Back in London after more than 16 hours of travel time from Singapore to my apartment, and I am plagued by jet lag. Here’s a high level overview on some things I’ve done in the last week:

• Singapore:

  • Visited the street my paternal grandfather used to live on during the 1970s

  • Attended a crypto conference (for work, not pleasure!) and learned nothing lol

• Finished Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb*

• Just picked up Anna Dorn’s Wifedom which is an exploration of George Orwell, Eileen Blair, and their marriage. Hoping to start it this weekend.

• Committed to finishing Solenoid by Sept 25 or I will die trying**

~Cool Girl Novelists~

Now, there’s a phrase you don’t hear too often.

Normally, I’m months and sometimes even years behind on Twitter discourse and literary drama. This week, I was front and center for the action because I got a tip-off about Charlotte Stroud’s “The curse of the cool girl novelist” from Raquel Alvarado’s Instagram stories.

The article begins by mentioning George Eliot’s 1856 essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” in which Eliot eviscerates the romance novel.*** Stroud goes on to say that the lady novelists of yore have taken on a new form courtesy of the authors behind “sad girl lit.” Fashioning itself as the heir to Eliot’s essay, Stroud’s article is an attempt to dismantle sad girl lit.****

For her takedown, she lumps together the work of Eliza Clark, Jo Hamya, Chloë Ashby, Natasha Brown, Sarah Bernstein, Daisy Lafarge, Ottessa Moshfegh, Halle Butler, Naoise Dolan, Nicole Flattery and Sally Rooney but fails to provide any textual evidence or quotes from these authors. She takes umbrage with these novelists for constructing female characters who are plagued by depression and anxiety while also, often, holding a PhD distinction. She adds that the anti-heroine of millennial fiction have:

The author of the article believes the greatest sin sad girl lit commits is to combine moralizing with the desire to impress the reader while also eschewing common sense and humor. Novels as vehicles for entertainment take a back seat. Novels, as a means to examine, analyze, and also laugh at the human condition, take a back seat. Yet, the article is unsuccessful in dismantling sad girl lit as there’s a lot of nuance that we are missing.

The article is looking at sad girl lit as a modern issue and though sad girl lit may be the pervasive genre in our current literary landscape, it is not a new one. There is a historic precedent to literary sad girls. Where would the unnamed narrator of Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation be without the unnamed narrator from The Yellow Wallpaper? Could the unnamed narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation have voluntary imprisoned herself in her apartment to sleep for a year if the unnamed narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper had not been involuntary confined in the bedroom upstairs?! It’s really just a a case of x walked, so y could run. Lol!

Sure, the language in these novels is “uniformly spare” and one (ok Stroud) might say, “their prose (is) monochromatically dull,” but isn’t that the state of modern writing? Sharp, clipped sentences are the natural birthright of writers raised on a diet of Ernest Hemingway and Joan Didion, both of whom had a reputation for being cool. Albeit, let’s be real, their coolness was very manufactured.

The article concludes with the indictment that these books are not novels of the human condition but rather the student condition and I think she’s wrong here. When it comes to sad girl lit, the lack of agency coupled with alienation and despair and all that jazz is the current condition. Whether you are or are not a student, late-stage capitalism is affecting you and these authors are just reflecting our reality with their characters.

For example, Natasha Brown’s Assembly is the story of an unnamed narrator, a professional working woman in finance (not a student), who is grappling with the isolation she feels from her white, wealthy boyfriend, his family, and her job in an incredibly racialized, capitalist world.******* The slim little novel looks at the realities of modernity as the unnamed narrator conducts a searching moral inventory in order to ascertain whether or not her life is something worth fighting for.

Now, this is a novel that raises the question: What constitutes a life well led? Personally, I think some of the best novels are concerned with this question. Novels should be exploring what does it mean to live and how should one live a meaningful life so that the reader can reflect and make these decisions in their own life. And, if these questions are being raised, and sometimes answered, by sad girl lit, let’s keep these books coming. Am I right?

On My Mind:

• The contents of Emma Watson’s Bag Pack via Vogue: How in the world is she bringing a bottle of gin through TSA? Surely, not. I think I need that eye mask before my next flight though.*****

• Good Night Gracie: I finally got to the bottom of this Gilmore Girls reference. It really wasn’t a hard thing to do. All I needed to do was Google it.******

• I believe I mentioned a few weeks ago how I was reading film scripts… One of the scripts I read was Thelma & Louise and I keep on thinking about it. Need to watch the film soon.

• Still have to re-read Didion’s On Self-Respect.

• The stagnation of art under late capitalism (TikTok).

Apologies friends for this late newsletter. Let’s blame it on the aforementioned jet lag. Also, would love to hear your thoughts on what makes for a good novel and what constitutes a life well led. Hit reply and lmk.

*We are still not monetized, but you knew that.
**Ok, maybe 9/26.
***Need to read Eliot’s essay asap.
****I personally refer to these books as millennial malaise. Shout out Barnes and Noble for labelling these books as such lol.
*****I also need this neck pillow which I saw on an influencer’s IG.
******Side note: George Burns and Gracie Allen of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show were married for 38 years. They also both seem like incredibly delightful people and I need to learn more about them.
*******When are we getting a think piece on all of the unnamed narrators in the sad girl lit of past and present?