Let Me Try Again by Matthew Davis (Arcade Publishing)
Alt-lit. Internet lit. Dimes Square lit. It is either about digital life or the consciousness consumed by it; it is disdainful, usually, of conventional narrative. It favors the deadpan, the pared down. It is modernism without ornamentation; it is like The Waves, except disdainful, in my own view, of the English language. Largely absent ambition, it is also, more importantly, bereft of beauty. Of this wave of twenty-first century novels—Honor Levy’s My First Book and Gabriel Smith’s Brat come to mind, as does Sean Thor Conroe’s Fuccboi and the works of Tao Lin—the most readable, and perhaps the best, is Matthew Davis’ Let Me Try Again. Davis’ debut novel is redeemable because he is funny. The blurbs on the novel nod to Philip Roth and Woody Allen, but the writing owes far more to early Bret Easton Ellis, if Davis never raises the stakes like Ellis or the Roth who wrote the exuberant, masturbatory Portnoy. The protagonist of Let Me Try Again is 23-year-old Roth Mathcamp (yes, that’s the name), a Jewish yuppie from Los Angeles who now lives on Roosevelt Island. He is a deeply neurotic prude who is obsessed with new gadgets and pop cultural ephemera. He loves, of course, Woody Allen movies (since Allen was cancelled, and slurs like “retard” and references to autism are peppered throughout, you know you’re in for a Dimes Square-inflected production) and he pines for his ex-girlfriend, a wealthy Manhattanite he originally dumped in some failed psychological ploy to make her mature and love him more. Ross’ affluent, car dealership-owning parents die in a helicopter crash, and suddenly he is rich. The thrust of the novel is Ross’ bid to win his ex back, though the narrative engine never really revs up and the climax is forgettable. Instead, we’re treated to a variety of set pieces, as well as ethnic and religious quips, and they can be amusing. At one point, Ross’ wunderkind teen sister converts to Catholicism (some Dimes Square personalities are performatively Catholic in a bid, it seems, to subvert social justice liberalism) and Davis is either satirizing the rad-trads or sotto voce cheering them on. I’m not sure which. But I did laugh when Ross, told that the elevator to his penthouse condo isn’t functioning, demands that the doorman carry him up all thirty-something flights. Davis, who is still young, may have a stronger novel in him, and I’ll be on the lookout for what he publishes next. In the meantime, I’ll be thinking about the viral trend taking Ross’ world by storm, the “Dershowitz shuffle,” whatever that may be.
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