The Disenchanted Normie
James Baldwin admits in his 1964 essay Nothing Personal to turning on the TV some mornings in order to distract himself from the frustrations the day would bring. He described the variety of commercials for products that defied natural biological realities to be “remarkable sights”: from women with dyed hair and grinning models with impossibly straight teeth, to glamorous middle-aged adults with wrinkle-free skin, and youth with “all conceivable body odor, under no matter what contingency, prevented for twenty-four hours of every day, forever and forever and forever.”
This flawless, odorless, picture-perfect ideal belongs to one of two “levels of experience” in the United States. One Baldwin describes as embodied in the pristine image of Gary Cooper and Doris Day, “two of the most grotesque appeals to innocence the world has ever seen”...which is to say, the America of Leave it to Beaver, the Weberian Protestant work ethic, sensible college students who major in STEM, and the predictability of algorithmic thinking.
The other America, embodied by Ray Charles, is “subterranean,” unkempt, decadent, and inevitably odorous. This side of the country fails to conceal the messy and unpredictable parts of human nature–both biologically and spiritually speaking.
Here In Avalon, Tara Isabella Burton’s third novel (and fifth book), is an exploration of this tension: between the “insane” and the “well-adjusted,” the secular and the enchanted, rationalistic and magical thinking, the self-selected and the gratuitously received.
We meet two sisters, Cecilia and Rose, classic Manhattan “nepo babies” whose history of neglectful parents and decadent escapades whiff of the protagonist of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Cecilia is a wildcard whose erratic tendencies have led her into situations as strange as an affair with a radical activist who robbed and left her on a train in Armenia, a brief stint in a convent of Catholic nuns, and an on-and-off search for the holy grail.
The incarnation of the Charles-ian level of American experience, Cecilia seems to perpetually reek of something between “ecclesiastical incense” and “sweat, alcohol, and cigarettes”…echoing her oscillation between debaucherous decadent and prophetic, holy fool. Rose, on the other hand, is the pragmatic Martha to Cecilia’s free-spirited, passion-driven Mary. The tension between the two sisters offers an interesting cultural analysis of how the dichotomy between the Martha-Mary archetypes manifests in today’s age, alluding to the contemporary phenomena of “girl bosses” and “trad e-girls.”
Spending her days coding for apps that promise users to optimize everything from their sexual encounters to their search for happiness, Rose finds herself conflicted between her love for her sister and her ludicrous yet riveting escapades, and her frustration with Cecilia’s inability to grow up and keep commitments. This tension is exacerbated by her impatient, “well-adjusted” fiancée, Caleb, who urges Rose to forego the “insanity” of continuing to give her sister more and more chances, knowing that Cecilia has no intention to change.
Cecilia’s antics eventually land her in the hands of a cult that involves 1920s attire, haunting cabaret music, and a mysterious matriarchal leader–all while taking place on a boat that travels to and from docks in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.
Burton’s novel is one among several recent releases that explore the clash between poetic, enchanted modes of thought and rigid, algorithmic ones (take Christopher Beha’s The Index of Self-Destructive Acts), and the draw to cultish retreats from the “real world” (Matthew P. Binder’s Pure Cosmos Club, Lexi Freiman’s The Book of Ayn). Yet what’s unique about Burton’s engagement with these themes is the questions she raises about the risks implicated in involving oneself with organized religious and spiritual communities.
The question of the role permanent commitments make in one’s pursuit of personal fulfillment appear in Burton’s nonfiction writings (see her books Self-Made and Strange Rites, and her work in the New York Times). Surely, it’s nice to be a “spiritual person,” to ask existential questions on one’s own terms and dabble here and there in religious rituals.
But to immerse oneself in a communal life, with bonds that tie an individual to the lives of others–others whose whims and temperaments may be unpredictable and at times unpleasant–demands certain risks and sacrifices. At what point does making sacrifices cease to be expressions of altruistic charity and become harmful forms of manipulation and masochism? And where exactly can one draw a boundary line between a dangerous cult and a veritable religious community?
The novel also raises provocative questions about the allure of committing oneself to one’s “chosen family” over the family that has been given to them. The friction generated by the characters’ experience of permanent bonds–those of marriage and blood family–which can’t just be shaken off at whim, force the reader to ask if such limits are a confining threat to our freedom of if they are a springboard that sets our freedom soaring to new and adventurous heights.
Without offering any definitive answers, the novel’s plot confronts us with the reality that while an “algorithmic” life can promise us safety and predictability, a life spent chasing after enchantment and surprises can open the door to danger as well as to joyous rapture.
Though of course some of us will debate whether or not to escape the matrix of “normie” life at some point, others are fated to live perpetually outside of it all. Burton’s book will resonate with the growing number of young people attracted to various forms of spirituality and intentional communities, and to those attempting to forge bonds with others in an age dominated by the vaporous and the ephemeral.
Stephen G. Adubato is a writer and professor of philosophy based in New York. He is also the curator of the Cracks in Postmodernity blog, podcast, and magazine. Follow him on Twitter @stephengadubato.
