The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. follows the twenty-first century love life of a wholly unlikeable but completely relatable New York writer, Nate. While I feel an uncomfortable combination of disdain and empathy for this up-and-coming young writer, I feel as though Waldman leads us there by immediately making him the bad guy of an impossible situation. This is then played off as an ‘every-guy’ move. We are put on our guard from the first chapter as we follow Nate, still recovering from the fall-out of a one-night stand, to an ex-girlfriend’s dinner party. Stopped on the way by a girl who Nate impregnated, and then blew off once an abortion was undergone, the reader is informed that he is ‘a complete asshole’. This is the beginning of the roller-coaster ride of ‘not-entirely-his-fault and made-the-best-choice-he-could’ scenarios that are Nate’s modern day love affairs. As a result of this ambivalent main character, to say that I liked this book would be inaccurate but to say that I didn’t enjoy it would also be a misrepresentation.
The issue with Nate’s attitude as a protagonist is that whilst he represents the everyday male, he is written by a female and so from a female point of view. Many times when following Nate into situations as a female reader, the pessimist in me was nodding along the way; “yes, this is the epitome of the modern-day man”. The danger here is that although we are given the first-person view of dating for men in this day and age, the voice is brought to us by a female author. Here we are set immediately on edge. Should everything we read be taken with a grain of salt? Should we be second-guessing everything? Is it fair for us to be against him and is it right for us to be on his side? The problem with this is that we’re brought almost to the point where we’ve overthought the writing so much, we are barely able to appreciate the story’s entertainment or satirical value.
The essence of the book had me so riled though, that I was continuously having to remind myself that it was, in fact, marketed as a satire. Or at least re-marketed that way. This being said, the cynic in me thinks that pitching the satire is a cop out. I found the guts of the novel to be gently but apologetically sexist, leaning on the supposed satire to get away with it. I feel the audience is strung along through a series of changes of heart and changes of mind. As the character does this so do we. We find the character placed in unfortunate situations and then see him make resoundingly human decisions: awful, but the best possible in the circumstances. This is where the story got me, and the pitch for the novel lost me. It was painted as so realistic. We sympathise with Nate as he thinks some cruel or unfair things, treats poorly people he’s dating, and makes bad choices, because we know full well that every lover is guilty of these things. Yet the women in the book come across as oddly guilt-free in these scenarios. It seems that every female character serves a unique but weirdly altruistic purpose. There’s the wise voice (perceived as a self-righteous, stuck up, know-it-all by Nate), the wronged ex-girlfriend, the ideal girl that becomes inexplicably less desirable, and a slew of other one-dimensional but largely forgivable female characters. This is where my discomfort beings to sink in. Meeting these characters through the eyes of the male protagonist seems like a set-up for the audience.
I feel I have to clarify that I really enjoyed reading this book. I flew through it. It is one of the novels I have gotten through fastest most recently. But I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I felt guilty for feeding into the ease of disliking him for what was painted as his ‘male-thinking’ and then also for finding times to really enjoy the character. This confusion left a bad aftertaste. The main point to come to is that while The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is both enjoyable and eye-opening, I feel that unless Waldman’s point was not to make one, her goal didn’t hit home for me. I found it quite convoluted in its message and felt it was wrought with an underlying distaste for the relationship men have with women.
Abigail Honey – On The Town
