess. After Beattie strains credulity for the tenth time or so, you realize it's okay, just let credulity go. Read the words instead and float in the bubbles of the moments. A book in which the protagonist fetishizes Creeley's poem "The Rain" is already halfway to being my friend. Keats' "Negative Capability" is name-checked and flashes its immortal teeth at us on more than one occasion in these pages. And this is set in that golden period in New York just before AIDS turned the party into The Pit and the Pendulum. It's interesting to peer into that somewhat protected bubble.
Here are a few passages which caught me off guard and elevated the book for me to something like Salinger after he got his app updates.
The p.'s first exchange with her partner's jack-in-the-box spouse (one of those "forgot to mention" wives) is particularly brutal and memorable:
"Did he brush your soft earlobes with his lips, lower his voice to a whisper, nearly hypnotize you? We'd lie in bed almost nose-to-nose, and he'd ask me to recite passages he'd had me memorize. Shakespeare's sonnets. I'm sure you and I could recite in unison."
The p. enjoys watching her gay friend and his lover make love on languid afternoons:
"This spectator sport was something I'd started doing once or twice a week, as the sun began to set: sharing a joint, having a glass of wine with Etch and Kim, looking out the window while they undressed (an odd bit of propriety: I'd wait until I heard Etch get into bed, then watch while Kim slowly took off his robe and did his little undressing dance). I sat in the corner chair (discarded, one night, by the famous actress, snapped up immediately by Etch) to watch. The box's storm was a little too theatrically noisy to be scary, but it wasn't quite funny, either. The strange thing was that other times, when real thunder rumbled, I always thought of the box and burst into laughter. Kim was a dancer, so the sexual pyrotechnics were often quite impressive. But I also became fascinated with the way his white robe pooled on the floor, thinking that if I knew how to take photographs, I could have quite a collection of images. The robe had real personality."
On her lover's (later husband's) horribleness:
"Other things he told me, that I believed: that you and another person could do something and say the words 'This never happened,' and it had not happened; that purchasing only the finest brands or shopping at thrift shops was the only way to acquire things--anything in between was bourgeois and pathetic; that only dumb people bought cars instead of leasing them; crystal wineglasses were for morning orange juice, and grappa was best sipped from the bottle; Turgenev was a greater writer than Dostoyevsky; using an exclamation point for punctuation was interchangeable with eating food and drooling. Irma Franklin was a better singer than Aretha. It was morally wrong to buy a purebred dog."
(Apropros of nothing, I would add "The use of an interrobang is always a camouflaged cry for help" to the above screed.") You almost start to admire the way Svengali bloviates to beat Polonius.
You might wonder how the p. spent so many years with a man who was clearly an insufferable blowhard. Well, she was young and he was older, well-heeled and a master manipulator. He made a contract with her the day he met her (just like Lucifer and about as coolly proffered as one of L's deals). As a young writer, she would be protected and have her ambitions fostered. The narration makes it clear the p. is looking back at her youth with acerbic amusement. And the novel calls bullshit on everyone, anyway.
I enjoyed this looking backward. There are many passages that will stay with me. I'm not coming away with a great story to tell or share. I'm coming away with the sense of life under my fingernails, because Beattie has been gardening in the soil of the earthly souls again.
Actually, I was already reading and deeply engaged by two other books (the earliest Capote and the most well-known Krakauer) but somehow this book displaced them for two days, because I was enjoying it so much and wanted to know where this little novella would ultimately deposit me at the end of the journey.
So, I finished Walks with Men (a Wortspiel on Dances with Wolves?) this morning and felt like a kid on Christmas morning, eager to read the reviews on Goodreads and see what others saw in this book. I was surprised the reviews were so harsh, but then I guess I should have considered that people (both men and women) are probably a little tired of the "woman in thrall to a man" narrative. Time's up on a lot of tropes. But this is a rather funny take on that thrall. Maybe it deserves an exemption stamp?
The protagonist, a young writer recently fledged from Harvard, begins an idealistic farm life up in New England with her Julliard boyfriend, has to go to New York for just one day, where she meets a suave but creepy, much older New York Svengali (the p.'s word) and ends up doing a total 180 from the dropout ethos, adopts a New York lifestyle and never again leaves, never again sins against New York. Later, some characters are snatched up by the invisible arms of not one but two dei ex machina.
Wow, now that I read the paragraph directly above, I can see where reviewers might open up a bottle of snark earlier in the day for the special occasion.
