Author: Jia Tolentino
Genre: Essays, Nonfiction
Blurb: Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social Internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet.
Me: I got to see Jia Tolentino in a passing second before I read her work. Having shown up late to one of her readings at college (which was so fully packed that I ended up leaving after a few minutes), I saw her walk in in a animal print coat with such a charismatic aura about her. I remember thinking that I absolutely had to read her book. And on finishing it, it didn't disappoint.
The Ups: I've never been a huge fan of essay collections. Though I think they're definitely worthy books that take a lot of thought and attention, the practice of just continually reading opinion after opinion has never been super fun for me- I usually get tired at some point in between. All that being said, though, these essays tackled topics I hadn't seen in any sort of collection. Maybe just because the world is moving so fast and the book was released so recently, the subject matter and voice just seemed so contemporary and real.
I think Jia Tolentino is unique in that she can articulate extremely complex realities with the sharpest language, all the while acknowledging her own difficulty to figure out the world as it is. I particularly loved the essay, "The I in Internet," when it came to this (which you can read here): she manages to draw the insane complexity and horror of the Internet in one essay even as she continues to interact and exist within it. It's a comforting way to read, really- realizing all sorts of scary things but having the writer tell you how inextricably lost they are within the craziness too.
Personally, I thought the most interesting essays were on the commodification and distortion of feminism to create the "modern woman" and the discussion of representation and female characters in literature. Both discuss how narratives and expectations create realities; the first, talking about the ridiculousness of barre classes and "sweetgreen," the second, about the change from spunky childhood heroines to depressed adult ones. At this point in my life, it made me consider what I want to do and what I want to read & write. I thought the modern career woman was amazing, high-performing, admirable; Tolentino opened up my skepticism to a lot of those ideals.
The Downs: As I said, as someone who doesn't naturally gravitate towards essays by personal taste, some of them were a little longer and more difficult to get through than others. I think particularly the ones with lots of research and cultural figures were interesting but felt a bit bogged down. Partially my fault though, I think- expecting a read to lose myself in over breakfast was probably not the smartest move.
Rating: 4 kisses!
I’ve been thinking about five intersecting problems: first, how the internet is built to distend our sense of identity; second, how it encourages us to overvalue our opinions; third, how it maximizes our sense of opposition; fourth, how it cheapens our understanding of solidarity; and, finally, how it destroys our sense of scale.
In other words, it is essential that social media is mostly unsatisfying.
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