MY FIRST BOOK REVIEW
by Hugh Blanton
With the publication of On the Road in 1957 Jack Kerouac was proclaimed by numerous critics to be the voice of a generation. Gilbert Millstein, writing for the New York Times said, ‘It is possible that it will be condescended to by the neo-academicians and the ‘official’ avant-garde critics, and that it will be dealt with superficially elsewhere…’ but he hailed the book’s publication as a ‘historic occasion.’ The publication of My First Book (Penguin Press, 2024) is not a historic occasion, but author Honor Levy is being proclaimed, much like Kerouac 67 years ago, the ‘voice of a generation.’ Kerouac defined a cultural movement at the time—a countercultural movement. Levy’s stories here are most definitely not countercultural. Acclaim for On the Road was not universal of course, it was often criticized for promising a revelation or a conclusion but then never delivering. There’s no revelations or conclusions here, either—but neither does Levy promise them.
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As you can probably guess from the title, My First Book is Honor Levy’s debut collection of short stories. The sixteen stories here zoom along at a breakneck pace, but a reader not familiar with the patois of the internet will find themselves making repeated pit stops at Google to look up unfamiliar words and terms. Thinspo, Laincore, waifu—this is the language of Levy’s Gen-Z world. Most of the stories here are light on plot, but they do give us high energy and character voice. The first story in the book sets the tone for the rest of the collection: a teen boy and girl texting back and forth. Him sending gym selfies and appending his ‘I love you’ with ‘lmao.’ Her: ‘screenshots of screenshots, funny monkeys, viral mutations, eternal recursion, words that aren’t in the Bible, lulz, layers of irony deepening into sincerity, drawings of frogs. One day, when she dies, this is what will flash before her eyes.’ Levy’s long sentences, shot through with commas, are sometimes repetitive and tedious (and border on nonsense). Her short sentences move the narrative along at a pace that makes the reader feel like they’re sprinting and spinning through a mirror funhouse. There’s a felt presence of Bret Easton Ellis smiling and nodding over Levy’s shoulder as she types—Levy popping Adderall, Bret bumping coke.
Levy takes cautious pokes at wokeness, opening her story ‘written by sad girl in the third person’ with a mock trigger warning: ‘TW: mentions of cigarettes, capitalism, death, swearing, cringe.’ She wants to be anti-woke but there’s a reticence as if she fears being grouped with the extremists at the other end of the spectrum. Even her broadside against cancel culture is tepid. From the story ‘Cancel Me’: ‘I’m mad because I’m dripping wet. I’m mad because Piggy is like Jack and Jack is like Roger and Roger is like Piggy and boys will be boys and I will never be a boy. I’m mad because Piggy won’t let us up, won’t buzz us in, won’t acknowledge the fact that he is the same as the boys in the rain yelling up at his window.’ This is her metaphor for being canceled—locked outside in the rain. (Does Levy have a future as a poet?) The Jack and Roger characters here like ‘stealthing’, secretly pulling off condoms during sex, but the narrator here doesn’t seem to think that’s really all that bad. Bad boys make her horny, she says.
Like Bret Easton Ellis, Levy attended Bennington. After leaving she became part of the Dimes Square crowd (today’s Brat Pack?) and had planned on publishing My First Book with Giancarlo DiTrapano of Tyrant Books, an alt-lit indie publisher. DiTrapano died in 2021 and Penguin, eager to poach alt-lit talent (Levy’s story ‘Good Boys’ had previously appeared in the New Yorker), enthusiastically picked up the manuscript. Levy had something of a brand before this debut went to press and it feels like the content of this book was created to fit her brand rather than the other way around. Punctuated with emojis, illustrations created from keyboard characters, it’s a thoroughly Zoomer book even if she wears her influences plainly on her sleeve.
The stories’ edginess is superficial for the most part. The main character in ‘Brief Interview with Beautiful Boy’: ‘He thinks the best decision he’s made all year is taking the blue pill. It feels great to have the same politics as attractive women.’ and ‘He’d be gay if it were still transgressive in any way.’ In the story ‘Do it Coward’: ‘Respawning isz teh recreation of a entity after its death or destruction, perhaps after losing 1 of its livez.’ However, Levy does push edginess for all it’s worth in ‘Fig’ when a character after coming home from an abortion ‘bled through [the] Tempur-Pedic’ and in another story when she mentions ‘Dachau liberation-day-skinny.’ In an interview with Interview Magazine Levy says she knows she’s annoying. One suspects maybe deliberately so—at least to the Boomers (and maybe Gen-X’ers too). In all the buzz on social media around My First Book curmudgeons and the literati vehemently vented their outrage at its punctuation and grammar. Back when On The Road first hit the shelves it faced similar criticism. Truman Capote said, ‘That isn’t writing; it’s typing.’ Others dismissed Kerouac’s prose as hep-cat jargon. Kerouac is still often called the voice of his generation all these years later. Will it be the same for Levy? Or is she just the flavor of the week?
A few times Levy’s attempts at high energy and speed run off the rails. This paragraph sounds more like someone suffering from long term drug abuse psychosis than an eleven-year-old girl:
‘I’m eleven. On Neopets I am God. I let my Blumaroo and my Xweetok and my Shoyru starve. I want to see if they will die. I want to know the rules of their world and mine. I can’t believe I’m in charge of this little dragon life. I can’t believe I’m in charge of my own little life. I can’t believe that they can’t die. Only things that can be lost matter. I want everything to matter. Can only things that are real be lost? I want everything to be real.’
She still gets an A for exuberance, though. One way she keeps this manic pace up is by relegating the grown-ups to the background like in a Charlie Brown cartoon. The only time the presence of parents is felt is if you should wonder who pays for these European vacations, therapists, doctor visits, and Adderall prescriptions.
When a Scribner slush pile reader thunked the 1000+ page manuscript for Look Homeward, Angel onto Maxwell Perkins desk and said ‘You have to read this,’ Perkins wearily sighed and asked if it was any good. The slush pile reader said, ‘Hell no. But it’s different.’ Perkins wasn’t just a good talent scout, he knew the zeitgeist and was a marketing genius. Has Penguin Press stumbled into a future classic here? Will the class of 2124 be doing close readings on My First Book and deciphering hidden meanings in the chibi angel and Medeco key on the first edition cover?
ABOUT THE CRITIC
Hugh Blanton‘s latest book is Kentucky Outlaw. He can be reached on X @HughBlanton5.
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