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

Biography
Amy's new novel, Motherland, will be published in August 2012 by Simon & Schuster. Beyond that . . .
In 1973 Amy was born in Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan. Raised in Brooklyn Heights, Amy went on to attend Hunter College High School in Manhattan, alma mater of Supreme Court justice Elena Kagan. In 1995 Amy was graduated from Brown University, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, and with Honors.
In 1995 Amy returned to Brooklyn to pursue a career as an actress. It didn't go well, though she did appear in an episode of "Law and Order" for forty seconds, an episode for which she still receives residuals. In 1996 she became a columnist at New York Press, writing her autobiographical "Female Trouble" column, a chronicle of dating below Fourteenth Street that elicited loads of invective from readers and shamed her parents at dinner parties. This column was satirized in a cartoon by Anthony Haden-Guest that featured a blond and brunette talking, with the brunette telling the blond, "I'm the new you." This was thought to be based on Amy and Candace Bushnell, though Anthony never admitted it outright.
In 1999, Simon & Schuster published Amy's first novel, Run Catch Kiss, which has since been translated into four languages. According to the New York Times review of the book, "A little-known event that took place around the time that Richard M. Nixon was resigning as President was the birth of Amy Sohn, who has emerged as a representative of her generation." The review included the word "concomitant," "concupiscence," and "Spenglerian," three words that do not appear in the novel.
In 1999 Amy became a columnist at the New York Post, where she enraged management by comparing Mayor Giuliani to Hitler and writing an expose on the Yankees locker room. In 2000, Amy co-created, wrote and starred in a television show for Oxygen's "X Chromosome" animated series entitled "Avenue Amy."
In August 2001 Amy landed at New York magazine. At New York, her columns mirrored the trajectory of her life, from "Naked City" to "Mating" to "Breeding." In 2004 Simon & Schuster published her second novel, My Old Man, about a May-December relationship between a rabbinical school dropout and an aging screenwriter. It took place in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
In 2008 she became a columnist at England's Grazia magazine, where she wrote a column called "Diary of a Recessionista." The recession soon took over and the column was axed. Over the years, Amy has also written for Harper's Bazaar, Premiere, Playboy, Elle, The New York Times, and Details. She is a recipient of a reader award from Playboy called the Golden Bunny and was voted one of Park Slope's 100 most influential people. She is certain she is the only individual to have received both honors.
In 2009 Simon & Schuster published Amy's third novel, Prospect Park West, about four Park Slope mothers on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It was translated into five languages.
As a pundit on popular culture, she has appeared on such networks as VH1, MTV, Fox News, CNN, Lifetime, MSNBC, and PBS. She has written television pilots for ABC, Fox, Lifetime and most recently, HBO and Sarah Jessica Parker, who optioned Prospect Park West. She has written two films, a Gen X Big Chill called Spin the Bottle, and a Gen X horror film called Pagans.
She grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives today. She has a brother, five years younger. She voted for Barack Obama and raised money for him. Her favorite writers are Laurie Colwin, Hilma Wolitzer, Charles Bukowski, Nathanael West, Mary Gaitskill, and Bruce Jay Friedman. Her favorite films include Gregory's Girl, The Landlord, The Apartment, My Life as a Dog, and Together.
She had her seventh birthday party at Kramer versus Kramer but not all the children were permitted by their parents to come. As a child she was taken to the films Heartland, Splash, Heart Like a Wheel, The Magical Mystery Tour, and Mr. Hulot's Holiday and is glad about it. She thinks Wainwright elevates Apatow and not the other way around. She has strong biceps but weak abs. She is aware that her inspiration for this list was the Kevin Costner speech in Bull Durham. She has had sexual fantasies about Richard Ford and they were productive.
If she could switch careers she would be a Broadway musical theater producer or a sommelier. She dresses to the left. She believes that when it comes to hair highlights, cheap is expensive. Her favorite joke is, "What's the difference between a Jew and a Gentile? A Gentile leaves without saying goodbye and a Jew says goodbye without leaving." She also enjoys a very tasteless Katharine Hepburn joke whose punchline is, "How do you turn it off?" Her favorite candy is York Peppermint Patties and she always has a knot in the same section of her hair when she wakes up. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.
Like her at www.facebook.com/amysohn and visit her at www.amysohn.com.

ugh sorry that was a lot more text than I realized.

"baby boom" - is there even replacement level reproduction going on at this socioeconomic level?

This guy is on the level:

melis (#1,854)
"Full disclosure: I co-sleep with Lena Dunham's former math tutor."

Posted on July 10, 2012 at 2:04 pm
Reply » 2 .

related - this article made me feel good about leaving NYC

Multiphasic (#411)
Woof. I'm plain tuckered out from all this judging. Yojimbo, come here and bring daddy some of your ritalin.

Posted on July 10, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Reply » 1 .

Jesus that was depressing.