But I gave it five stars. Why? Because for me, this was a seduction by wise language. It was a story made up of really beautiful sentences and paragraphs and dialogue. I didn't believe the characters were real and had just accidentally wandered onto the page. While this is not a work of magical realism, it's not that far off the genre.
Other reviewers have commented on how narcissistic most of the people who populate this novel are, but the protagonist tells us that very early in the book. She knows you're going to roll your eyes. Perhaps Beattie is using this study in narcissism to highlight the emptiness of the gambit. Because narcissism is nothing more than a gambit. Sometimes the strategy works and sometimes the strategy immolates people. And, even though we intuit that the main characters in here (with the exception of the almost token Goodness ne Ben) are major narcissists, the full extent of their narcissism is not really shown. Well, "Svengali" (Neil) is an exception. He is rightly excoriated, but manages to preserve some of his magic and mystery in the end. He gets a special dispensation.
The narrator might be unreliable. Because she has to be a shark, even in her fairy tale world. Or at least a little sharky. But her ambition is hidden, never on display in these pages, and she presents herself as a paragon of passivity, with only a few rare moments of total self-assertion. Everything good or great that happens to her is serendipity. That doesn't sound like real New York. That sounds like fairy tale New York. But I don't have a problem with this being a dark fairy tale. Books come in all shape, sizes and flavors.
If you are a story junkie, don't read this book. This book is more pleasantly invested in omphaloskepsis. I'm not using that word in the pejorative sense, the typical sense. A novel filled with characters staring at their navels is actually blackly humorous. I enjoyed the artistic effect and I enjoyed the protagonist's anti-hubristic stance. I think she wants us to see how deeply flawed everyone is, but how they may still be cherished (some might deserve cut-rate cherishing, but still...).
This is pretty much a dark fairy tale set in New York at the dawn of the eighties. A fairy tale with grit in its eye. But there is a princess. After Beattie strains credulity for the tenth time or so, you realize it's okay, just let credulity go. Read the words instead and float in the bubbles of the moments. A book in which the protagonist fetishizes Creeley's poem "The Rain" is already halfway to being my friend. Keats' "Negative Capability" is name-checked and flashes its immortal teeth at us on more than one occasion in these pages. And this is set in that golden period in New York just before AIDS turned the party into The Pit and the Pendulum. It's interesting to peer into that somewhat protected bubble.
Here are a few passages which caught me off guard and elevated the book for me to something like Salinger after he got his app updates.
The p.'s first exchange with her partner's jack-in-the-box spouse (one of those "forgot to mention" wives) is particularly brutal and memorable:
"Did he brush your soft earlobes with his lips, lower his voice to a whisper, nearly hypnotize you? We'd lie in bed almost nose-to-nose, and he'd ask me to recite passages he'd had me memorize. Shakespeare's sonnets. I'm sure you and I could recite in unison."
The p. enjoys watching her gay friend and his lover make love on languid afternoons:
"This spectator sport was something I'd started doing once or twice a week, as the sun began to set: sharing a joint, having a glass of wine with Etch and Kim, looking out the window while they undressed (an odd bit of propriety: I'd wait until I heard Etch get into bed, then watch while Kim slowly took off his robe and did his little undressing dance). I sat in the corner chair (discarded, one night, by the famous actress, snapped up immediately by Etch) to watch. The box's storm was a little too theatrically noisy to be scary, but it wasn't quite funny, either. The strange thing was that other times, when real thunder rumbled, I always thought of the box and burst into laughter. Kim was a dancer, so the sexual pyrotechnics were often quite impressive. But I also became fascinated with the way his white robe pooled on the floor, thinking that if I knew how to take photographs, I could have quite a collection of images. The robe had real personality."
On her lover's (later husband's) horribleness:
"Other things he told me, that I believed: that you and another person could do something and say the words 'This never happened,' and it had not happened; that purchasing only the finest brands or shopping at thrift shops was the only way to acquire things--anything in between was bourgeois and pathetic; that only dumb people bought cars instead of leasing them; crystal wineglasses were for morning orange juice, and grappa was best sipped from the bottle; Turgenev was a greater writer than Dostoyevsky; using an exclamation point for punctuation was interchangeable with eating food and drooling. Irma Franklin was a better singer than Aretha. It was morally wrong to buy a purebred dog."
(Apropros of nothing, I would add "The use of an interrobang is always a camouflaged cry for help" to the above screed.") You almost start to admire the way Svengali bloviates to beat Polonius.
