Somehow they do. Even when you can’t live there because there are way too many people, the idea of NYC is so strong that I come back to the thought, “I should just live in NYC” every year or so. This is usually when I have reached for my comfort book, The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.
This book is always funny and touching and poignant, every time I read it. What is different and strange about that feeling is, it is funny and touching and poignant in the same way every time I read it. Usually, when I reread a book I love, such as, Pride and Prejudice or Trading Up or Anna Karenina (joke! Not going to reread three pages describing wheat), there is a change in the feelings I have while reading it. But not with this book. Why?
When I was nine, I was going to move to NYC with my friend and work on Broadway and live in an apartment with mirrored doors and adopt nine kids. The nine kids part seems naive now, but the other parts are still completely doable. For reasons left to a memoir I will never finish, I won’t explain why I never lived in NYC when I was young(er), but I think I would like to have had some experiences of Nan’s early adult life.
While reading The Nanny Diaries, I am probably living my idealized youth over and over again, that is not too hard to figure out, I guess. Moreover, I like reading it over and over again because it is well written. It has that amazing quality of encompassing many existential questions into a relatable plot line. And it is supercalifragilisticexpialidociously funny. Funny answers to existential questions.
The authors also include a heartbreaking story wrapped up into a coming-of-age-rom-com, and how they get away with having a ‘sacred’ child be the center of the heartbreak is brilliant. The moment you find yourself feeling uncomfortable enjoying Grayer’s gut-wrenching but funny misery, you remember how privileged he is and think, “He’s going to have tons of opportunities to mend his psyche from this bad parenting through myriad resources available to this young fellow.”
There are so many chances for comparison too. How I would have done it differently — better — than Mrs. X can turn around any day of anxiety as a parent. But it also includes the stellar living abilities of Nan’s parents and grandma to keep me eating healthy humble pie.
Insert book summary here:
The story is of college aged—
Wow. An interesting thing just happened. I remembered that I need to write a summary of the book at the beginning of this post and started scanning the book to look at the details of Nan’s college situation. I didn’t want to write: college girl working her way through… without an accurate account of where exactly Nan is in college (is she a senior? I think so…), considering the last time I wrote a book summary and didn’t get it right it was problematic. And what happened was, suddenly I started looking at the pages and realized they are kind of yellowing, and that she used the word Xerox, and bulletin board. I am planning on writing about books written in this decade or year even… but what happened was, I started analyzing the characters! What? No!
I don’t want to think about if the grandmother sounds like she is living in a bubble, I know that she is. And I know that I grew up in a situation that didn’t really match theirs but didn’t make me think: who are these people? I can’t relate! Which makes me pause because someone out there will think I need to comment about that in a — insert word that won’t make anyone mad — kind of way we write now, and even writing that (especially the word ‘now’) could be criticized? I do know these people and — oh, no… now I have to explain myself to talk about these people or this book or my views on privileged NYC residents and why I don’t hate people for their privilege and why I don’t isn’t because I am a privileged person.
And now I am writing about societal structures and class and race and advantage and intelligentsia and elite….NOOOO. I was just wanting to write another post for my book blog about a book I love that is like chicken soup for my soul or something and if I keep fact checking it, it will no longer be a comfort story but a thesis (because I could spend years and use tens of thousands of words intelligently writing on those above mentioned subjects). And, holy cow, I am at 800 words (see Word Count post…805…) and no, just no. What am I doing with this blog?
Maybe I should change the title of this post to: literati
And reading about the internet’s wrath, on the internet, made me think: I shouldn’t even post this. (I can’t find any articles to link to that back me up 100%…)
…I don’t want to spend days researching a post that is supposed to be diary-like, and I really don’t want to put something out that could be interpreted as insensitive, which I am mostly not.
Maybe this is how I will write all the posts from now on: here’s the book. It’s good.
But anyway, here’s the book. It’s good.