Selina Chan “It’s up.” I reluctantly lifted my eyes from my book. “What?” Kellie Cade, City Magazine’s other senior editor, had angled herself into my office in the usual way, her chin hooked around the doorjamb. “Your High and Dry review,” she said. “It just went up.” “Ah.” Kellie snapped her fingers. “Hey. Don’t do the face. It’s a good piece.” “A piece that should never have been assigned to me.” “Probably. People online are having fun with it, though. Maybe it’ll ke ep the click overlords off our backs for a week.” She tossed a glance down the hall. “Speaking of which: Hayden’s here for the meeting.” “What? Why?” “I don’t know. Firing the rest of us, maybe?” “Thank you for that inspiring theory.” Kellie cracked a smile that compressed her eyes into sly green dashes. “I try. See you in there.” Her hair whipped out of sight. Alone, I exhaled and let Lauren Groff flip shut in my lap. Kellie had always been much more attuned to the thoughts and feelings of people online than I was; the closest thing I had to social media was a Venmo account. And contrary to what the internet surely thought about me, I didn’t relish the idea of people cheering on a negative review, especially for a book I’d never wanted to read. I sw ept the advance copy of High and Dry from my desk. One look at its dusky, rain-shot cover, and my frustration began to simmer again. I would never pat a writer on the back for what they might someday accomplish. That was a job for the supportive English teacher, for generous friends and relatives. But if I’d been forced at gunpoint to
talk about that dubious conc ept, potential, I would have had to admit that Parker Navarro had it. The man could write a single-punch knockout of a sentence. The kind of description that makes a reader look up with new eyes at the room around them, freshly aware of texture, color, and sensation. He also seemed perversely uninterested in making any meaning out of his balletic turns of phrase. He was Pavarotti singing on a nonsense word. Van Gogh run through a paper shredder. The dizzying height of his potential—and the corresponding d epth of the loss that these god-awful books r epresented. I stood and tossed High and Dry onto the desk face down, exposing Navarro’s brooding headshot. Charcoal-gray sweater pushed to his elbows. Soft-looking hair that rose above his forehead. For an instant I imagined his shadowed eyes following me, a glint of accusation in that glossy black and white. Ridiculous. I sw ept my laptop beneath my arm and strode out of my office, down the hall. To my left, the misty silhouettes of fact-checkers paced behind frosted glass doors. On the right, framed City Magazine covers lined the wood-paneled walls. Warhol-inflected sixties duplication. A screaming neon mouth from 1987. By the time I rounded the corner, I’d pushed Parker Navarro out of my mind. I believed in criticism too much to waste time on guilt. When critics wrote honestly, the public could use us to cut through the chatter and find the books that would illuminate their worlds. But if we shrank back from our feelings, apologized and demurred, we were of no use to anybody. I had one life. I wanted to spend it surrounded by excellence, by fine wine and dark chocolate and great reads. I wanted everybody else to have that, too. How many books could a person read in a lifetime? A thousand, five thousand, ten? A world without criticism looked like
the thirty-million- title Amazon catalog. Without criticism, I’d have died unaware of Asylum Piece, Anna Kavan’s strange, clinical story collection shot through with isolation and incomprehension, which Marcy D’Artagnan had raved about in City Magazine—a book that had saved my life at sixteen. In a world without discernment, in the attempt to give everything a chance, you could die without tasting chocolate. I was not sorry. I entered the library at 10:59 to Hayden singing out, “There she is. Our killer queen!” I moved my mouth into something that could technically be called a smile and looked to the armchair in the corner. Seated there was a tall, sharp-chinned woman in her midforties wearing beige cashmere and scrolling through an i Phone the size of her face. Her name was Hayden Fairbanks. Back in April, when City had been bought by a venture fund named Nextward Capital Associates, she had become our handler. We’d never seen her in the library, though. Her presence felt intrusive. Bookshelves ran corner to corner in this inner sanctum of the City offices, displaying the hundreds of authors—Ellison, Faulkner, Sontag—who had published work in our pages. “The reactions are so good,” Hayden went on, to her phone screen. “I can’t believe you didn’t want to write this. Didn’t I say you were the perfect fit?” Of course she had. I was used to the euphemisms. The perfect fit. The viewpoint we need. The truth was, as City’s only Asian American staff writer, I was all but required to write our opinion on everything from the continental diaspora.
