Nathaniel P. follows the life of Nate Piven, a thirty-something hipster living in Brooklyn, the gentrified part of Brooklyn that is. Nate is a writer and a member of the Brooklyn literati, and he and his ilk references George Eliot on the fly and writes essays about the "commodification of conscience" and how meritocracy is actually bad for the society. Nate was "a product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education." He's a class-conscious feminist who feels bad for the Hispanic maids that has to clean his grimy, disgusting apartment because he's too much of a lazy fuck to do it himself.
Nate Piven is like a rotten pickle hidden in an otherwise delicious vegan artisan sandwich. You're eating the sandwich and you feel good about yourself for being so healthy, so ethical, and so supportive of local craftsmanship. Then you accidentally bit the pickle and you nearly die of food poisoning. I know this is a weird and overly-extended metaphor, but Nate Piven inspires in me a rage that I cannot express using normal sentences.
Nate Piven is the kind of guy that says he's a feminist, only to subtly undermine women whenever he went. Everyone I think knows one. The educated college graduate who reads Svavo and Heidegger and whose favorite author is 95% white men with a few token women and POC thrown in. He thinks Jane Austen is a "sentimental" writer. Nate Piven actually says in the book that women aren't just capable of producing good literature because they, in their infinite practicality, only accepts things as it was with no interest in examining it further. He thinks that women are educators instead of aesthetes and when a woman expresses an opinion that goes against his generalization of how women thinks, he immediately assumes that she copies the thought of a male professor, thoroughly ignoring that women have this thing called "intellect" and "free thought", both concepts entirely foreign to him apparently.
He's an asshole, but the book's in third-person limited, so we have to endure him thinking up various ways of justifying him being proud that his girlfriend is smart and ~not like~ other girls and transforming into a detached fuckface when they start being serious. Nate's smart. He has a way of making it seem like he is justified and reasonable...until you realize that it's all utter bullshit.
Unlike the Virgin Suicides, I don't feel repulsed. The book is sharp and ruthless, although the prose is flat at times. It's evident that we're supposed to hate Nate and join his ex-girlfriends in their rage. The novel is brilliant; it directly exposes liberal progressive sexists like Nate for what they're worth. Although, the writing isn't as sharp as it can be. Someone on NPR says that it has Jane Austen-style wit and social commentary but while it's sharp, Ms. Waldman still has a long way to go before she can hang with Austen. That's why I'm having such a hard time assigning a grade. I think it's brilliant and well-written, but does it really truly deserve a four-star? The writing, though better than some, is still very mediocre compared to others in the genre. But I'm being harsh on Ms, Waldman. This is her first book after all, and I love the incisive social commentary.
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