Tony Thulathimuth’s Rejection – The Struggle for True Connection in a Hyper-Connected World

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RefusalTony Thulathimutt’s new book of interconnected stories begins with a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: “but sweeter are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add one more life: they build before us a sky that we never dreamed of, and thereby supply us with new strength from the recesses of the spirit, and call us to a new and inexhaustible performance.” .

Such inspired performances – in this book, swift and doomed – enliven Refusal. There is a certain type of character that stands out prominently in this book: the outsider, smart, misunderstood, manically aggressive and a little too online, prone to outbursts of self-pity and/or outbursts of self-righteousness. Their emotional intelligence gradually turned into a sour, lonely solipsism. Against all odds, Thulatimutte makes these misfits sympathetic—or at least believably human.

Thulathimutt runs the popular writing workshop Crit in Brooklyn; his previous novel Private individuals was announced as “Middlemarch for Millennials” and earned comparisons to David Foster Wallace. IN Refusalit focuses on the struggle for true connection in a hyper-connected world.

The most poignant stories in the collection explore sexual rejection in different ways. “The Feminist” is about an unfortunately “narrow-shouldered” man who has fully mastered the language of female allyship but is completely ignorant of the art of courtship. “Photos” shows Alison, a woman chronically unlucky in love, unraveling in spectacular fashion after her friend-turned-lover lets her go. The two characters appear briefly in each other’s stories in a sexual encounter that disappoints both for different reasons. Another story, “Aheago, or the Ballad of Sexual Repression,” is a gay coming out story gone horribly wrong.

It’s all very dark, but there’s joy in it. Refusalthis is prose. Important plot points unfold in emails, Reddit-style posts, and tweets sent from throwaway accounts. When Alison’s romantic interest flatly rejects her, the Greek refrain of her group chat doesn’t miss a beat: “Yeah, he’s fine, but his pronouns are so ho/hum,” chirps one friend. Previously, in his arms, she felt “brainless and cozy like a martini in a glass,” but when she sees him with someone new after their relationship ended, she makes a jealous, drunken scene: “That night, falling to bed, it now feels like a martini without a glass, like a puddle of poison.” The light, deliberate detachment of the book’s language belies its emotional and intellectual reserves. As one character puts it: “I acted careless, but in reality I was terribly careless.”

Refusal it’s perversely funny and poignantly insightful, but also tiresome. It mercilessly distorts the logic of the Internet, but has never completely freed itself from it; there is no transcendence here, just so much suffering. Refusal place on the shelf next to Patricia Lockwood’s book. Nobody talks about itR.F. Quang Yellowface or Lauren Oyler Fake accounts is literary fiction created and created by the creatures of the Internet. That is, all of us. Turning the last page is like closing a browser tab: relief.

Refusal Tony Thulatimutt Collins £21.58 / William Morrow $28, 272 pages

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