The Self Unstable

Gabbert's (The French Exit) latest is a treatise on a deconstructed world, which she describes as "the %E2%80%98so what' school of criticism"%E2%80%94the exact opposite of a cheerful self-help book: "in truth," she writes, "both irony and sincerity are filters." Of course, this is a shrewd and basic truth we often willingly choose to overlook. But this experiment in positioning the self outside of all systems of values and ideology yields, at best, mixed results: on the one hand, the book is full of sleek, provocative lines, and the koan-like structure of each essay invites the reader to linger over it, pondering each line's implication for hours: "Be careful what you wish for, in that it tells you what you want." On the other hand, the book's tone is cold and oppressive: "It is difficult to feel moved in general," she writes. "Statistically, most worlds are boring." The most vivid moment in this compressed book of misery and boredom masquerading as nonchalance is of a famous poet throwing his half-eaten ice cream cone in the trash: "this is boring." David Foster Wallace suggested the next generation of literary rebels would "eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue," be "artists%E2%80%A6 willing to risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama." In this instance, Gabbert does not represent such a vanguard. (Dec.)