You might wonder how the p. spent so many years with a man who was clearly an insufferable blowhard. Well, she was young and he was older, well-heeled and a master manipulator. He made a contract with her the day he met her (just like Lucifer and about as coolly proffered as one of L's deals). As a young writer, she would be protected and have her ambitions fostered. The narration makes it clear the p. is looking back at her youth with acerbic amusement. And the novel calls bullshit on everyone, anyway.
I enjoyed this looking backward. There are many passages that will stay with me. I'm not coming away with a great story to tell or share. I'm coming away with the sense of life under my fingernails, because Beattie has been gardening in the soil of the earthly souls again.
September 15, 2013
Despite its critical acclaim, I found this novel--if you can even call it that--to be disappointing on all fronts. It is choppy and seems hacked together. The characters are vague sketches of people who the author seems incapable of making seem realistic or engaging, the relationship dynamics are insulting (Women have to watch their man's every move! Older men only date younger women to manipulate and ruin them!),and ultimately it reads like the scrap notes of a book that hasn't reached its second draft. Beattie tries way, way too hard, and ultimately fails in every way.
August 7, 2010
I really could not get into this book at all. I completely could not sympathize with, or relate to, the characters. I didn't enjoy the plot. I didn't really understand the purpose of the book. The writing style was distracting--lots of parantheses, changes in point of view, flashbacks all over the place, words that appeared to be used just to show off, and brief little paragraphs that didn't really fit in anywhere. Not my style at all.
December 30, 2017
It was really a one and a half star. Starts out with a lot of promise for such a short little book, and then it truly peters out. It is almost as if the writer said, "Oh, am I still writing this book?" ????
July 14, 2023
this book is trying to sound deeply profound and philosophical, but it falls short and shallow. also nothing really happens??? but i still enjoyed reading it (and finishing the entire thing in an hour) nonetheless.
August 16, 2022
I got this from the library, but have zero idea why!
It seems to live up to the negative reviews.
I thought it was non-fiction for some reason.
She narrates the audio version and isn't great.
And I'm giving up...just bad writing and boring story.
It seems to live up to the negative reviews.
I thought it was non-fiction for some reason.
She narrates the audio version and isn't great.
And I'm giving up...just bad writing and boring story.
October 30, 2016
A ratos me resultó muy divertida, a ratos soporífera. Iba veces ágil, otras repetitiva. Un pequeño relato de poco más de cien páginas denso y directo sobre la figura del amante-tutor, aquel que presume de abrir las puertas a la mujer a un mundo desconocido pero que luego resulta vender solo humo.
El tema está bien, es original, y la escritora tiene un lenguaje directo muy agradable pero me resultan desconcertantes algunas cosas, especialmente el destino de Neal (el amante, no digo nada más para no meter apiólese) y el final, tan abierto, tan "¿pero qué me quiere decir esta mujer con esta historia?"
Diferente, sí. Buen libro... uhmmmm
El tema está bien, es original, y la escritora tiene un lenguaje directo muy agradable pero me resultan desconcertantes algunas cosas, especialmente el destino de Neal (el amante, no digo nada más para no meter apiólese) y el final, tan abierto, tan "¿pero qué me quiere decir esta mujer con esta historia?"
Diferente, sí. Buen libro... uhmmmm
October 27, 2012
An amazing character study. Very very true to the time. Ann Beattie is an artist who continues to grow in very interesting directions.
August 1, 2016
Horrible, don't waste your time.
July 14, 2018
Si mezlara una tarta de manzana, una hamburguesa y un pastel de carne y mermelada, el resultado sería similar a esta novela.
April 26, 2025
I really wanted to rate this three stars but the ending sucked. I enjoyed the writing style the first 3/4 of the book, but man it just fell apart. At first I had sympathy, empathy even, for Jane, seeming that she had endometriosis or some other reproductive health issue. I understood the unfortunate cliche of being caught up in a relationship with a narcissist. The continuation of her selfish behaviors showed absolutely no character arc and maybe reflected that she was just as selfish as Neil (which was alluded to in the beginning I think.) Come on! You would think she’d learn to be more considerate of the people and world around her, instead caught up in her own head. Also where tf did Neil go??
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 29, 2024
Ann Beattie has plenty of praise and awards yet she sucks at short fiction. Maybe I would care about the characters/plot if it was longer than 100 pages…so it could actually develop into..something..anything….