No matter that Parker Navarro was third-generation Filipino American, the Californian son of Californian parents, while my parents had moved from northern China to Minnesota in the 1980 s. Our backgrounds had never come within one and a half thousand miles of each other. But no one really seemed to care about this. “Thank you, Hayden.” I sat stiffly at the round table, a pitted oak slab fifteen feet in diameter whose feet, four heavy claws, had notched de ep footholds in a century-old Persian rug. When I’d started here, twenty-six of us had sat around this table during editorial meetings. Now we were down to fourteen. “De ep breaths,” Kellie murmured, spinning her pen over the back of her hand. “Working on it,” I said under my breath. The clock hit eleven, and the door swung open. In sw ept our editor in chief with the embattled air of a general on day one hundred of the siege. Scott Goodwin had been City’s editor for twenty years. Every year he looked more and more the part, with his trim, graying beard and his rotation of well-cut suits. He lowered himself into his chair, shook his expensive sleeves up his forearms, and interlocked his arthritic knuckles. “Good morning, all,” he said. His eyes strayed to Hayden but didn’t linger. “Let’s kick right off with features. Joyce, what have you got?” We looked to our features editor, Joyce Crafton, a pixieish woman in her sixties whose tufts of silver hair stuck out from her scalp in every direction. This combined with her wide, unblinking eyes gave her a look of recent electrocution. “What do we think about Teresa Cagle?” she said. “I have an idea for her latest, Pathogenius—you know, with the alien frame narrative? I want to put it in conversation with War of the Worlds.”
“What’s the gist?” Scott asked. “So”—Joyce adjusted her reading glasses with a jittering fingertip— “with the pandemic in mind, I’ve been thinking about barren environments. Safe from disease, but hostile to life: Is that more comforting or menacing? The way that both books—” Hayden cleared her throat. The fourteen of us looked to her corner. She was still holding her phone near her face, as if she were about to return to an unmissable video call. “Hi.” She broke into a wide smile, as apple-cheeked as a cursed Victorian doll. “I’m so sorry to interrupt the pitch sesh. So great to see you guys again!” Nobody answered. “I was wondering...” Hayden looked to Joyce. “Who’s this Teresa Cagle person? Path—what’s this book?” “Oh, it’s wonderful, it’s called Pathogenius,” said Joyce quickly, shifting forward in her seat so that her glasses skittered back down to the tip of her nose. “It came out in July.” “Okay! So, like, a summer blockbuster? Book of the season?” “Well ... not exactly. It didn’t get the attention it deserved.” “Ooh. Bummer.” Hayden’s smile flagged. “And the author is...” “Teresa Cagle. A real talent. Her first collection was in 2003. Then a novel in 2012 that, I think, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Cir —” Hayden, who’d gone back to her phone, said, “Right, I’m seeing the book. Wow. A dozen reviews on Amazon.” She scrunched her face into an apologetic wince. “I’m not sure, Joyce.” I aimed a wearied look at Kellie, who bobbed her freckled shoulders. Apparently Nextward was no longer satisfied with emailing Scott twice a week to complain about our traffic. They’d stationed Hayden at the source to make sure our coverage had all the intrigue of unbuttered toast.
“Point taken, Hayden,” Scott said with audible restraint. “That said, Pathogenius is an excellent book. I’d be happy to send you a copy.” Hayden laughed. “Okay, but seriously, what about the Top Ten lists Alicia did last month? Those performed.” She aimed an encouraging look at Alicia, one of our editorial assistants, who flinched. “What if you jumped in on those for a week or two, Joyce? We could use a few more in the pipeline.” Her nails clattered against her phone screen. “And I just forwarded everyone a list of books I’ve been seeing around. It’d be great to pop out some reviews for them while they’re hot.” A dozen laptop track pads clicked as we opened the email, and Kellie disguised a laugh as a cough. Hayden’s list was immediately familiar, culled half from Barack Obama’s reading list and half from October’s highest-profile book club selections. I k ept my voice even. “Hayden, unfortunately we don’t have the bandwidth for this. Our review calendar is blocked out for the next few weeks.” “Ah. You know, I’m so glad you mentioned output. I’ve been wanting to break open this conversation: How do we feel about using AI to increase the team’s content production?” Deafening quiet dropped over the round table. Beside me, Kellie’s pen stilled in the middle of a doodle of Hayden. A blot of ink widened until it engulfed her left eye. “We do not feel good,” said Scott, in a voice that suggested he wanted nothing more than to tar and feather her. Hayden looked from shocked face to shocked face and let out a small laugh. “Everybody, come on! Let’s be realistic, right? You’re up against sites that are packed with AI. Of course we want to preserve
