Danielle’s Comments (group member since Jun 10, 2013)

Danielle’s comments from the NYRB Classics group.

Seana wrote: "Danielle, did you read Pumpkin Eater with the group here awhile ago?

Thanks, Seana! I only found this group recently, so missed the Pumpkin Eater topic. I just went back and read some of that discussion. I am going to try to track the movie down as well.

I recently picked up one of Mortimer's other novels My Friend Says It's Bullet-proof. Its first few chapters were not as compelling as PE and the book has somehow migrated back into the middle of my gravity-defying bedside reading tower. However, to tie it into our discussion at hand, it also features a darkly funny woman journalist who reminds me a bit of our Speedboat narrator.

Curses to Katie Roiphe for the reductionist, dismissive "woman adrift" category. Her review recently caused my fairly highbrow book group to reject Speedboat for its list. However, truth be told, what Roiphe might call the "woman adrift" novel has become one of my favorite NYRB sub-categories. I loved, loved, loved the subversive After Claude by Iris Owens with its complicated, emotionally paralyzed narrator who causes havoc wherever she goes. (The ending completely lost me, though.) Another favorite is the heartbreaking black comedy Pumpkin Eater by Penelope Mortimer with its lovely, disconnected narrator, her nameless brood of children, and her successful, difficult husband. These novels and Speedboat all share sharp, funny authors and smart, complicated main characters. But, honestly, given the period in terms of gender politics that these novels were written, how would it have been possible to reject convention, as many of these authors do, and attempt to live authentically in a fundamentally absurd world, as many of these characters do, without being tagged "adrift."

Thanks for both of those review links! I coincidentally happened to be reading another recently released NYRB classic this week We Have Only This Life to Live and came across this comment that Sartre made about Camus, which made me think of Speedboat: "Each sentence is a present moment. But it is not a vague present that smudges and runs into the following one. The sentence is sharp, crisp, self-contained; an entire void separates it from the next one, just as Descartes's moment is separated from the moment that follows....And we tumble from sentence to sentence, from void to void."

Kristin wrote: "The fact that so many of these passages end with what feel like straight-faced punchlines really drew me along."

I agree with you, Kristen. I was crazy about this book and found myself savoring Adler's humor and sense of the absurd. I felt that the looping structure kept the various disparate sections connected and relevant.

Thanks, Abigail! New York Review Books wrote: "Hello all. I have started a discussion thread titled "August Book Discussion: Speedboat, by Renata Adler." Feel free to chime in at any time!

-Abigail"

Hello all, I am mid-way through reading Speedboat and am looking forward to our discussion this month. I see that Lucky Jim is still listed at the current book. When are we planning to begin the Speedboat discussion?

Hello, all. I have been on a NYRB classics reading binge lately and am glad to find this group. I have not yet read Speedboat, but will pick it up this week.