I have a friend with kids who says Wine o'clock all the f'ing time on fb. :/

it's depressing to read about depressed people

yes

My wife started going to *mommy meetups* in our neighborhood and a lot of the women are heavy drinkers and sound like they're probably the slightly younger versions of the women in Sohn's novel.

How do you think they smoked weed out of the cardboard part of a hanger? I can't figure it out.

sounds like a really long one-hitter

I just assume they packed the tube full of weed and smoked it like a cigar

you put the burning matter at one end and inhale out the other iirc

Why are these people having kids?

yeah, but cardboard

because they didn't pull out, that was covered

lol

or they were uncovered, I guess

I mean don't these people basically have a lot of paid help with their kids? It's news to me that parenting becomes easy once your kids start kindergarten, and obviously someone is watching the kids while mom and dad are out at all these coke parties. I guess if you can outsource responsibility you don't really have to be responsible, you can just enjoy drug-laced ennui.

I figured that with the exception of the anecdotal party where the husbands were off to the side while the wives were going crazy, the described nights were all ones where the other spouse was at home with the kid.

oh right, yeah she did say that

Tbh I still like doing all those irresponsible things, and if I'd gotten married at 30 and had my 2.5 kids already I'm not sure I wouldn't resemble those people?

i kinda of feel like there's a tone in this piece that is simultaneously asking readers to make ethical judgements on these ppl (the drinking, cheating, drug use, mindlessness) and is defiantly justifying those behaviors. i understand that it's titillating to read about presumably responsible adults (parents, no less) doing irresponsible things, but it's also hugely sensationalistic and i doubt any of these behaviors indicate some broader/extensive trend. maybe more importantly, this should be the crux of the piece:

Why do moms in my generation regress, whether by drugging, cheating, or going out too late and too often? Because everything our children thrive on—stability, routine, lack of flux, love, well-paired parents—feels like death to those entrusted with their care.

But it is totally asinine! Why do things like stability, routine, lack of flux, love etc feel like death to parents?

Also, the stigmatization of casual marijuana use in that article is pretty reactionary. The guy who gifted the author a generous amount of weed isn't her friend but her drug dealer? OKAY.

What, casually nicknaming your friends Hooker, Slut, and Drug Addict and cheating on your dude in the back of a minivan?

xp

You can do all those "omg irresponsible" behaviors without pretending you're a total degenerate for the purposes of creative fiction, imo.

What, casually nicknaming your friends Hooker, Slut, and Drug Addict and cheating on your dude in the back of a minivan?

I have a bunch of friends who would do this in a heartbeat but they're all guys

mommy whites

Judd Apatow would be proud /morbs

I used to get all the jokes along that line, or even the casual prison rape jokes, but then I realized I knew people who had shitty families or were actual former drug addicts or work in sex work and I was just o_O at throwing that shit out for the laughs

btw this says a lot about me but the only thing that actually made me angry about this was calling the dude who sells you weed a drug dealer, otherwise it seems like a certain kind of boilerplate workshop fiction I've heard a million times

The difference between twenty-five and thirty-eight is that, at thirty-eight, when a strange man says he wants to have sex with you, you feel grateful.

o rly?

in 2012 is weed drugs

I don't see how anyone can read the "drug dealer" section and think that she for real considers that dude to be her drug dealer, as opposed to sensationalizing their relationship to elicit a reaction (which, btw, fails spectacularly)

Actually I am a simmering kettle of thoughts about women calling their female friends (previously?) derogatory names. I've been seeing it in a few difft capacities lately, some more defensible than others, and THAT is not something I do but the ways it's done are percolating with me right now.

The difference between twenty-five and thirty-eight is that, at thirty-eight, when a strange man says he wants to have sex with you, you feel grateful.

o rly?

― mookieproof

YEAH my outburst of yesterday notwithstanding, this is some seriously toxic bullshit.

i think it's telling that she watched Girls and decided that it was time for a similarly self-hating narrative about ppl her age.

showing how vapid + irresponsible you and your friends are = brave + honest in 2012

I am sorry I clicked on that link thanks a lot guys

completely loling at you guys getting offender by "drug dealer". if she referred to a barista that way, would you be offended? or are you angry because of the borderline acceptable/illegal way weed is treated so you have to stand up for your socially-acceptable drug of choice?

wtf are you talking about mh?

lyfe

*passes a hanger*

*winks*

*mouths "get yer coat mate"*

PLEASE FERTILIZE ME O MAN, FOR I HAVE A HAUNTED PUSSY

Mordy, if "drug dealer" carries a stigma, why not her derogatory nicknames for the friends? Seems like an arbitrary distinction.

yes, her derogatory nicknames for her friends also carry a stigma is that your point?

... are we just going to ignore Tracer's post, then

I'd change my display name but apparently I'm already "the dude who makes reference to sex organs in his display name" and I don't really feel like conforming to expectations right now