Happy Hour

I just wrote a very negative review of a autobiographical book written by a coastal media figure. It's another story young woman of a young woman trying to figure shit out, whilst also swimming in fairly elite circles in an American world city. I couldn't stand it. So why do I like this autofiction by culture writer Marlowe Granados?

Cynical take: it's set in a New York-y and draws experience from the media scene there, and that's a milieu I've spent some time on the fringes of myself. It's about a person in the arts (broadly defined) and not somebody in a full-throated tech job (like I, self-despisingly, am).

Generous take: it's good! The self-insert Isa and her best friend are self-regarding and directionless in a way that is so authentic that it makes them irresistibly likeable. This isn't a book that goes somewhere, but the Brownian motion of the protagonists through New York is the point. The observation is delicious and bitchy and from time to time the writing reaches out and slaps you with something unexpectedly lovely.

So maybe I like this because I turned thirty and I'm reflecting on my twenties sort of fondly, sometimes spent in places sort of like these. Maybe it's because it reflects the side of my world I embrace rather than the side I reject.