Issue #11: Transactional vs. Spiritual

I'm mad at Emma Cline and it's exposing my spirituality!!

Hi Everyone!

I had two opposing experiences the past couple of days and would like to share them with you.

The first was reading Emma Cline’s The Guest. I guzzled it down in two sittings, knew within the first few pages I’d hate it but lap it up anyway - like a rootbeer float, nauseating but impossible to resist.

I’m a little late to this conversation - it came out over a year ago and generated a ton of buzz — glowing reviews in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and a very spoilery rundown of proposed endings in Vanity Fair. I’m itching to talk about it because…whew…it made me feel feelings.

A quick rundown, if you’re unfamiliar: The Guest is basically a late-stage capitalist survival story about a 22-year-old sex worker named Alex who is stranded on Long Island’s ritzy East End after a transactional relationship with a much older man falls apart. The whole book takes place over a nerve-wracking few days as Alex manipulates her way into one social group after another, destroying relationships as quickly as she engenders them. Alex has no backstory, no guile, no friends, no resources, no ambition beyond charging her broken phone and getting through the next few hours. She is deeply perceptive of the rarified world around her but lacks interest in either destroying it or properly inhabiting it. She never changes, never learns. The book ends mid-action, leaving the reader to guess the rest of Alex’s story.

After I finished it I closed the book and closed my eyes and felt a deep heaviness settle on my shoulders.

The whole thing felt like a trick.