the spirit of the whole project, but at the end of the day, this is a business. Dollars in, dollars out. We need more eyes on the site if we’re going to ke ep paying for”—she gestured at us—“this.” She rose, hoisting her purse onto her shoulder. “Think about it! No one’s saying you can’t add your own little personal touch.” As she headed for the door, she spared a brief downward glance for Scott, as though he were her unpaid intern rather than a man who’d shaped American culture for decades. “Thanks so much for letting me sit in, Scott.” She paused, keen-eyed, on the threshold. “It’s been so illuminating.” The door shut, leaving crushing silence in her wake. After work, I met my friend Jacob for a drink in the Meatpacking District, at an Italian restaurant as long and thin as an alleyway. We drank matching happy-hour glasses of house white, ten dollars per anemic pour. “Scott won’t let that happen,” said Jacob. “Will he?” “Scott would set fire to our office before touching AI.” “Good. I need to know that your pans are made from all-natural, homegrown loathing.” I managed to smile. “So, you saw the High and Dry review.” “Y ep.” Jacob laughed. “It, uh, didn’t sound like a very good book.” “We don’t have to talk about it.” “My lips are sealed,” he said. We clinked and drank. Jacob and I had met on our first day at Columbia orientation through alphabetical fate: Selina Chan, Jacob Chau. Even then, he’d been handsome in a professorial way. Thick wavy hair, relaxed blazer, stubble. He’d been the sort of person you’d expect to adjust his glasses while reciting facts about Sartre. Which he’d frequently done. Everybody thought something sordid was going on between us, despite Jacob’s five years of blissful marriage. True, we’d dated for
about a month in our senior year, but it was hard to express the lack of romantic feeling I’d had for him since then. His passive, go-with-the-flow style of partnership had felt like some torturous psychological test—how could someone have so few opinions on how we spent our days?—and the sex had appalled me, a kind of limp-touched, romantic-whisper lovemaking that had made me want to go to a boxing class. I’d known the fling was doomed forever when he’d asked me, with genuine curiosity, why I cared so much about the other students’ comments in a seminar I’d been taking. “Because they haven’t done the readings, Jacob,” I’d said. “I can look at their faces and see they didn’t read the book.” “So?” he’d said with a good-natured laugh. “Does that hurt your understanding of the book in some way?” I hadn’t even known where to start with that. Jacob, Upper East Side– born and bred, might not have related, but I’d moved halfway across the country and taken on eighty thousand dollars of debt for that degree. It was fucking Columbia. I was supposed to be sitting in a room full of exc eptional people who would try, who would care, in exc eptional ways, not legacy admits who started every sentence with “Um, going off what Addison said.” But I could have tried for hours to explain my frustration, and it still wouldn’t have registered with Jacob in any personal way. I loved him, of course. He was my best friend, and every day I admired his kindness and humility. I adored his wife, Cassie, a molecular biologist and rock climber who, with her mile-long list of travel plans and her desire to micromanage every detail, had always been a self-evidently perfect match for Jacob. And I loved walking into their apartment to see their one- year-old daughter, Lyra, finding new and creative ways to destroy their imported furniture.
“How’s Cassie?” I asked. “Wait—did she like the Isa Serrano book?” “Not really her thing. She said it was ‘too crime-y.’” “Too crime-y?” Jacob made a calming motion. “Easy, easy. It’s the thought that counts.” He was baiting me. I gave him an unimpressed look and sipped my wine. “What, you’re not going to say it?” He sat up out of his usual slump to imitate my posture. “‘It’s not the thought that counts, it’s the execution!’” “It is the execution that counts,” I muttered. Jacob laughed. “Got her.” I broke into a smile. “What about the gremlin? Has she developed ethics yet?” “No. I think she might actually be getting more evil.” Jacob covered a massive yawn with the back of his hand. “You two still aren’t sle eping?” “Nope,” he said dully. “She’s been having nightmares again.” “I’m so sorry. Can I do anything? Edit anything?” I asked. Jacob was a grant writer for a global health nonprofit. Whenever he sent me a proposal for a final polish, I was acutely reminded that there could, in fact, be more urgent aspects to writing than beauty of language. “Or—let me know if I can babysit. Buy you and Cassie some time to nap.” “Thanks, Lina.” Jacob rubbed at one eye with his knuckle. “I miss sle eping, but I miss doing things more. We spend half our lives, like, mumbling about when we used to go on dates. Let alone ride horses in Croatia.” “That’s what you get for bringing the miracle of new life into the world.” “Yeah, our bad.” Once we’d finished our wine, we gathered our coats and edged down the restaurant’s slender artery. “Which way are you headed?” Jacob asked.
