Rejection

Rejection is the cruelest book I’ve read in a long long time. I love it! Unfortunately, Tulathimutte decides to wander into a meta-fictional corner at the end, a detaching move that pulls the string of this book.

“The Feminist” was a story selected for my short story book club, and set its hooks in my brain. Our narrator is a self-described feminist, who becomes a blackpilled incel due to his ‘narrow shoulders’. His life collapses under the weight of his absolute bummer of a personality, a bitter tale of what people expect and what they don’t get.

“The Feminist” launches into a cycle of stories, where protagonists reappear as minor characters. A late-20s woman implodes a key friendship and then her vitally supporting group chat. A gay Asian-American with deep self-loathing and sadistic tendencies gets lost in an elaborate pornographic fantasy. A tech bro gives an r/AITA style exploration of min-maxing a relationship into implosion. And a person who tries to eliminate her entire identity confesses that every insane person on the internet is her in an elaborate metatextual troll. The book ends with a rejection letter from the publishers, explaining all the flaws in the book.

It’s cute, it’s clever, it’s incredibly mean. Tulathimutte has a keen eye for the way in which the construction of self is both necessary and painful, and the mismatch between inside and outside generates misery. Social media, dating apps, and the breakdown of traditional forms of social solidarity (including gender and race) all take their turns in the center.

But ya know, at the end of the day the worst thing that all of these characters can imagine is getting cancelled, and they deserve to be excoriated.