Lonesome Quill

I’ve been reading a lot of the smack/feminist rage against Lori Gottlieb and Marry Him, and, all due respect from a card-carrying member, I think it’s misplaced. Of course, Gottlieb (and/or her editor) is baiting the response with the title/subtitle of her book. She’s probably delighted by all the sturm und drang, which gets her media appearances and sells units. And, sure, if you don’t look beyond the stupidity of the book’s cover, it seems only natural that you’ll see Gottlieb as an anti-feminist throwback, preying on women’s societally inculcated fear of remaining single.

True enough: Gottlieb has that fear. As I said, she desperately wants to be married—though, of course, at least until writing the book, not desperate enough to open her heart to non-alpha men—and she seems to forget that there are women who aren’t straight, or who don’t want to be married, or who don’t want to have children, or even women whose standards for partners are depressingly low. That’s all part of the book’s narcissism, that it takes Gottlieb’s own personality profile as a cultural trend that supposedly says something about all women.

But if you read the book, it’s not too hard to see that Gottlieb is talking about a very specific kind of woman: the straight, upper-middle class, marriage-minded, hyper-intellectual, achievement-oriented, status-obsessed striver who refuses to date anyone but the alpha hottie who’s talented at sexy banter but miserable at real connection. She’s talking about herself. And sure, there are women like Gottlieb. Just last night on the phone, a friend told me about someone she knows, a 40-year-old woman who won’t date any man who isn’t extremely conventionally attractive, because she, apparently, “deserves no less.” So, there’s a Gottlieb.

The honest version of Marry Him would have a personal title, something like “Learning to Love,” and it would chart Gottlieb’s initial steps toward deepening as a person, without making any claims about women in general. But the book is designed to sell. The movie rights have already gone to Tobey Maguire: In two years we’ll get the predictable romantic comedy about the woman who goes through a series of charmers, only to find a goofy loveball at the end—the goofy loveball in this case played by the very conventionally handsome Tobey Maguire, handicapped only by a pair of glasses or a bow tie.

So, bottom line: Gottlieb strikes me as less than self-aware and not exactly a feminist. But she’s not trying to take us down. She’s trying to find love. And make a kamillion dollars. And I think she’s on track for the latter.

As promised, I read it.

It’s a provocative book. Naturally: Gottlieb intends it to be. And it isn’t the antifeminist rant that Bitch mag says it is, although Gottlieb does blame feminism (really, her misreading of feminism) for making her (too) choosy about men. (That’s because she got her “feminism” from Sex in the City, which . . . oy. Why is that show never seen for what it was—a commercial for materialism, narcissism, and sex addiction?)

I think what’s hardest about the book is its desperation. Gottlieb is basically saying, “I lost.” More specifically:

1) In her 20s and 30s she was judgmental and superficial, her libido the unconscious victim of too many banter-laden romantic comedies, so

2) she dated for sexual sparks rather than emotional connection, which meant

3) rejecting any number of potentially suitable suitors for traits as trifling as red hair, so

4) her relationships with hotshots never worked out, and

5) she missed out on marriage, and

6) now she’s over 40, and she may be single forever, and it sucks.

She tries to twist her hard-won wisdom into a message of hope for younger (straight, female, marriage-minded, and equally shallow) readers—i.e., If you don’t make the same mistakes she did, you’ll be fine—but it feels like a dollop of whipped-up editorial imperative, when the rest of the book has soaked in rue.

In fact, Gottlieb trots out a fat lot of statistics showing how much harder it is for over-40 women to find available men, since over-40 men, almost to the one, date women 5 - 10 years younger. The statistics are inarguable and sad for women, but their centrality to the book hews to an economic model of partnership that is pretty unsavory, given Gottlieb’s attendant failure to, basically, open to love. In other words, if love were what she were after, would age matter? Or matter so much?

Part of what’s hard here is that Gottlieb really, really wants to be married. Not partnered, but married. And I think in writing about marriage (instead of love) as the goal, she betrays her lingering attachment to status above connection. And she keeps doing that. So while the books supposedly limns (hello, Michiko Kakutani*) Gottlieb’s trajectory from the projection-based frisson of the banter date to a deeper and more open quest for connection, we’re instead left to marvel at all the ways she remains attached to signifiers of status and achievement.

*”Limn” is Kakutani’s favorite verb.

Example. Gottlieb rates men. One of her claims is that if, by your early 30s, you open yourself to marrying the good guy who treats you well instead of the asshole/striver/achiever who turns you on, you’ll end up with an 8. And an 8 is, I quote, “a catch.” But if you wait until you’re 40 to get religion, you’re going to have to go with a 6. Or even a 5.

Ouch. And oy. And ouch again. People aren’t, you know, numbers. Surely, by 41 (another number we keep hearing), Gottlieb might know that? Might she have gleaned by this time in her life that, while she may connect more comfortably with some men than with others, all human beings are worthy of love? And hey, what’s the asshole—a 10?

When forced to narrow down her epic laundry list of wants in a man, Gottlieb chooses these: intellectually curious, kid-oriented, and financially stable. I’ll give her kid-oriented, because she has a young son. And if by “intellectually curious” she means that they’re honestly interested in each other as people, as opposed to objects, I can let that slide. But financially stable? Has she learned nothing?

It’s telling that Gottlieb never uses the word “status” in the book. (It appears once, in a quote.) My sense is that it’s because she’s so caught in its maw, she can’t see around it. Nor does she ever write about her heart as the organ of romantic connection. (Indeed, she leads with her head.) Late in the book, Gottlieb does share the epiphany that her job as a romantic partner might extend beyond merely allowing the man to adore her; she sees that she might be called upon to love him as well. But what should be a momentous breakthrough (i.e., “Holy shit! I don’t know how to love!”) is a brief whistle-stop on a speed train to further calculations about how to get the guy. You know, the 6.

The entire book is like that—taking a baby step toward wisdom, fumbling backward toward confusion. There are moments of what could be insight for people who, like Gottlieb, have lost touch with their inner softness, followed by defended analyses of romantic partnership as economic exchange. In one section, to calculate the economic losses of being single, Gottlieb makes an expense list for dating that includes cosmetics, new outfits, and multiple sets of lingerie. Really? In 2010?

It’s a funny book, one that doesn’t learn its own lesson. “The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”: That’s a subtitle in the egocentric model that Gottlieb is supposedly trying to leave behind, where the man is a prize rather than a partner, and where his “value” confers hers. What she really means is, “Stop being a superficial idiot, crack open your defended heart, and learn how to love.” But the closest she can come to saying that is “Be less choosy.” So you don’t end up alone. In other words, take the “8″—so you don’t have to take the “6.”

For me, one of the reasons that the book held any interest at all is that I spent a good deal of time in the world that Gottlieb doesn’t seem to have left: the East Coast intellectual elite, where status and achievement are the governing values. It’s a heady, lonely place to be, often devoid of connection and compassion, though nobody seems to know. Or mind.

That world became empty for me pretty quickly. By my sophomore year at Yale, even (an alma mater I believe Gottlieb and I share). But, as far as I can tell, Gottlieb is only now beginning to question those values and search for something deeper. I hope she finds it.