Hello and welcome back to Second Thought. Many thanks to Sascha Seinfeld for filling in for me last week, and for her sharp yet sweet eulogy for Vine. Do not miss it!
As has been noted in these pages, I spent last week in the woods of California without a phone or access to the internet, and let me tell you, it was glorious. Endless stretches of time where there was no app to reload, check, log in to, or scroll on. Just my own thoughts—the poor man’s algorithm—and the sweet sounds of my retreat facilitator assuring me that it is all my parents’ fault. I’m not saying I’m better for it, only that you’re worse, and please note: I go by only my Sanskrit name now, which roughly translates to “Bari’s little sister.”
The bright light in me honors the less bright light in you. And now, finally, back to the culture at hand.
Jennette McCurdy Goes the Whole Way
Jennette McCurdy is used to making everybody uncomfortable. Her first book, a memoir, was literally called I’m Glad My Mom Died—and was about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her stage mom, who she claims was “obsessed” with turning her into a successful child actress. In the book, she wrote about how her mom inflicted an eating disorder on her, and performed sexually invasive “exams” to exert her control. She wouldn’t let McCurdy shower alone.
McCurdy did become a star—as a teenager she acted in Nickelodeon’s iCarly, and later in Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande—but she also became severely bulimic, very unhappy, and later an alcoholic.
During these dark years, she dated a man she met on the set of iCarly. She was Half His Age. That’s the title of her debut novel, which came out Tuesday. Having read it, I can tell you: It’s going to make people even more uncomfortable than her memoir did.
McCurdy has been frank about the fact that it’s based on her own experiences. Her stand-in is the character of Waldo, a tragic yet wry teenager who lives in Anchorage, Alaska—and whose life is utterly upended when she first lays eyes on her new creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy. He is nearly 40, 20 years older than she is, but Waldo finds herself fantasizing so forcefully about her teacher—a married, failed novelist sure only of his own artistic genius and taste—that she finds herself in a living nightmare beside him.
The novel is narrated exclusively by the 17-year-old, and McCurdy does a terrifyingly good job of putting to the page what it’s like to be inside a teenage girl’s head. Waldo aches for the rush of purchasing fast fashion and cheap makeup that she hopes will transform her into a self-assured, beautiful woman, and she is a fiend for hyper-palatable junk food, social media, and, of course, Mr. Korgy. McCurdy captures what it’s like to have an obsession that verges on psychological violence, torture followed by release in ever-tightening cycles, with a fidelity that only someone who’s experienced it can create.
