The London Review of Books,
July 17, 2014 issue, arrived this week with four books given prominence on the
front page. “How to Be an Asshole,”
reviewed by Sheila Heti, was number four. I doubt anyone could turn himself into body orifice, but, what the heck, I’ve read
books on everything else, why not a “how to be” an “ass” (if not an asshole)
and aggravate family, loved ones, friends, neighbors and the old man next to
you on the public bus going to pick up his unemployment check. I could hardly contain
myself long enough to tear off the plastic wrapper and see man’s guide on how
to aggravate and torment.
It turned out that “how to be an asshole” was merely an editor’s
slug line to capture attention. Ms. Heti reviewed “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., by Adelle Waldman. (Windmill, 244
pp.) Nathaniel is a struggling writer trying to exist in Brooklyn
while waiting for the miracle call from a publisher that something he has written
is going to be published and please find an advance check enclosed. He is
running one night to a party and encounters a woman he once dated.
“She tells him he is an ‘asshole’ for his behavior after her
abortion in the wake of one of their trysts. (He phoned only once in the weeks
after the operation, a quick check-up.) He’s annoyed by her accusation, and
defensively soothes himself as he walks away: ‘She could have called him,’ he
thinks.” This qualifies, surely and unequivocally, as either “ass" or “asshole” attitude
and behavior.
The review (by a woman – Ms. Heti) goes on for approximately
five and a quarter 14” columns and tells us it is important that a woman (Ms.
Waldman) write about a man and his relationship with a woman named Hannah (not
the one of the abortion) but who in the end settles on Greer “about whom there are
many negative things” but whose story will “sell for six figures.” Hannah’s won’t: “She lacks charisma, is morally
cautious, has an average body.”
Maybe Nathaniel is, after all, capable of being an orifice.
