I’m never so aware of my personal literary aesthetics as I am when encountered with a novel that doesn’t follow them. My gut says to me, “this novel isn’t doing what it should be doing.” Which of course raises the question: What should it be doing?
I’ve at least learned to recognize what I believe novels “should” do. Which is to say, I’ve learned my biases. I’m biased in favor of novels with substantial, eventful plots following layered, intelligent characters; I’m biased in favor of novels that are pleasures to read. This isn’t to say I dislike theme or philosophy, but I want novels to funnel those concerns into narrative questions built up out of characters’ actions. And those actions need to be believable. When I can feel the author pulling puppet strings behind the curtain, the whole performance loses meaning for me.
In the absence of compelling plot, a novel can still be redeemed for me either through a narrative voice that captures me, or prose that engages me (though these usually come hand in hand).
Real Life by Brandon Taylor did none of those things. For me, at least.
I struggled with this book: both the reading of it and the writing about it. It’s gotten a lot of buzz since it was released last year, including being shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and so like any buzzy book, I was excited to see what all the hype was about. On top of that, I attended a college that was often referred to as its own “bubble”; I have experience with this topic of real versus academic life, and I was excited to see it depicted.
Real Life isn’t the first novel I’ve read for this project that’s disappointed me. But I’ve refrained from writing critiques in these posts. Partly because I don’t believe I’m writing book reviews here — I’m aiming for a more personal, reflective quality — and partly because I just don’t know how interesting it is to read someone list their reasons for disliking a book. Or even if it is interesting, it precludes other veins of discussion around that book. Why would you want to read more about a novel just put through the wringer?
So I’ve refrained from that type of discussion, but I think I’ll enter it now, because it made up such a large part of my experience reading Real Life. Firstly because it’s just difficult to encounter something so widely praised only to find yourself locked in debate with it. It makes you question your taste. And partly because I believe Real Life is doing important work by depicting the isolation and repeated prejudice suffered by its black protagonist living and working in the predominantly white environment of academia — and yet I found myself struggling to meet it in that space. I found my narrative tastes getting in the way, and I felt conflicted. I wanted to love it, but I just couldn’t.
I’ll focus on my major frustration with the novel: the relationships between its characters. Wallace, the protagonist, has to remind himself at least half a dozen times that his group of grad school peers — people he never particularly wants to see, who don’t defend him in moments of prejudicial attack, and whom he doesn’t feel comfortable sharing himself with — are his friends.
Really?
Wallace's inability to call a spade a spade felt like an artificial source of narrative conflict. I was reminded of teenagers in high school who settle for harmful friendships of convenience because they don’t realize they might be better off alone. But the difference is that Wallace is 25, not 15, and I felt he ought to have more self-awareness. The novel presents Wallace’s social landscape as though it’s his first time building a community for himself, and yet he’s a PhD student — and has been for several years. Did he not learn these tools during his four years of undergrad like a lot of young adults have to?
This lack of self-awareness could have a place in the novel if it was balanced by any sort of notable character growth. But it’s not. Wallace is making the same questionable decisions on page 250 as he is on page 15 — perhaps even more questionable, given the type of mistreatment we’ve witnessed him suffer at the hands of his “friends” by then.
The problem with founding a novel on ambivalent relationships is that it undermines whatever stakes there might be for those characters. If it’s already clear to me that Wallace holds disdain for all his “friends,” and most of them likewise hold disdain for him, and in fact there’s little in these relationships to suggest friendship apart from the insistent use of that label, then I feel no anxiety over the question of whether the friendships will continue. In fact, I’m longing for someone to cut them off. The conflict seems artificial to me. Or if not artificial, then easily solvable. To use Wallace’s own words when he comments on a long-term hot and cold flirtation between two of his friends: It seemed more miserable than was strictly necessary.
Likewise, when one of Wallace’s friends asks him for relationship advice during an overly lengthy tennis scene and Wallace later jeopardizes that relationship by intentionally causing an argument between them, I feel no suspense. One half of the relationship has already been characterized as a shallow, cold person with no redeeming qualities, making me believe the other would be better without him. The novel doesn’t acknowledge this possibility, but instead seems to expect me to care about the relationship, which — like all relationships in the novel — is fundamentally and maybe irredeemably broken.
It’s entirely possible that Taylor’s intention in surrounding Wallace with toxic relationships is to depict the pervasiveness of racism even amongst “good” white people. It’s entirely possible Taylor aims to showcase the overwhelming impact of forces like prejudice or childhood trauma and individuals’ helplessness in the wake of those forces. It’s entirely possible that Wallace’s lack of growth or forward movement is meant to be reflective of the difficulty of his position in a racist society.
Are those sentiments realistic? I think so, for a lot of people.
Do I think they make for good narrative? Not really. There’s no one to invest in and nothing to hope for. The novel treads and retreads the same territory. It has no momentum or shape.
But there are issues with holding these personal literary aesthetics. It creates a temptation to dismiss books that don’t follow them; and relatedly, they’re not always compatible with novels that are written for the sole purpose of documenting a person’s experiences.
Taylor based the novel off his own experiences of being the sole black person in the PhD cohort he eventually left in favor of writing. He’s trying to do something important here by writing a novel that depicts the solitude of a person of a color in the predominantly white space of academia and the moments of prejudice and unfairness that follow.
And when I find myself unable to fully enter the landscape he’s built, I feel like I’ve failed in my duty. I want to bear witness to what Taylor invites us to see, but I feel guilty when I begin arguing with what I see on the page.
Yet my tastes are what they are. I want decent, self-aware, emotionally intelligent characters who undergo significant change, and I don’t see any in Real Life. So I suppose this is where I land: I don’t feel very interested in ignoring my tastes in favor of praising a book that frustrated me greatly — even if its aims align with my politics.
And the truth of the matter is that Real Life wasn’t written for me or readers like me. My opinion here is unimportant. Taylor makes this explicit in an interview with the Guardian he gave last year, where he says,
Eventually, it was this matter of centering my own experiences and pursuing with a really intense focus and conviction the stuff that spoke to me. Because I could have written this book to be more sympathetic to the white gaze, but it would’ve been a worse book.
There are plenty of reviews and responses out there from people who had a very different reading experience — people who saw themselves in this novel, who found it beautiful and moving.
For them, Real Life is doing exactly what it should.
Thank you for reading. This marks my post covering my second category: a book from a writer of a diverse background. Next I’ll be writing on The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann as my choice for a book I feel I “should” read.
Thanks again, and I hope you’re well.