"Even the banality of evil is outstripped by the banality of anxiety neurosis." (my favorite line)
Daniel Menaker's The Treatment is an unusual novel for me. It's exactly the sort of mind-candy I normally (but not always) try to avoid, and yet I'm here to tell ya, I actually kinda loved it.
Seduction: it starts with a bit of a gut punch when you pick the thing up in a bookstore, and see yourself precisely mirrored in the marketing. The synopsis about the usual witty, anxious, plus madcap and/or tenderhearted New Yorker protagonist doesn't do anything one way or the other, but the blurbs... oh my... they limn so exactly what I like in lightweight fiction, they made me paranoid.
Now, at considerable risk of sounding like some perky dame on TV, I've gotta say it: I'm glad I didn't.
The psychoanalyst character is a hoot. His buffoonish but oddly authoritative manner, his off-kilter, make-your-head-spin statements in session, have such a way of sticking in the brain, I know I'm going to remember him in decades to come, when my memory of the story has faded to merely a smile. The main character starts out a bit too annoyingly Mr. Nice Neurotic, but is just so true, he grows in three dimensions, like those rounded characters in classic 19th-century fiction. As for the "wealthy Manhattanite ... Allegra" (gag)--the single phrase on the back cover of the book that most urged me not to succumb--she was: not bad. Not bad at all. I was agreeably surprised to find that she's a person--a genuine human being who belongs in this novel for that reason alone. I don't know a better way to put it.
And the story? It's not cute, or especially uplifting, or warm and fuzzy. Nor is it dark. (I live and breathe dark. But I can take a break from it.) The ending is just inconclusive enough to leave room for musing about the future of the characters, but not (for me at least) so unfinished as to feel like a gyp. It's just a Good Story--one that has you slowly turning the pages, deep in "the fictive dream," taking the unfolding as it comes.
It really is nutball to say this to a vast amorphous gathering of pan-planetary strangers, but what the hey--
You won't be disappointed.
--Fiona Webster
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Complete and Utter Non Sequitur:
Musings on the word gyp... I've been thinking lately that maybe I shouldn't be using this word. It's derived from "gypsy"--not a very nice thing to suggest about our fine friends, the Rom.
Do you want a definition? Pronounced "jip," gyp means "cheat, fraud, swindle" as either a transitive verb (to gyp someone) or a noun (a gyp). "I had to pay 30 bucks more for Pearl Jam tickets: Ticketmaster gypped me." It's used as a noun near the end of the above review.
It's a punchy little word. I've always liked the spelling. When I was a kid, it was a super common word--like we must've used it every day. Paranoid little monsters we were, running around yelling "What a gyp!" at the slightest provocation, especially in reference to consumer products. Or while watching TV: "What?! They're not going to tell us whether Happy Hero escaped from Evil Brain, not 'til next week? WHAT A GYP!!" I remember how gleefully we expressed our outrage, chuffing loudly on the "J" sound of "gyp" like a pack of crazed grizzly cubs.
Daniel Menaker's The Treatment is an unusual novel for me. It's exactly the sort of mind-candy I normally (but not always) try to avoid, and yet I'm here to tell ya, I actually kinda loved it.
Seduction: it starts with a bit of a gut punch when you pick the thing up in a bookstore, and see yourself precisely mirrored in the marketing. The synopsis about the usual witty, anxious, plus madcap and/or tenderhearted New Yorker protagonist doesn't do anything one way or the other, but the blurbs... oh my... they limn so exactly what I like in lightweight fiction, they made me paranoid.
- "Daniel Menaker is a writer after my own heart and has been for years. His storytelling is useful in the old-fashioned sense. Sometimes it's wistful, even skeptical, but never despairing or even pessimistic. His ironies penetrate and are sharp, but don't wound. As a writer he is clever and vigorous about what's funny, and always searching for what balm humor can add to the human condition. In this way his novel serves as an elegant instruction kit for how we--adults, after all--may make a hopeful, credible peace with life."
--Richard Ford
"This wonderful story keeps changing--it gives us the rewards we counted on all along and then goes after something different, and this is done with such ease that it's only at the end we realize what surprises have unfolded."
--Alice Munro
"How closely we live to disaster is the theme of The Treatment, and of every enduring work of comedy. Daniel Menaker--a true comic artist--keeps us on the edge of our chairs as we follow the fates of his hero and heroine--knowing and not knowing whether things will come out all right for them. I read late into the night to find out the answer, and I am still brooding about the mysterious, over-the-top psychoanalyst Dr. Morales, and wondering whether he is Ariel or Caliban."
--Janet Malcolm (one of my favorite nonfiction writers: if I don't have every one of her books, then I've screwed up)
Now, at considerable risk of sounding like some perky dame on TV, I've gotta say it: I'm glad I didn't.
The psychoanalyst character is a hoot. His buffoonish but oddly authoritative manner, his off-kilter, make-your-head-spin statements in session, have such a way of sticking in the brain, I know I'm going to remember him in decades to come, when my memory of the story has faded to merely a smile. The main character starts out a bit too annoyingly Mr. Nice Neurotic, but is just so true, he grows in three dimensions, like those rounded characters in classic 19th-century fiction. As for the "wealthy Manhattanite ... Allegra" (gag)--the single phrase on the back cover of the book that most urged me not to succumb--she was: not bad. Not bad at all. I was agreeably surprised to find that she's a person--a genuine human being who belongs in this novel for that reason alone. I don't know a better way to put it.
And the story? It's not cute, or especially uplifting, or warm and fuzzy. Nor is it dark. (I live and breathe dark. But I can take a break from it.) The ending is just inconclusive enough to leave room for musing about the future of the characters, but not (for me at least) so unfinished as to feel like a gyp. It's just a Good Story--one that has you slowly turning the pages, deep in "the fictive dream," taking the unfolding as it comes.
It really is nutball to say this to a vast amorphous gathering of pan-planetary strangers, but what the hey--
--Fiona Webster
---------------------------------------------------------------
Complete and Utter Non Sequitur:
Musings on the word gyp... I've been thinking lately that maybe I shouldn't be using this word. It's derived from "gypsy"--not a very nice thing to suggest about our fine friends, the Rom.
Do you want a definition? Pronounced "jip," gyp means "cheat, fraud, swindle" as either a transitive verb (to gyp someone) or a noun (a gyp). "I had to pay 30 bucks more for Pearl Jam tickets: Ticketmaster gypped me." It's used as a noun near the end of the above review.
It's a punchy little word. I've always liked the spelling. When I was a kid, it was a super common word--like we must've used it every day. Paranoid little monsters we were, running around yelling "What a gyp!" at the slightest provocation, especially in reference to consumer products. Or while watching TV: "What?! They're not going to tell us whether Happy Hero escaped from Evil Brain, not 'til next week? WHAT A GYP!!" I remember how gleefully we expressed our outrage, chuffing loudly on the "J" sound of "gyp" like a pack of crazed grizzly cubs.
