I read a lot of quality fiction, stuff that could be generally classified as “literature.” I keep meaning to write more about what I read, but the problem with quality reading material is that I don’t have too much to say about it. I write down a lot of inspiring quotations in my journal, but when it comes to making some sort of commentary, I’m completely lost. There are a lot of people writing insightful reviews on these works, and they do it a lot better than I do. Some of them are even professionals. I may have found my calling in the “reading something and then writing about it” world. In between reading works of “literature,” I read a fair amount of flat out crap. And I love it.
After reading what may be the emotionally heaviest book (though totally beautiful and worth it) I’ve ever encountered (and I read about the Holocaust a lot), I needed a pick-me-up. It came to me in the form of an advance reader’s copy of The Manny that I scored for free when I was working for Borders. The Manny? Now that is something I have a lot to say about. My $120,000 college education is going to come in handy on this one. Hold on to your seats, we’re going to have a dissection of gender and class issues here folks! Ohboy! [First, I would like to recommend that for a brief analysis of this book in song form, you check out this amazing video on YouTube.]
I would like to dive right in to a quote from page 1 that illuminates the premise of the novel and also illustrates the concept of “Trophy Babies” that I have talked about quite a bit in my own wee life. I know the sort of people who have had Trophy Babies, and while they are not NYC elite, they are certainly snobs of a certain variety, possessing far more money than sense.
“These children play an important role in their parents’ never-ending game of one-upmanship as they are trotted out in smocked dresses, shuttled from French tutor to cello class, and discussed like prize livestock at a 4-H fair.”
Indeed, for the remainder of the novel, children are treated as a high-maintenance accessory, and not an actual fulfilling part of life. Certainly not worth having for their own sake. Not only does every family have a nanny, but some families have a nanny for each child. On picking up the book, I thought the premise was simply that the protagonist went against societal-norms and hired a male nanny for her children, scoring one for dis-establishing the oppressive gender binary. Oh, would that it were that subversive. Alas, the “manny” in question is a male nanny specifically for the purposes of providing a positive male influence for her eldest son in the absence of his workaholic father. Her eldest son who already had one nanny, albeit a female one.
Let us take a minute and pause on the implications here. The son “requires” a male influence in his life in order to develop properly. What about the millions of boys raised in single-mother households? Oh, that’s right. No one in “The Grid” (as the Upper East side is referred to in this tome) would be a single mother. And if she was, she would hire a manny. As for filling in for an absentee father, no one can fill in a parental role on a contractual basis. Co-parenting requires a commitment. Whether or not that commitment should be coming from someone whose main concern in life is his social status and how, even as a member of the upper class elite, he doesn’t have enough of it because there exist people in the world who have more money, is debatable. In any case, a “manny” is hardly a reasonable solution for absentee parenting.
Of course, nothing in this novel is reasonable. It’s a trashy window into a world that we plebes will never enter! That’s why we’re reading it! In the tradition of such upper-class exposés as Pride and Prejudice, we read books that describe the folly of the upper class with the tried and true moral that those of us in the middle class may have less money, but our lives are so much more emotionally fulfilling, to make us feel better about the fact that we have less money. The class structure will never be toppled. We will never have our revolution. But, we can live vicariously through the experiences of fictional characters who vomit up caviar and realize that the “better life” was really their own humble upbringing.
Irritatingly, though the protagonist predictably ends up ending up her loveless marriage and leaving her high-stress high-status job and settling into a more mundane life “downtown,” none of this is done by her own actions. Jamie Whitfield is the least pro-active character I have ever seen written down on paper. How she managed to claw her way to the top of a major news network is beyond me, especially since she fails abominably at her job and her stress coping skills seem to be below-par for someone in her position. Her marriage is a miserable failure, and yet, she waits until walking in on her husband’s infidelity before deciding on a divorce. She doesn’t even decide to hire a “manny” to encourage her son’s development until being advised to do so by a friend. And the inevitable relationship with said “manny” (because let’s face it, without this particular element, we would not be reading this book)? While the feelings are mutual, the relationship is, also predictably, entirely on his terms. So much for high-powered women being bastions for modern feminism.
Despite her career and class status, Jamie Whitfield is a bastion of gender conformity. As is her “manny,” who only has a job in the “service industry” as a hobby. His real career? Software development. At which he’s doing very well, thankyouverymuch. This is all just a whim, a sort of extended favor to a pretty girl. There is no devotion to a calling to working with children on his part, though he is certainly devoted to the specific children involved - perhaps more so than their own mother, who seems to be attached to her own children as most people are to their dogs. Which is to say, she likes them, but only to the extent that they make pleasant companions. Their inner lives are of little to no concern.
In the end, everything goes down as one would expect. The rich are shallow. Meaningful life is found among the “salt of earth,” who evidently live in Brooklyn. High power and high class are no match for happiness, and as the great philosopher Lennon once said, “Money can’t buy me love.” The manny returns to his software company and returns once the ink is dry on the divorce papers, starting a relationship with a former employer on his terms. Jamie finds a less intense job to spend more time with her children, because no, women really can’t balance motherhood and high-power careers. Gender conformity will live another day. Class consciousness will go back to sleep, and the plebes will rest happy knowing that private pilots do not bring emotional fulfillment, which is far more important in life than being able to burn the clothes in your closet the nanosecond that the new season’s fashions are off the runway.
And suckers like me will continue wasting our education in the social sciences on reading crap like this. And loving it.