I probably wouldn’t though because the author and her main character have that issue where straight, skinny, white people believe they are the default and everyone else is cooky and strange and weird for being anything other than straight, skinny, and white (emphasis on the white)
I probably wouldn’t though because the author and her main character have that issue where straight, skinny, white people believe they are the default and everyone else is cooky and strange and weird for being anything other than straight, skinny, and white (emphasis on the white)
September 8, 2019
Un quiero y no puedo pretencioso y sin interés. Por lo menos se lee en un rato.
November 16, 2021
So much too enjoy but also so much WTF. Listened to audio as opposed to read and that may have skewed perception.
December 8, 2021
Started off strong, but meandered away.
April 19, 2019
This entire book was just gloomy and sad. I didn't understand why some of the characters did the things they did. Connecting with anyone in this book just didn't happen with me. :(
September 18, 2022
i can’t bring myself to finish this. but i deserve credit for making it a little over halfway through.
literally what went wrong here!
the premise is promising—a 22 year old harvard graduate named Jane starts seeing a 44 year old man named Neil after he interviewed her for a piece he worked on for the New York Times because of activism she did at her school. he’s well known in the literary world so their relationship is a secret. he wants to be her teacher/guide figure (while also fucking her obviously. it wouldn’t be that interesting otherwise).
i like the idea of this. but here is some of the “advice” he gives her: “Watch children, to remember how to play.” (first off, it’s creepy. second, it’s cliché. third, that grammar is killing me). “If you take food home from a restaurant, don’t say it’s for ‘the dog.’ Say that you want the bones for ‘a friend who does autopsies.’” (I don’t get how this is advice? it’s just a bad joke?) “Never wear a T-shirt advertising a place in that place.” “Asparagus are the best vegetable, but never trim the ends; people cut the fat off steak, don’t they?” What? Like why is it the most random shit ever? this does not make out Neil out to be an attractive, intelligent older man at all—he just comes off as wholly unrealistic. I would not fuck Neil.
the timeline is nonlinear, which usually I enjoy. I like fragments that are woven together seamlessly and give a mosaic-like recollection of an event. however, this is done extremely clumsily, as everyone else is pointing out, to the point of incoherence. I really wanted to finish reading this book, because I don’t like feeling like my time was wasted. but I’m afraid I’ll have wasted more time by continuing to read.
Ann Beattie has won many awards and seems to be a critically-acclaimed author so some of her work must be good. i hope to come across something of hers in the future that at least is better than this mess
literally what went wrong here!
the premise is promising—a 22 year old harvard graduate named Jane starts seeing a 44 year old man named Neil after he interviewed her for a piece he worked on for the New York Times because of activism she did at her school. he’s well known in the literary world so their relationship is a secret. he wants to be her teacher/guide figure (while also fucking her obviously. it wouldn’t be that interesting otherwise).
i like the idea of this. but here is some of the “advice” he gives her: “Watch children, to remember how to play.” (first off, it’s creepy. second, it’s cliché. third, that grammar is killing me). “If you take food home from a restaurant, don’t say it’s for ‘the dog.’ Say that you want the bones for ‘a friend who does autopsies.’” (I don’t get how this is advice? it’s just a bad joke?) “Never wear a T-shirt advertising a place in that place.” “Asparagus are the best vegetable, but never trim the ends; people cut the fat off steak, don’t they?” What? Like why is it the most random shit ever? this does not make out Neil out to be an attractive, intelligent older man at all—he just comes off as wholly unrealistic. I would not fuck Neil.
the timeline is nonlinear, which usually I enjoy. I like fragments that are woven together seamlessly and give a mosaic-like recollection of an event. however, this is done extremely clumsily, as everyone else is pointing out, to the point of incoherence. I really wanted to finish reading this book, because I don’t like feeling like my time was wasted. but I’m afraid I’ll have wasted more time by continuing to read.
Ann Beattie has won many awards and seems to be a critically-acclaimed author so some of her work must be good. i hope to come across something of hers in the future that at least is better than this mess
June 7, 2020
I’ve finally finished this book and i have some thoughts on this book.
Ann you’ve confused me and the prospective reader by the Title Walks With Men in relation to Follies with a dog picture on the cover, a short within Follies audio in the New Yorker with a story centered on a lady walking with a man. Confusing. Out of this I ordered both this and Follies since the price is right and i have the time for more reading. I didn’t find too many complete collection reviews, but this one https://literariness.org/2018/05/05/a... helped me straighten out some title differentiations albeit more Ann Beattie said major works.
