A Month of Novellas, Book 15: Walks with Men - Ann Beattie (2010)

bedroom mementos (apologies for crappy pic)

I’m going to cut right to the chase and say that I really disliked this book.

That’s right, before I’ve even said what the title and who the author is, I’ll state that I hated this book. Just so we know where we’re standing.

I spotted this little tome in one of my research lists and thought it would be good to read something contemporary. This was published in 2010 after all, so besides a book put out this year, I thought this very much fit the bill. Well, its’ timeliness has nothing to do with my hatred for it, but let me actually say something about it.

This was another writer I’d never read. I’ve seen her name here and there, but well, there’s not quite enough time in a day, in a week, in a lifetime to get to all the writers one hears about, so this was my first foray into her work.

Walks with men at 102 small pages should’ve been a breeze to read and instead turned into a chore with each page becoming a Herculean task for me. As in it was Herculean to not just throw it across the room. But it was a library book so I had to be careful.

It concerns Jane, a recent Harvard graduate who seems to think she’s a lot smarter than she actually is. How else to explain the ridiculous risks she takes in her life? Neil, a sometimes writer as well as a professor who promises to fill her in into the mysteries of mankind. That’s right. Mankind. He promises her that if she, well, sleeps with him, he’ll teach her everything she’d ever want to know about men. Like he’s some sort of savant on the workings of the male mind. The set up is already ridiculous and I’m already annoyed at Jane and at Neil and particularly at the author for writing down this crap.

Yes, recent college graduates can be a bit naïf, but really? ‘Hi person I’m not actually attracted to that I’ve just met. What’s this you say? You’ll teach me all your great ‘wisdom’ in exchange for me sleeping with you? And I’ll leave my loving boyfriend and go against what everyone I know thinks in order to be with you, oh great guru?’ Give me a break.

Interspersed throughout is a litany of name-dropping, 80s NYC references to make sure that you know that you’re reading a story set in the 1980s. It all feels so forced, like someone has just been told that there aren’t enough mentions of Basquiat or AIDS, and could you please fit some more in?
Nothing about it feels real, and when one of the characters takes off inexplicably or another gets pushed unto the subway tracks (Really? Really??), it just adds to the disaffection for the whole thing.

The jacket of this book came complete with reference to Ms. Beattie’s various previous awards. I don’t think she received any for this one and its’ vapidness makes me unwilling to try out another one of her works.