“Fi Di. There’s some publishing party. Scott made us all swear to come.” “You’re going to a party? On a Wednesday?” “I know. But one drink and then I’m home.” As we emerged onto the sidewalk, the wind combed the cool evening air through our hair. I leaned up and hugged Jacob. “Good luck,” he said. “Text me if you start hyperventilating in a bathroom.” “Jacob.” “Oh, how I miss College Selina.” He waved and walked north. With the breeze humming in my ears, I watched him move lightly, purposefully back toward his beautiful life. We were thirty-four now and the novelty of Jacob having a kid wasn’t so shocking anymore, but sometimes, in moments like these, the difference between our lives hit me afresh. I’d be standing somewhere like this, alongside a road full of cars, in the black space beneath the old train line, watching the world move and change, feeling pinned in place. I’d wonder if I belonged in any real way to that world, where people tumbled pleasantly along in love, or if something about me was just askew enough to put me on the outside. I caught myself before I got too wistful. Perspective, after all, came from being on the outside of something. Better to be out here and objective than inside and lost. I buttoned my coat and headed for the subway. The Maynard-Roth party was held at Cipriani, a venue whose two levels of gray granite columns loomed over Wall Street. In publishing, the place was best known for hosting the National Book Awards every November, but tonight the atmosphere was more casual. The cavernous ballroom had been cleared of the usual lavish dining setup. Instead, a hundred small high-top tables formed long aisles down the hall, and teak easels, at intervals, displayed four-foot blowups of Maynard-Roth book covers. Hundreds of people in neutral coats stood grouped around them, chatting over drinks, their profiles
lit by the racks of stage lights that hung suspended from the seventy-foot ceiling. I wound between groups and ignored the eyes that strayed to me. One person in my wake said, in a lowered voice, “Was that—?” I increased my pace. At the curtained front windows stood tables of hors d’oeuvres, plus the bar. I bolted a few slices of cheese and sw ept up a glass of bubbles, but before I could retreat, an eager voice said, “Excuse me, are you Selina Chan?” I turned, bracing myself. A pair of women holding champagne flutes were gazing at me with expressions of morbid fascination. I managed a taut smile. “Yes. Hi.” The woman who’d spoken was close to six feet tall and cupped her champagne glass as though it were a mug of hot cocoa. Bending toward me like a reed, she said, “I’m Eileen. I do data at Harper. I read all your pieces.” As her friend’s head bobbed, my shoulders relaxed. So they didn’t hate me. In criticism you never knew who was carrying one of your less flattering sentences around in their pocket, nursing it like a bottle. “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate that.” Eileen exchanged an uninterpretable look with the small blonde friend. Had I somehow, in five words, said something abnormal? That would be a record, even for me. But then Eileen said, “This is my friend Courtney Mitchell.” Panic spread over Courtney’s face, but Eileen forged on: “Courtney’s an author. Her debut comes out next August and it’s brilliant.” “Ah.” I nodded to Courtney. “I’ll ke ep an eye out. What’s the title?” Her face turned bright red. “Oh, wow—thank you so much. It’s called
Mean Streak. I hope you like—if you read it, I mean, not that I expect you to—” “I’ll read it,” I said. “Congratulations on the sale.” A profusion of giddy thanks, and they disappeared into the crowd. I wrote Courtney’s name into my phone and breathed. That could have been much worse. After a full circuit of the ballroom and mezzanine, I’d found nobody from City. Inconvenient, since Scott needed to see I’d been here before I could es cape. Moments later I’d been roped into conversation with an editorial director asking if I’d slide his author’s latest into my queue. “Selina Chan, out in public!” he exclaimed with the rare, brash confidence of literary extroverts. “A review from you, I know Jack would be thrilled...” Meanwhile, from over his shoulder, two men’s venomous glares were burning into my forehead. None of it surprised me. I was less than beloved among novelists. Occupational hazard. Six months ago, Christian Gatehead had referred to me—on the record with The New York Times!—as “an insufferable little whiner delivering undergraduate-level analysis with the self-righteousness of a youth pastor.” Better characterization than anything in his past three books. I did another round of the mezzanine with my glass emptying. I hadn’t eaten enough. What was I doing here, in a hall of people who looked at me and saw either a tantalizing shortcut to commercial success or the literary Antichrist? I never felt so far away from the point of literature, an art form built on honesty and intimacy, as I did at these events. To my left, a group of authors burst into laughter over a comment made by the bestselling writer among them. They gazed at her like they wanted to eat her.
I wished I were at home. As usual, I wished I were alone. And when I stopped at the mezzanine rail and glanced back down at the ballroom, I wished I were anywhere on earth but here, because st epping over the threshold in a dark felt coat, spots of color high in his cheeks from the cold, was none other than Parker Navarro. My breath stuck in my throat like a bone. I was seized by the absurd urge to run. Instead I stood utterly stiff, hammered down into place like a nail. Navarro slipped out of his coat. He was lean and angular, the first author I’d ever seen whose headshots didn’t overstate his appearance to the point of unreality. He actually looked like that: debonair, something sorrowful about his mouth, like he was made for black and white. Before I could move, he looked up, across the ballroom, and his eyes locked onto mine.