We have become an army of multiply chemically sensitive, high-maintenance princesses trying to make our way through a world full of irksome peas.
I couldn't quite pinpoint what was turning me off about this book until I read someone else's review wherein he complained that the lack of connection Rakoff makes with his material is because he is sent off on adventures that are sure to bring out his snarky side-- I hadn't considered this and of course that's the problem, and also the reason why I can't quite classify him as a memoirist. Of course the gay Rakoff is going to have a dull time at a Playboy photoshoot. As the Director of the Log Cabin Republicans ( a gay Republican group) says to the incredulous Rakoff, "You had this story written before you even got here". It seems apparent that Rakoff exclusively sought experiences that would confirm his worldview, confirm that he's on the smart side of history. And in this book, about excess and avarice, he can be downright cruel about some easy targets:
At Paris Fashion Week
All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, 'What can you write that hasn't been written already?'
He's absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with at that moment is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn't. Also, not yet having undergone his alarming weight loss, and seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin overrisen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How's that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L?
On post 9/11 distrust:
If for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur porn auteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capiltalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothing more on its mind than servitude to Mammon and celebrity at any cost, I wouldn't be surprised.
And he takes several potshots at Republicans in general and the Bush family in particular:
While we're on the subject of the horrors of war, and humanity's most poisonous and least charitable attributes, let me not forget to mention Barbara Bush (that would be former First Lady and presidential mother as opposed to W's liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter. I'm sorry, that's not fair. I've no idea if she smokes.) When the administration censored images of the flag-draped coffins of the young men and women being killed in Iraq - purportedly to respect "the privacy of the families" and not to minimize and cover up the true nature and consequences of the war - the family matriarch expressed her support for what was ultimately her son's decision by saying on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
Mrs. Bush is not getting any younger. When she eventually ceases to walk among us we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag-draped coffin. Whatever obituaries that run will admiringly mention those wizened, dynastic loins of hers and praise her staunch refusal to color her hair or glamorize her image. But will they remember this particular statement of hers, this "Let them eat cake" for the twenty-first century? Unlikely, since it received far too little play and definitely insufficient outrage when she said it. So let us promise herewith to never forget her callous disregard for other parents' children while her own son was sending them to make the ultimate sacrifice, while asking of the rest of us little more than to promise to go shopping. Commit the quote to memory and say it whenever her name comes up. Remind others how she lacked even the bare minimum of human integrity, the most basic requirement of decency that says if you support a war, you should be willing, if not to join those nineteen-year-olds yourself, then at least, at the very least, to acknowledge that said war was actually going on. Stupid f-ing cow.
I'd imagine a reader's enjoyment of this book would be related to how closely one's own worldview is confirmed by the smart and articulate David Rakoff's expression of it. Just as only a very rich person could recognise the ironically retro high value of rough handmade bars of soap, only a person with access to unlimited food could find it a spiritual quest to commit himself to a strict fast-- an experience so self-indulgent that Rakoff spent many hours every day preparing the broths and teas that sustained the fast, prompting the question,"Who outside of a person of high means could afford that kind of time to artificially keep himself above starvation level?"
I will stipulate to having both French sea salt and a big bottle of extra virgin in my kitchen. And while the presence of both might go some small distance in pigeonholing me demographically, neither one of them makes me a good person. They are mute and useless indicators of the content of my character.
I wonder if that notion is backwards? That perhaps the indicators aren't so mute?
On cryogenics, he says:
In my brief glimpse of what is to come I realize how little I care to witness it. I have seen the future and I'm fairly relieved to say, it looks nothing like me.
It is still poignant to hear Rakoff dismiss immortality from beyond the grave, and even if his politics seemed to enter this volume more than in the last one, he passed too soon.
