quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

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lol

"our project"??

I scrolled very quickly through it and caught something about "top 10 orgiastic tao sex maneuvers"

wowwwwwwwwwww

New York Times I love you but you're bringing me down

sorry but i see the photo and all i can think is dude can maybe power lift a bagel if he's feeling up to it

I was wondering when someone would post the link this.

I'm going to get a bit challopsy here, because I actually read that entire article, and in spite of wanting to punch both people in the face at multiple moments, I liked parts of it. I mean still, yeah, it definitely was made for this thread.

i can believe there are some actual relationship insights here and there in it. or i'd hope so. i'm just not going to read the whole thing to find them.

yeah, I too started to read it and then after about a page was just like, oh barf, gimme a fuggin break with your fake ass yuppie narcissism "problemz"-which-are-really-new-modes-of-self-love

God knows I don't begrudge anyone happiness, which is why I blame the reporters, not the subjects: as usual with the NYT, the story's framed as if it was about beehives on the moon or some shit.

Um, it's a memoir.

And? It's still published in the NYT mag as a main story, complete with photos and headlines. Framing matters.

The things she says "drive her crazy" about her husband are all actually braggin.

xpost yeah but you said you blame the reporters, not the subjects. The reporter is one of the subjects.

I guess as a married dude I enjoyed some of the "What is it we're actually supposed to be looking for (if anything) in a marriage" stuff. I also found it interesting to read between the lines to the narcissism and distance in their relationship.

from reading this thread only, im hoping it goes totally tiger woods on them

one thing is i'm just very tired of this whole stunt-memoir thing: i'll do or try to do XYZ thing to change or improve my life, and write a book or a big magazine feature about it. and in a case like this, you're bringing other people into it too. she writes at the beginning how her husband is kind of resistant to the whole thing, and i mean, no kidding. "honey, i want us to work on our relationship, and by the way i'm going to write about everything you do or say."

his n hers lamps :\

lol modern marrieds

(and then if doing the stunt-memoir puts a strain on your relationship, you can do like julie powell and write a second memoir about the stress caused by the first memoir. it's a perpetual bullshit machine.)

yeah julie powell needs to go away

I need to write a stunt memoir about being stressed out by trying to come up with my own stunt memoir.

RFI: is Julie Powell worse than Elizabeth Gilbert?

o man my sister on her blog said she was lookin forward to reading that article cause she knows the guy - and her post has got a bunch of comments from ladies being all omg it was so great - smh

this is the couple where the husband wrote (and published) an epic "sexual bildungsroman" about all his past lovers right

yeah here's the Publishers Weekly summary of the husband's book:

Duane tracks the emotional meanderings of Berkeley grad student Cassius Harper in this meticulous study of the ambivalence and romantic bewilderment of privileged American 20-somethings...his occasionally claustrophobic first-person narration offers a second-by-second account of his affair with this "most exquisitely sexual and vulnerable girl-woman."

i declare a new rule, if your husband writes a book containing the phrase "exquisitely sexual and vulnerable girl-woman" you're allowed to go all sorts of Julie Powell on his ass.

argh. i want to know less about both of these people.

despite many reservations and twitches, made it through the article on good faith. The last two years have seen so much writing on modern divorce as a generation of 35-45ers discover it all over again for themselves, and so much of it is gung-ho marriage-is-an-inherently-fucked-institution / I-got-divorced-and-YOU-SHOULD-TOO that I was actually willing to suspend all snarkiness for the sake of a hilariously overamped article suggesting that even a ludicrously picture-perfect marriage takes work

so in the middle of what seems to me like a tidal wave of female bloggers who are loudly & proudly giving up on marriage, I had time for this article, even if I thought the couple were pretty shamelessly ridiculous. almost woke up mothra's divorce thread the post about it but figured that'd be a lonely thing to do

i loved how it turned out their marriage was never even the silver mylar balloon, it was "hiding" in the basement

how could you MARRY someone who wrote the phrase "exquisitely sexual and vulnerable girl-woman"?

that article made me against gay marriage, and also straight marriage, and against humanity

I was actually willing to suspend all snarkiness for the sake of a hilariously overamped article suggesting that even a ludicrously picture-perfect marriage takes work

i guess, but that seems like such an obvious point, and i'm sure in any case it could be made by less annoying people. i have read some good things over the years about the unique pressures on the modern western marriage to provide not only stability and security but also self-fulfillment and transcendence, and how can anything ever live up to that, etc., i think it's a fine topic for discussion. but it doesn't have to be done in such a self-involved and off-puttingly self-aggrandizing way.

that article made me against gay marriage, and also straight marriage, and against humanity

^^^

x infinity

i read the whole thing and yes, it was horrible

I salute anyone who makes it past page 2.

I read the whole thing and somehow it didn't make me hate everyone in it. Maybe my sensors just weren't on yesterday.

the unique pressures on the modern western marriage to provide not only stability and security but also self-fulfillment and transcendence, and how can anything ever live up to that, etc.

I want to read more about this, actually.

I know the marriage industry is as busy as it ever was, and as a result couples confuse the formality with lifelong commitment, but, really, does anyone look for "transcendence" in marriage? They can just eat hash brownies if they're looking for that.

jokes aside this is about as good an article as i think you can hope from this kind of personal-essay crap

I want to read more about this, actually.

wait for my memoir!

Alfred, I'm pretty sure there are smart, well-meaning people who think they're going to get all of that out of their married relationship. I don't really understand, that's not my world, but I think I would eventually have trouble with the same thing.

i know what yr saying alfred and otm obv., but isn't "if this relationship is good, why aren't i happier?" sort of a recurring theme in the culture? i think there's a natural tendency to locate the source of personal dissatisfaction in whoever happens to be closest. and sometimes it's true -- if you're in a bad relationship, it'll make you unhappy. otoh sometimes the problem is just that nobody's ever happy or satisfied all the time and over time it's easy to start associating that with the person you spend most time with. which is maybe not the same as consciously expecting transcendence from a relationship, but it's an subconscious form of it.

a subconscious form of it.

and yeah, that is my own divorce experience talking there. i expect my ex- would have a different take on things. anyway, it all definitely shaped how i thought about what i wanted from a relationship, when i got married again.

ehhh so i read the whole thing, its really not that bad, i dont think

i mean especially compared to barfworthy ayelet waldman shit

that being said its probably way more interesting to marrieds and ppl in long term relayshs

i like the idea of always "improving" a relationship, it's good advice--but one of her main gripes was that the guy cooked too much, and cooked stuff that was too elaborate. i can understand that, but it seems like small potatoes compared to other problems you can have in a relationship. but of course, every relationship is different and maybe it just really bugged her.