the fact that she wrote a little life and yet also jokingly called people who were effected by it to the point of crying "pussies" is... she's what happens when teenage girls don't grow out of the "weirdly fixated on queer men" phase.

I’m sad little life was her book that blew up her debut novels concept is so much more interesting than a guy getting into looney tunes styles of misfortunes for 700 pages straight

Tiktok promised me a little life would make me cry. I didn't cry but I may never recover from it.

The actually explicitly stated gay people in A Little Life are abusive or coded as assholes (Caleb and JB). Jude is a sort of "asexual sex-repulsed because broken" trope which sucks for my sexuality. And Willem "isn't gay, he just likes Jude"

"Andy,” he says, “tell me honestly: Is he mentally ill?” There’s a very long silence, until Andy says, “I don’t think so, Willem. Or rather: I don’t think there’s anything chemically wrong with him. I think his craziness is all man-made.”

Honestly god bless you I’ve only read a little life and may never recover

Thank you for making this video! I needed help sorting my thoughts after A Little Life! I feel validated now

Wow! This was really interesting. Glad I came across this video! Hahaha the song was brutal and I loved it. Brava!!! I have not read her books, good for you for reading all three and taking them in, and then sharing with us! I went to the play (A Little Life) about a week ago, and had been wondering about the source material! Imagine my surprise when I found out it wasn’t based on someone’s life experience, but was a novel written by a heterosexual woman! That supported my feelings about this play being incredibly disingenuous and silly. When I finally read more about the author, and saw what she had to say about not reading research about people who have been through trauma, and what she had to say about talk therapy…I felt sick to my stomach. First, at what appeared to be a lack of curiosity about what real people experience, as well as no desire to try to make her beloved character’s experiences realistic. Second, that she feels so strongly about her point (that those who are lost are simply lost) that she feels compelled to write a long book letting readers know. To get this point across, she imagined horrific scenarios that she thinks would give people reasons to not want to live, and to have no self-regard. This feels incredibly slimy to me, because a lot of survivors of trauma and people with disabilities do want to live and DO have self-regard. I don’t know why she wanted to write so much about sexual abuse. Especially refusing to learn about it, or use her writing to somehow help someone else. It doesn’t add up. If you’re going to go there, and it isn’t a metaphor, and you’re not going there to help someone somehow, or say something useful, then why go there? Why was sexual abuse her chosen vehicle? I just find it all dubious. From what bits I read of the book, the play was very true to it. I didn’t read the whole book, I only skimmed to try to get a sense of her style, and get an idea of how much of the book is focused on friendships, and how much on the bad things that happen to Jude. It’s weird how unbelievable so much of it is. I don’t know if this is bad storytelling, laziness, or my own failure for not believing. But I don’t really believe he could go from being abused, to pimped, to kidnapped, to becoming a highly educated and successful corporate litigator with best friends who are all also incredibly wealthy and at the top of their careers in NYC. Maybe this is explained in the book. In the play it was just repeated over and over again that he is a genius. It could happen, sure, but it wasn’t depicted in a believable way in the play. I don’t have a problem with a protagonist not getting better, and I don’t think I have a problem with making the point of the story be that some people can’t or won’t see themselves as worth saving. But something feels off about the play/book to me. It doesn’t feel true, it does not feel like it came from a place of earnestness to depict what’s true. I realize it’s subjective and my experience of A Little Life being slimy and disingenuous doesn’t mean the author or the playwright really were being fake as hell, but I’m not going to discount my own experience. I’m not convinced her point is all that thoughtful, sensitive, or responsible. Just to share…a bit off topic since it is not the book…the play was over 4 hours long and in Dutch. There was a lot of fake blood, simulated rape, and unbelievable friendships/relationships between characters with no personalities (including Jude). I almost got the giggles when the car crash happened, because so much bad stuff had happened up to that point, of course that would happen, too! Amputation? Sure, why not? What else should we throw in? Well, we’re coming up on hour 4, let’s just let him kill himself in a painful way, then have his adopted father say some cliche crap about how he can see Jude’s face in every flower (or something to that effect), end the play, and whoever hasn’t already walked out will give the play a standing ovation. It makes me laugh, but also makes me worried, that someone (I guess the author, playwright, and director), REALLY want us to feel affected by watching a character in a perpetual state of suffering, and watch them hurt themselves or be hurt over and over again - and that they REALLY want us to believe that darkness and cruelty and suffering is deep and meaningful in a way we they seek to think we haven’t thought about enough. I want to shout at them, “GET A LIFE! Go help someone!” This was a long comment. Hope that is ok. Thanks again for your great video.

This video needs more hype!!

hi! loved this video, a little life might be a shit book but at least it led me to your channel and for that i am grateful :) the part where you talked about women voting against ourselves caught my attention and i was wondering if you could perhaps recommend some reading materials on this topic, as i'm not sure I can fully grasp the concept. thanks!!

i agree with you a hundred percent!! thank you for this

Thank u for sharing ur insights abt this author. I do hve the book “Little Life” waiting to b read.. since I bought it I might as well read it, once I finish reading Stephen Kings “Talisman”.. I’m hving a hard time liking.. I’m pushing through..I will not b reading any other of her other books bcz I agreed w/u she writes from a entitled Ivory Tower life..

i totally get criticisms of a little life - personally i found it cathartic bc i went into it knowing it would be sad and i wanted to see if a book could make me cry (it did), and so i got what i wanted out of it. there’s also something about it that keeps drawing me in, but i haven’t done enough inner soul-searching or whatever to really understand why. anyway this was a good video!

Subscribed. I have considered reading Yanagihara, but I won't bother now... I was very impacted by your dystopia rant. I love the idea of novels about solutions. Can you offer a list?

What an icky lady. Wish i would have known all this before i bought 2 books of hers. Finding them and getting rid of them in a heartbeat.❤❤

I think you need to start to read solarpunk books if that's the future you want to read about :)

no but i enjoyed this so much please

5:50 read ficciones by Borges, don't know if you know Spanish but if you do preferably read it in Spanish

So it really sounds like you’re against an honest portrayal of what the depressed and traumatized mind is like. That’s how we think about ourselves. Is it wrong to establish that about a character?