Book review - Infinite Jerk: Adrienne Miller’s memoir of her relationship with David Foster Wallace
Adrienne Miller: In the Land of Men
Reviewed by Laura Marsh
A young woman - observant, self-conscious, harboring literary aspirations, though not quite sure where she wants to end up - meets an older novelist, and they start dating. He is as famous as it’s possible for a contemporary writer to be. He is obsessed with his privacy: She is not to draw any attention, occupying a hidden corner of his life. In fact, he sets all the terms of their relationship; the age gap benefits him. While there’s plenty of desire, it’s tinged with condescension (even spite), which contributes more than it should to their sexual tension. In return, he allows her to soak up some of his brilliance, as if by osmosis. Of course, she will have to leave him if she wants to be the star of her own life. The experience is only worth having if it is the precursor to something bigger....
This is, loosely, the arc of Adrienne Miller’s new memoir, In the Land of Men. The book is a recollection of her career as an editor at glossy men’s magazines from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, and of the sexism she encountered on the job. A large part of that story is dominated by David Foster Wallace, the writer she met when she was 26 and he was 36; she published a long and difficult short story of his in Esquire in 1998, and soon after they began an affair. A May-December romance is also the starting point for Lisa Halliday’s 2018 novel, Asymmetry, which draws on the relationship she had with Philip Roth in the early 2000s, when she was in her early twenties and he was in his sixties.
The appeal is undeniable: a simple story of coming out of the shadow of a Great Man. Yet I don’t think that’s the process either of these books is really describing. There’s nothing straightforward in finding independence by way of dating a famous man. There are also tangled questions of agency and desire, of what’s in it for anyone who attaches herself to a celebrity...
https://newrepublic.com/article/156550/infinite-jerk
Reviewed by Laura Marsh
A young woman - observant, self-conscious, harboring literary aspirations, though not quite sure where she wants to end up - meets an older novelist, and they start dating. He is as famous as it’s possible for a contemporary writer to be. He is obsessed with his privacy: She is not to draw any attention, occupying a hidden corner of his life. In fact, he sets all the terms of their relationship; the age gap benefits him. While there’s plenty of desire, it’s tinged with condescension (even spite), which contributes more than it should to their sexual tension. In return, he allows her to soak up some of his brilliance, as if by osmosis. Of course, she will have to leave him if she wants to be the star of her own life. The experience is only worth having if it is the precursor to something bigger....
This is, loosely, the arc of Adrienne Miller’s new memoir, In the Land of Men. The book is a recollection of her career as an editor at glossy men’s magazines from the 1990s to the mid-2000s, and of the sexism she encountered on the job. A large part of that story is dominated by David Foster Wallace, the writer she met when she was 26 and he was 36; she published a long and difficult short story of his in Esquire in 1998, and soon after they began an affair. A May-December romance is also the starting point for Lisa Halliday’s 2018 novel, Asymmetry, which draws on the relationship she had with Philip Roth in the early 2000s, when she was in her early twenties and he was in his sixties.
The appeal is undeniable: a simple story of coming out of the shadow of a Great Man. Yet I don’t think that’s the process either of these books is really describing. There’s nothing straightforward in finding independence by way of dating a famous man. There are also tangled questions of agency and desire, of what’s in it for anyone who attaches herself to a celebrity...
https://newrepublic.com/article/156550/infinite-jerk
