Yesterday I read Miss Misery by Andy Greenwald. This novel started out well, I even thought it could be the successful successor to the book I’d read just before, The House Beautiful, also a novel about youth figuring itself out.  But whereas The House Beautiful was fresh and witty, exuberant and unpredictable, Miss Misery quickly became stale, flat, juvenile, and a sad slack attempt at something (I’m just not sure what).  Our narrator David is a writer living in Brooklyn, writing about pop culture (just like the author) and gets a book deal to write about online diaries.  Doing research for his book, he falls in love with a teeny bopper who drinks and smokes and has sex (how unusual) and then his evil double appears.  His ego and his id begin battling it out for his soul.  But like the online journal entries of the book and on the internet, this novel inspires nothing more than nasty giggling.  The lack of spontaneity, wit, genuine feeling, or original insight is stunning; the mass of self-conscious, facile, and repetitive writing is equally stunning.

The final chapters come loaded with so much moralizing and superficial advice about being true to your own self that it could have been served up in Readers Digest, Teen Edition: “Then you go get it.  You don’t look back.  You don’t let anybody stand in your way. Not Franta.  Not these kids.  Not your own true self.“  Or: “It was about me and it was about my life.  It was about living it instead of fearing it for a change.  It was about going out instead of staying in.  It wasn’t about dealing or fighting or any of the convenient buzzwords I had placated my subconscious with over the past few hectic days – it was about accepting.”  Whew.

For club kids old and new generations, the bits about the clubbing and dancing and DJaying were fun.  But figuring out that going to clubs isn’t living your life is not new (see Tama Janowitz’ Slaves of New York, Jay McInerny’s Bright Lights, Big City, and others) and Greenwald doesn’t give us any new spins on an old rift.