The Elegant Variation: WEARYING MAD MEN

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February 06, 2011

WEARYING MAD MEN

Despite the signs of torpor around here, there is, in fact, a little action brewing these parts. I've got a review going live on Tuesday. And I'm working to get some of the outdated parts of this site repaired. (Yes, I know the blogroll disappeared. That sort of thing.)

In truth, though, I've been navigating a fair amount of personal turmoil down TEV way. And I'm teaching this semester. And I am working hard to try to get Part One of my novel finished. (Already behind schedule.) All of which to say, it's been increasingly hard to keep things alive here, but I'm not quite ready to throw in the towel. Because, to my surprise, there are still things that pop up that I want to talk about.

Today's case in point: this essay by the brilliant Daniel Mendelsohn, one of my favorite critics. In the current NYRB he takes on Mad Men, a show whose appeal I have never understood. I found the first few episodes broad, cartoonish and cheesy beyond belief. And although many have said to me that it picked steam later, I never quite believed it. Here, Mendelsohn nails my experience of the show:

To my mind, the picture is too crude and the artist too pleased with himself. InMad Men, everyone chain-smokes, every executive starts drinking before lunch, every man is a chauvinist pig, every male employee viciously competitive and jealous of his colleagues, every white person a reflexive racist (when not irritatingly patronizing). It’s not that you don’t know that, say, sexism was rampant in the workplace before the feminist movement; it’s just that, on the screen, the endless succession of leering junior execs and crude jokes and abusive behavior all meant to signal “sexism” doesn’t work—it’s wearying rather than illuminating.

And then there's this, which bloody nails it:

Worst of all—in a drama with aspirations to treating social and historical “issues”—the show is melodramatic rather than dramatic. By this I mean that it proceeds, for the most part, like a soap opera, serially (and often unbelievably) generating, and then resolving, successive personal crises (adulteries, abortions, premarital pregnancies, interracial affairs, alcoholism and drug addiction, etc.), rather than exploring, by means of believable conflicts between personality and situation, the contemporary social and cultural phenomena it regards with such fascination: sexism, misogyny, social hypocrisy, racism, the counterculture, and so forth.

Hear, hear. I sleep better at night knowing Mendelsohn's on the job.

Anyway, there will be more soon. There's much to discuss, including Sheila Heti's publication difficulties; Jonathan Evison's new novel; the Elizabeth Bishop riches coming from FSG; and, of course, more James Salter. Plus a few of my Novel III class discussion, which seemed to good not to share here. So hang tight, stay true. There's life in the old boy yet.

Posted at 06:12 PM in Housekeeping, Obsessions | Permalink

Comments

Dear Mark,

I find that my dissatisfaction with even what is called good television has been alleviated by no longer subscribing to cable, and using my TV set as a box for watching DVDs of exactly what I want, when I want. I sympathize with the competing demands on your time; my blog posts have slowed (no longer do I promise or expect to deliver one a week). Now, my Facebook friends endure bulletins re: my weekends devoted to revising my novel for an interested agent. First things first!

Susan D. Anderson

Posted by: Susan D. Anderson | February 06, 2011 at 09:47 PM

We've been through this before, but Mendelsohn misreads the show as badly as Mark Greif did. Just for starters, his list of what "everyone" does in the office is simply incorrect. And the peculiar tone of the show comes precisely from the fact that nothing is ever resolved, melodramatically or otherwise: lots of things end, without being over.

Secondly, like all people who decide (pretty much ex nihilo) that the show is about its historical setting, Mendelsohn misses what the show is actually doing - which is establishing a kind of continuous present: a history-free zone full of ephemera that nobody in the show really notices.

These are people who feel their lives should be free of unintended consequences: they should be only what they present themselves to be. The things that thwart them in that aim are very rarely the allcaps racism and sexism that Mendelsohn takes to be the show's guiding and gigglingly superior fascination. Mad Men is not saying that we are better than the characters: it's saying that these are our immediate ancestors and that not much has changed.

Anyway, that's enough of that from me. Good to have you back, Mark.

Posted by: (The Other) Niall | February 07, 2011 at 02:30 AM

On the subject of television, did anyone watch Downton Abby? One of the best, I thought. The characters, the setting, the story line, hard as it was to relate to know. Entailment. Bondage without the chains, but as painful for the women of that time.

Posted by: ward | February 07, 2011 at 07:37 AM

Welcome back; we've missed you.

Posted by: Alexandra Boland | February 07, 2011 at 07:43 AM

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The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 06, 2011

WEARYING MAD MEN

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MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

February 06, 2011

WEARYING MAD MEN

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism