Novels and Money

Everyone who reads a lot of fiction—novels specifically—gets some weird hangups. But everyone who writes a novel has some weird gaps, so it’s fair. Someone in my bookclub freaked out last week because a character in the book we were reading lost his wallet and just…never found it and eventually lost interest in the problem? He was upset for a while, but seemed to forget about it without, say, suffering any repercussions or taking any steps to remedy the situation. It was generally a good and realistic book for the most part but just not that bit, or not for most of us. I like being in that bookclub because a lot of people will chime in with similar levels of alarm if, say, a character is wandering around alone for days on end without having secured any childcare for their young kids. Jobs where no one does any work (or even shows up), relationships where no one seems to like each other but the concept of divorce is unheard of, people walking away easily from what should have been a killing blow (although that one happens more in the movies)—many of us struggle to enjoy a book where these little slices of unreality have distracted us from the story. And yet…this bookclub is not the general reading public. Novels where people have sex standing in the ocean at high tide, buy large houses on a struggling artist’s income, or leave home with no notice for a week and come home to a cat that isn’t dead sell very well, and are reviewed without mention of any of these anomalies. (are the reviewers being censored?? I have met some book reviewers and they are a persnickety crowd. Surely they notice these things.)

The money thing is the one I’ve been snagged on for a while. Apparently I was freaked out about it as early as 2020 judging by this post, which I vaguely remember writing (there’s lots of other problems in that one, I have a lot of other attempted realism failures I cannot abide). Most recently, I was so distracted by how the characters dealt with money in Miranda July’s All Fours that it took me months to accept that it truly is a novel about sex. I mean, it is, I know it is, but I read it in January according to my book diary and I’m only just sort of accepting that that is the main heart of the book. I was so distracted by the inciting incident of the novel being that the main character gets a random $20 000 ($20 000 US!!) and having no immediate need for it, which is already extremely surprising, decides to spend the whole wad on a glorious trip to New York by herself, despite the fact that she is married with a child. I mean, couples can and should travel apart if they want to—Mark and I do occasionally, and it seems revitalizing up to a point, a point that probably varies by your individual relationship—but if a person gets once in a lifetime money and decides to take the TRIP OF A LIFE TIME alone, I don’t think it is a spoiler to ask how married do you think that person will be at the end of the book? I honestly had an easier time letting go of the tampon sex scene go (yes, this is that book, and personally, ew, but I’m much better at not judging sex stuff than what I perceive to be moral decisions—that scene was a minor you-do-you ew compared to NOT SHARING $20 000!!)

The thing about the decision the character makes to keep all the money, is like most of the book—it is born of tremendous privilege. The book seems like autofiction and if you look into Miranda July’s life, that tracks although of coursewe can’t assume anything. But it’s about an author with some considerable success who writes all day while her husband produces music and they have a lovely creative life and enough money to do what they like and provide a good life for their sweet kid. It sounds pretty idyllic although it eventually turns out they aren’t actually all that happy although no one is really doing anything wrong. It happens sometimes. The thing about the money is not irrelevant to the author or to readers—there is a vague focus on class and how the $20 000 is eventually disposed of (the trip is aborted early in the book but so extremely bizarrely and so pivotly that I can’t really talk about it without it being a spoiler) but the whole point of the $20 000 is that it will be used for a frivolous purpose. No one thinks when they get it, “Oh good, now we can fix the roof/get a new car/save for the child’s education/whatever useful thing most of us would do with that amount of cash.” I suppose I don’t know everyone reading this or their financial setup but I bet most of us could think of practical uses for that amount of cash. The idea that such a windfall would just be for fun is class-based. And the inciting incident for the whole novel. And so I never really got over the idea that the protagonist of the book was Not Like Me.

Of course, she isn’t like me in lots of way—tampon sex not withstanding, she is a very weird and provocative person, and also a way more successful writer. She’s also mean to her husband. But she’s also sort of like me in the sense that she crowd-sources her problems to her group chat and believes that people who have been cruel to her have just made a mistake they will eventually notice and apologize for (still waiting on a lot of those apologies).

So, in short, regarding All Fours my experience boils down to: a) the central conceit is bizarre and doesn’t make much sense; b) because of a) and because of how money and sex appear in the book, it was all but impossible for me to relate to this book; c) I related to it deeply anyway and am still thinking about it nearly 6 months later?

WTF, Miranda July?

PS—As a sort of palate cleanser, would you like to know something adorable? Mark was this week years old when he discovered that, unlike kittens, human babies are able to open their eyes from birth!!