Look at Me

It's almost impossible to read this book with any sort of objective eye in the year 2013. It was written in the six years leading up to 2001 and released a week after 9/11. To've read it in, say, August 2001 - that would be the ideal. Because it isn't just the 9/11 thing that is prescient but rather the entire novel. Imagine a world without Facebook, without Twitter, without iPhones, without any of it. Then, imagine an author feeling those inevitable realities, maybe not in those forms but in their most basic thought-stages, and trying to express what creeping rot-of-the-soul lay underneath the feel-good 90s.

This is the sort of novel that should make you want to write a paper (or several) just to parse all of the thoughts that it show more inspires. The only thing? It's a bit rocky at times, a bit too long, a bit... dare I say unfinished? It still feels like it never quite got where it wanted to go, although that aspired position was hands and heads above where just about anyone else can reach. You can see the seeds of Ms. Egan's later, more daring works here - and for that alone, it's well worth reading.


More at RB: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-GG show less

I struggled a little to get into this book, but once I did I was wholly immersed. It's fascinating to see that Egan is already, in the 1990's, thinking about the themes that will make Goon Squad and Candy House so compelling. Look At Me makes me appreciate Egan's brilliance even more; she essentially anticipates so many elements of our modern culture, the fascinations and the traumas. I found the epigraph especially illuminating, and kept the idea that whoever we are looking at, we always see ourselves in mind as I was reading. It added a meditative layer to my reading, a purpose that I relished. That layer, on top of the compelling stories and mysteries of Egan's characters, made this a deeply satisfying and somewhat unsettling read.

I loved the beginning of this book, but once she started getting into the "Ordinary People" reality TV/social networking thing, I started to find it boring.

Egan's style reminds me of Ann Packer to a degree, but this might be just because I read Look at Me immediately after two of Packer's books. The difference I see with Egan is in the action of the story. Her plots seem to follow a more fanciful direction. The second half of this book actually kind of reminded me of P.K. Dick (not sure if anyone else would see the similarity and I'm not sure I can explain it adequately, or if there's really much overlap between Egan and P.K. Dick readers, but that's what "Ordinary People" put me in mind of).

The characters in this story all go through show more or have gone through a "before and after" kind of experience, several of them more than one. Egan seems to be questioning the very nature of personal identity. What does it mean to each of us to be "me"? Am I identified by how I look, by what I do or have done, by what I own? If one or more of these things changes, am I still "me"?

I found the public persona/private persona question she raises fascinating. If we reveal all of ourselves in a reality TV/blogging/social networking realm (note that this book was published in 2001, before most of that, except reality TV. I agree with other reviewers and am impressed with Egan's prescience), when do we stop being "me"? On the flip side, if we keep everything about ourselves a secret and jump to another identity as soon as we begin to make a connection with others, do we have any more control of our identities? In the case of both extremes, we can lose ourselves, in one case belonging to everyone else and in the other belonging to no one because we are invisible.

It's caused me to wonder if I might want to change the nature of the information I share on my blog and social media. When I share personal feelings and details about my life, am I sharing myself? And if so, am I losing myself in the process?

The other question this book left me with: Do people really have that much sex? show less

Overall I liked this tale of identity and seeing clearly, but it was a little frustrating. Particularly with model Charlotte and her endless self-destruction. Everything from her drinking to her free-fall career plans. She really seemed to hate herself, her life and everything she’d done. She also seemed to act out with that hatred, too. The booze trick with the detective was pretty low. As was wishing he would take up the bottle again, which he does, much to my disappointment. Egan seemed to give more agency to young Charlotte than to old. Some characterize her seduction of Michael West as orchestrating her own sexual abuse, but it didn’t come off that way to me, and having been a teenage girl, I don’t see it that way either. show more Sure, some girls are abused and manipulated, but Charlotte wasn’t one of them.

West, Z or Aziz as he is known by turns, is a strange character. He lived in New York and still snow is new? Huh? I wasn’t sure what to make of him. At first he seemed just another thug trying to get away with a scam, but then he got a little religious, but it didn’t stick and when he just vanished at the end, I wondered if he’d been totally seduced by “the West” as he had been by Charlotte. Did he finally see himself clearly? We’ll never know and I’m ok with that. Not everything should be tied up in a bow.

The other character to mystify me was Moose. I couldn’t see his connection to anyone else and have no idea what purpose he served. After a while I skimmed a lot of his anguish and male twisting in the wind. I couldn’t understand his obscure obsessions or why he resorted to torturing his students with a bomb. It was bizarre. I did like the way his ramblings brought glass and its history into things; how it has affected the way humanity functions and sees itself, both literally and figuratively. His book about it, or maybe it was someone elses’, is something I would willingly read.

