Book reviews: Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte | The Book of George, by Kate Greathead

There is something divinely appalling, almost sublimely ghastly about Tony Tulathimutte’s linked collection of stories, Rejection. It is quite difficult to laugh so hard while also being goldfish-mouthed at its audacity; the only writers I can think of who manage to be precise, radical and necessarily provocative in the same manner is Shalom Auslander and Julius Taranto, and they both have a similar capacity to create profoundly embarrassing narratives without the slightest shred of embarrassment.

The opening story is a cause célèbre, or at the least a work of some notoriety. “The Feminist” is narrated by a man who is self-righteously proud of his (somewhat self-awarded) feminist credentials, and it charts his journey towards being a middle-aged incel with a ski-mask, determined to “pull out the serrated knife of virtue that’s been stuck in his chest for so long he thought it was part of him”. It is shocking, and the humour is caustic enough to make the reader wince.

The more he abases himself for being a “cisgender heterosexual white man”, the more egotistical and delusional he becomes. Somehow it is not an apogee of cringe when he resorts to online dating and describes himself as follows: “He/his/his (or whatever pronouns you are more comfortable with). Unshakably serious about consent. Abortion’s #1 fan. Loves books, Thai food, a glass of vino verde on my balcony, endless conversation… and did I mention books? I can usually be found haunting the bookstores and bakeshops of our fair burgh, when I’m not dismantling the imperialist male supremacist hetero patriarchy”. In all the self-aggrandising correctness, the slip of “our fair burgh” – mannered, pleased with itself, smirking – that nails it.

Characters from stories appear in person, or in the background, or on online forums, across the collection, which refracts the stories so that there is no definitive “take”. “Pics” uses a group chat to dissect a woman’s one night stand with a male friend into nigh psychotic obsession, in tandem with the female friends’ vacillations of response and hypocritical double-standards. It is shot through with unbearable pity: the equivalent to Chekhov’s revolver on table in Act I is her allowing him to take a pornographic picture of her; and the meanings and possible uses of the photograph have multiple valences as revenge, memento, leverage and humiliation (but whose?). One narrator is a Musk-esque micro-managing tech bro, another, in a smart piece of postmodernist chic, is an editor rejecting Tulamhimutte’s Rejection. This story acts as a smart internal critique of “the internet-borne tendency of writers of your generation to ass-cover with tedious disclaimers”.

The story “Main Character: Introductory Guide to Botgate v.1.7.3” is more reminiscent of the metatexts of Borges and Calvino. Bee doesn’t bother describing their appearance – “the weird surly bucket that houses my brain has always felt like the unhappiest accident” – but is “the most ubiquitous person on the internet”. When not demonstrating the intellectual incoherence of their peers’ identity politics by Bartleby-esque refusal or “dressing as Judith Butler for Halloween”, they weaponise avatars. “The agenda was, first, to undermine confidence that anyone you interacted with online was real, and secondly to so thoroughly debauch discourse by filling the place with freak behaviour and godawful takes that nobody would ever take its tenets seriously. Flood the zone with clones, makes what was visible so manifest that nobody would assume anything was left underneath. In brief, the accelerationism of identity”. To which one can only say: si monumentum requiris circumspice. Nor have I read a better description of Gen X culture than the mash of American Psycho and Wes Anderson; “profane nihilism… and twee escapism… what I called Shock-and-Aww”.

The can’t-believe-it story, for me, is “Ahegao, or The Ballad of Sexual Repression”. It begins – and this is important – with Kant sending an email to everyone coming out, which comes as no surprise. The story then etches in tentative relationships but Kant has a secret: he is only really aroused by abusive fantasies of domination, although he knows “no-one wants a sad-sack sadist, no-one longs to be topped by a man shorter than his refrigerator”. The sentimental part segues into Kant’s online discovery of “Cody Heat” and his “custom-order porn videos”. There follows 15 pages of his fantasies, which are sick, pitiable, hilarious, demented, awful and include apologies for anatomical impossibilities. I don’t normally like twists in stories, but bear in mind Kant has a group email at the beginning of the story. Mortification doesn’t cover it.

Kate Greathead | Pete Pin

Tulathimutte has written a very interesting essay in the New Yorker on his dislike of the claim he has “written the first great millennial” novel” – there is also a good interview at Electric Literature where he talks about a fake movement called “Post-Relevance”. I mention this because Kate Greathead’s The Book of George is described in such terms “a portrait… of a generation”. The stories in the life of George are sometimes rather achingly done – it is worth reading the whole book just for the bittersweet final story – but the hapless, entitled, perpetually failing George is not a patch on Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces. George is too lame and lazy even to be deranged and arrogant. It is a book that surfs like its main character; whereas Rejection is an utter, uncompromising, devastating surge. Tulathimutte is serious and then some.

Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte, Fourth Estate, £16.99

The Book of George, by Kate Greathead, Atlantic, £16.99