What a departure from anything I’ve read from Ann. This novella is definitely Beattie’s words and writing which has sharpened greatly since 2001. For your readers that expected poignant yet safe Ann Beattie post 60s, tight writing, safe middle of the road fluff casually throw in a Joni Mitchell or Ry Cooder song, this isn’t that, the music associated with this Novella would be more old Lou Reed like. And this material substance would seem more of a hybrid of Candace Bushnell and Amy Hempel.
The start and ending are very structured and conclusive, it’s nice to have a strong introduction and clear character and story conclusions. Somewhere in the middle you lost me on the flip of years and locations. Such great awe sentences that keep me reading your stories and books. I’m greatful for the output and the variation in your writing.
Ann you’ve confused me and the prospective reader by the Title Walks With Men in relation to Follies with a dog picture on the cover, a short within Follies audio in the New Yorker with a story centered on a lady walking with a man. Confusing. Out of this I ordered both this and Follies since the price is right and i have the time for more reading. I didn’t find too many complete collection reviews, but this one https://literariness.org/2018/05/05/a... helped me straighten out some title differentiations albeit more Ann Beattie said major works.
What a departure from anything I’ve read from Ann. This novella is definitely Beattie’s words and writing which has sharpened greatly since 2001. For your readers that expected poignant yet safe Ann Beattie post 60s, tight writing, safe middle of the road fluff casually throw in a Joni Mitchell or Ry Cooder song, this isn’t that, the music associated with this Novella would be more old Lou Reed like. And this material substance would seem more of a hybrid of Candace Bushnell and Amy Hempel.
The start and ending are very structured and conclusive, it’s nice to have a strong introduction and clear character and story conclusions. Somewhere in the middle you lost me on the flip of years and locations. Such great awe sentences that keep me reading your stories and books. I’m greatful for the output and the variation in your writing.
November 3, 2016
No sé a qué se debe exactamente, pero lo cierto es que la lectura de Paseando con hombres me ha dejado muy descolocado. Igual me han traicionado las expectativas... o igual es que no estoy acostumbrado a este tipo de narrativa deshilachada e irreflexiva. Sea como sea, el contenido de este libro que apenas sobrepasa el centenar de páginas no se corresponde en absoluto con el que esperaba encontrar y, por desgracia, he salido perdiendo al cambio. Estamos en el Nueva York de 1980 y Ann Beattie nos pone en la piel de Jane, una chica joven, ingenua, recién licenciada, que se enamora de un hombre mucho mayor que ella, embarcándose (o más bien debería decir lanzándose) sin apenas percatarse de ello en una relación tóxica, fraudulenta, de dependencia y sumisión absoluta que acaba anulando completamente su carácter aun cuando ella está convencida de lo contrario. Sin embargo, lejos de desarrollar una trama de manera convincente o esbozar un estudio de los personajes, Beattie prorrumpe en un sinfín de escenas y conversaciones fragmentadas que nos llevarán por diversos lugares, realizando observaciones puntuales sobre el ambiente neoyorquino y las relaciones sentimentales que, opino, confieren al relato el poco encanto que tiene. Más allá de eso, no he entendido el propósito de la obra ni me ha dejado ningún poso, aunque no descartaría —por su extrema brevedad— una futura relectura que me pueda despejar todas esas dudas que ahora tengo.
January 11, 2012
Pret-ty great. Moves along swiftly (I read it in an afternoon (and a night)), engaging all the way through, great characters. A really interesting relationship, where the guy's an asshole, but she knows it, and calls him on it, and yet they're still together. Seemed symbolic/metaphoric, yet this was pure realism. At first Beattie seemed to do a lot of work to explain why/how they were together, and I paid super close attention to all this, read lines over, etc., but in the end that didn't really matter. They were together, was all. There's a casual inevitability here which is really tragic and engaging. Things happen and the reader is simply meant to accept them along with the protagonist, who mostly does (i.e. accept things). It's that classic female protagonist, strong but damaged, somewhat aloof, and it's done well here. Three fourths of the way through something big happens, and the novella seems to lose momentum, but it picks back up again. Beattie does a lot of stuff in 100 quick pages, but it never feels polyphonic or experimental or quirky or contempo or annoying. It's really good. Glad I read it. Glad I didn't die of whooping cough or random violence before I came across it.
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