Young Charlotte on the other hand was real and I thought her writing and inner monologues rang quite true for an adolescent. That horrible division between wanting to be unique and wanting to fit in. No protective coloration. She had it in spades.

In the end, Egan splices all the narratives together without distinction - you were taken from one aspect to another in adjoining sentences and I’m not sure this was necessary. I didn’t see what it did that a more traditional spacing wouldn’t have done, other than make me read things over again. And all of the musings on terrorism and especially the failed attack on the world trade center must have freaked Egan out a little since this was published just after the successful attacks. Also the whole thing with the “Personal Space” project. Jeez. It reeked of My Space, but had none of the prescience of Facebook. Of course, none of us knew that then. Except a few. Kind of creepy in a way. show less

I loved this book and recommend it highly: Wonderful writing, characters I cared about, elements of satire that were funny and perceptive. It is not really lighthearted because its themes concern obsession with image and surface and the soullessness of (aspects of?) American culture, but there is a lot of humor. I feared for all the main characters but the author worked out a very satisfying ending. Jennifer Egan has a wonderful website and I emailed her to tell her about my pleasure in reading her book. I can't wait to read her more recent novel, "A Visit from the Goon Squad".

Content warning: This review has tons of spoilers, and mentions rape and underage relationships.

This is going to be a pretty unstructured and ranty sort of review, sorry about that, but I just wanted to blab my thoughts on this book.
First, I thought the writing style was really the only great thing about this book. Egan has a very sharp yet descriptive way of writing and I truly enjoyed that. The only other thing I liked about this book was the snappy, snarky bits of dialogue, mostly from Charlotte Swenson. (The 2 stars I'm giving to this book are purely for the writing) But that was later ruined for me because Charlotte is a god-awful human and I went from really liking her to basically despising her. And it's not because of her show more "lying" personality that she brags about; it's because she's written as getting a happy ending after doing all kinds of awful things, including but not limited to raping Detective Holladay. That was seriously a f-ed up scene and I'm pissed that Charlotte got to have her happy ending after all that. I know there are people who will argue that her ending wasn't happy because she had to "sell" her identity, but listen: she sold her name willingly and eagerly, gots a TON of money from it, and got to start her life over, which is something she really wanted. She got to escape all the celebrity of her life, and for Charlotte, that was a happy ending.
Additionally, the awful relationship between the other young Charlotte and Michael West is never condemned or taken care of. I understand that Charlotte was the one who pursued the relationship and wanted to have sex, but that still doesn't excuse the fact that West never has to face the consequences of his actions. He literally gets to skip off to LA and go make movies or whatever, and there are no repercussions for him.
Okay and lastly, wtf was up with Moose? At first, I kind of felt for him, but as his narrative went on it just seemed to spiral out of control and made less and less sense. I read "Look at Me" in a college class of mine and lots of people were going on about how "deep" and "thought-provoking" Moose was, but I'm like ???? No ??? He's a pretentious dipwad who thinks he's smarter than everyone else? I'm also super over his whole "oooohh, I don't use technology so ClEArLY I'm Smarter and more Wise than all you dummies". lol give me a break.
The only character I ended up caring even a little about what Ellen, and she didn't even get a proper ending to her narrative! -_-
okay, that's the end of my rambling review. I originally just passively gave this book 3-stars but thought about it again and realized how annoying and problematic it was. Would not recommend this book. show less

I bought this just after finishing 'A visit from the goon squad' and I was just as impressed. Basically three individual stories are tangentially connected, nevertheless each one gripped me in different ways. Older Charlotte is an ex-model who has reconstructive facial surgery after an accident and becomes desperate when none of her old acquaintances recognise her - desperate enough to sign up to a truly invasive Internet scheme. This was my favourite strand even though Charlotte herself isn't very likeable. Younger Charlotte is restless in her teenage life and has an affair with an older man to try and quell her restlessness - I thought that this Charlotte was drawn really well and was an entirely believable, if unusual, teenager. show more Finally there's the middle eastern terrorist who plans to bring down America from the inside, but ends up being sucked further and further in.

This book was written in 2001, before 9/11 and before so much of our lives began to be lived online. As a result it feels alternately naive and prescient. The character of the terrorist is less believable now in a post 9/11 world but he is sympathetically drawn and his journey is comically bleak at the end. Similarly the 'real-life' Internet experiment that Charlotte takes part in is all too familiar now - the only detail strange to us is how much money she gets paid for sharing her life online.

Not only is Jennifer Egan a brilliant writer who manages that rare combination of readable and well-crafted prose, she seems to have predicted the future. 10 years on, this still feels like a book that is of our time and well worth a read today. show less