Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings is not wholly devoid of value, though. It allows us to see with greater clarity what the new era we are entering into will be like. Everybody in The Interestings is a throwback to the past that is now gone and cannot be brought back.
The novel’s characters share one defining feature that completely takes over their lives: they have no capacity whatsoever to look inside themselves for solutions to their problems or even for an insight into what these problems are. This is all the more shocking given that the novel’s protagonist Jules is a psychotherapist. Even that, however, doesn’t make her aware of the existence of psychological problems either in herself or in anybody else. Like the rest of the characters, Jules spends her entire life beating her head against the same old issue that bothered her in adolescence without moving an inch in the direction of resolving it or progressing to the next stages in her development.
As Ulrich Beck once pointed out, we are entering an era where there is no alternative to looking for “biographical solutions to systemic contradictions.” This means that the only thing you can do to improve your lot in life is changing yourself, simply because there isn’t much more that it is in your powers to change. One could refuse to accept this new reality or one could try to adapt to it. Both are valid life choices, in my view, although for myself I have very obviously chosen the latter. What I do find unacceptable is a profound incapacity ever to recognize the existence of these choices. I don’t get people who spend their entire lives in the state of staring in shock at their own existences, asking “And what the hell was that?”
Wolitzer’s characters are the perfect example of people who live in the state of a deadly lack of self-awareness. This is a way of being in the world that was maybe possible 20 or 30 years ago. Today, this option is no longer available. And when I look at the characters in The Interestings, I can’t avoid thinking that maybe that’s not such a bad thing at all.
Clarissa's Blog 
You make it sound terrible even when you’re praising it.
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That was my goal. 🙂
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Interesting analysis. But don’t you think that sometimes people write in a semi-comedic fashion, for instance a bit like Beckett, showing the absurdity and limitations of the characters without trying to help them or develop them according to a higher wisdom? Not everything has to be a lesson in morality.
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This author’s writing style is so pompous and earnest that, try as I might, I can’t see the text as humorous.
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But, an honest question: How do you KNOW it is pompous and earnest? I mean you are reading a mood into it. How does anyone know that something is necesarily earnest? Even Beckett can be read in a manner of existential angst, as if he were overly dry and earnest, but I maintain that the best way to read him is in a much more mocking, comic light.
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I’m a literary critic. It’s my job. 🙂
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That’s nice, but my question was directed in a philosophical vein. I wasn’t looking for a mystical answer.
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There is nothing mystical in what I do. I can provide quotes when I get near the copy of the novel and you will see that it is very pompous writing. There are things like “she was a poodly, dandeliony adolescent.” Just really obnoxious writing.
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“Poodly”?
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I remember the “poodly, dandeliony” quote. As a teen, Jules has a strong perm with lots of really tiny curls, so she ended up looking like she had a huge afro. The “poodly, dandeliony teen” quote is, I think, the description of how she thought she looked back then. (Don’t have the book here.)
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I enjoyed it because I felt as if the author was saying ‘look at how pathetic these characters are’ not in a comedic way, but as a sad story. The characters reminded me of my mom sadly.
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The book irritated me for many reasons, only a few of which I can pinpoint.
— I ended up not caring about any of the characters really, except perhaps Ethan, or what happened with them. As a result, I had to force myself to continue reading.
— Why the hell did we have to read every 2 pages how Ethan Figman is talented and brilliant? Okay, we get it. Cutting that redundancy would have saved 50 pages. It made me want to edit the damn thing.
— While Ethan, Jules, even Jonah, are fleshed out in some detail, Ash is this completely unreal character. We never learn anything real about her, other that she is beautiful and willowy and just perfect, gets sad but never angry, and just absorbs shit from all sides with grace and is just this infallible perfect darling.
But there were some redeeming qualities.
— For instance, I recognize Jules’ jealousy. It’s awful to envy someone you also love, but often you just can’t help it. I think this envy was depicted quite realistically. Other than that, I thought Jules was a really obnoxious character.
— There were a couple of surprisingly good insights. Where Ethan says, on page 485, “Sometimes I think work is a great excuse for everything…” “But then I think, maybe it’s not an excuse at all. Maybe it really is more interesting than everything else. Than relationships.” When I read that, a shiver went down my spine, because that’s the dirty unspoken secret of workaholics, or at least this workaholic (me) — that no matter how much you love people, spending time with them may bore you, and you’d really rather work. That’s an awful thing to say, but it’s true.
Overall, I don’t think it’s awful, but it doesn’t deserve the hype it has been receiving.
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The repetition of how talented Ethan is obscures that he bombs at everything – the movie, the spin-off, fatherhood, marriage – aside from a single idea he had in childhood. The guy never even tries to grow up. He dies as a child prodigy at the age of 50-something.
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That’s a great point!
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Congratulations, you’ve convinced me not to read The Interestings or look past the blurb, which to me read “self absorbed privileged boring characters in a Boomer bildungsroman” of which there are millions of such books. It seems, though, that most Boomers would not be alive or indeed extremely old in this brave new world where you’ve got to change yourself to deal with systemic contradictions. This extreme age or actually being dead would render this need to change moot for these characters.
Boomer bildungsromane has never been of less interest to people other than Boomers at this moment. The most common age of an American at this very moment is: 22.
That’s right: people who have just graduated or are one year out of college. The median age is 37. Not boomers.
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