A certain cheap value

Did you ever notice that women can seem common while men never do? You won't ever hear anyone describe a man's appearance as common. The common man means the average man, a typical man, a decent hardworking person of modest dreams and resources. A common woman is a woman who looks cheap. A woman who looks cheap doesn't have to be respected, and so she has a certain value, a certain cheap value.

The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner, is devastating. The writing is also clever and laugh-out-loud funny.

("'The thing about cows is they're dressed all in leather,' he said. 'Head to toe, nothing but leather. It's badass. I mean when you really think about it.'" And there I was on my morning commute, thinking about it.)

It's about Romy Hall, in prison for murder. It tells of her life on the inside and of her previous life as a stripper. (Romy may not have been educated, but she reads a lot. She's savvy in her way, and perceptive.) It's brutal and sad.

There was a club on Columbus where feminist strippers made eleven feminist dollars an hour. It was very little for what they gave out, and took in, watching men masturbate in the little booths around the stage. Regal Show World was a regular peep show without the feminism.

She spends much of her time tying to track down her son, who seems to have been swallowed by the system after Romy's mother died.

Romy's story is punctuated with a glimpse into the lives of a couple men: a teacher at the prison (with a profound familiarity with both Thoreau and Ted Kaczynski) as well as Romy's victim, serving — as with all the men in her life — to put her life in negative relief.

A man could say every day that he wanted to change his life, was going to change it, and every day the lament became merely a part of the life he was already living, so that the desire for change was in fact a kind of stasis that allowed the unchanged life to continue, because at least the man knew to disapprove of it, which reassured him not all was lost.

It's hard to call it an enjoyable read — it's like watching a train wreck — but it's propulsive

He needed certain things to feel okay. Vanessa was among those things. He needed dark and heavy curtains, because he had a sleeping problem. He needed Klonopin, because he had a nerve problem. He needed Oxycontin because he had a pain problem. He needed liquor because he had a drinking problem. Money because he had a living problem, and show him someone who doesn't need money. He needed this girl because he had a girl problem. Problem was maybe the wrong word. He had a focus. Her name was Vanessa.

Reviews
New York Review of Books: Notes from the inside
Guardian: What it means to be poor and female in America
Washington Post: If you like despair — and 'Orange Is the New Black'* — you'll love The Mars Room

*I once tried to watch Orange is the New Black. I think I made it through the whole first episode, but I didn't care. This to say: liking the show is not a prerequisite for appreciating this novel.

By their own social code, you were not supposed to ask what people had been convicted of. It was common sense not to ask. But the opprobrium on asking was so deep it seemed to also bare speculating, even privately. You weren't supposed to wonder about the facts that had determined people's lives. He had in his mind something Nietzsche said about truth. That each man is entitled to as much of it as he can bear. Maybe Gordon was not seeking truth, but seeking to learn his own limits for tolerating it.

Excerpt.