happiness and love (zoe dubno)

Came across Zoe Dubno via an article on her friend, Adam Tooze, which included Tooze’s sclerotic take on the Biden-era democrats whose complacency has, in his view only facilitated the rise of Trump. Tooze is one of those writer-journos, like Jäger, whose take on geo-politics or eco-politics (in both senses) is always worth reading, so was curious as to what kind of a novel a close friend of his would come up with.

Whilst reading up about her, I discovered, like Calderon, she’s a fan of Bernhard, and indeed this is made explicit through a note at the end of the book acknowledging the influence of The Woodcutters on the novel. Fans of Bernhard in the Anglo-Saxon world are a select bunch. As I began to read the novel. I realised that it could almost be seen as a homage to the Austrian. Happiness and Love is a stream of consciousness thought-piece set at a New York supper party, supposedly held in honour of a recently deceased actress friend.

Apart from this structural echo, the narrator’s tone is also decidedly Bernhard-esque. She is full of loathing for Eugene and Nicole, the pretentious pseudo-intellectual couple hosting the party. Eugene is a mediocre but well-connected artist, subsided by his wife Nicole, scion of a wealthy family. The echo with Tender is the Night is probably not accidental . (“Nicole trapped in the perfectly terrible cage of her own creation”). The novel, through the narrator’s voice and that of another actress who arrives late to the party, lays into these over-privileged mediocrities with gusto.

There is an unlikely synchronicity, a crossover, with the last novel I read, also about metropolitan socialites. At one point someone in the novel says: “I see no difference between someone reading Virginia Woolf and Twilight.” Perhaps, as in the case of Latronico’s Perfection, Dubno runs the risk of being hoisted on her own petard. (Or indeed, Fitzgerald himself.) In focusing on the objects of her scorn, Dubno could end up actually promoting them. Maybe this is why she makes the decision to switch from the narrator’s voice to the actress’ to deliver the coup de grace at the book’s conclusion - by framing this sclerotic attack in the third person Dubno intends to lend the book’s critique a sense of a greater objectivity.

Or perhaps not. Whichever, the novel is a great addition to the canon of novels about the superficiality and vainglory of the upper classes. (Although referring to my above point I note that it was listed as one of Vogue’s best books of last year…)

I also enjoyed the writer’s observations on contemporary trends in literature:

That’s why it’s such a great failing that literature these days has become so incredibly banal, so fixated on worthlessly depicting the mundane thoughts that their authors have as they drink a cup of coffee and mourn that their lives aren’t more special. They’ve given us in Hollywood a monopoly on joy and humor and wonder.