Lucy Ellmann's Mimi

"Tell me, my dear, what do you have against us poor men?  We really try our best, you know ---"
    Without a pause Mimi replied, "War, racism, injustice, destruction, tyranny, feudalism, monarchies, mercenaries, pirates, despots, the slave trade, the Ku Klux Klan, global warming, capitalism, corrupt bankers, wife-beating, the Freemasons, monotheism, radioactive waste, ugly architecture, animal extinctions, toga parties, pubic hair removal, sniper rifles that can shoot people a mile away, and failure to do the dishes."
Lucy Ellmann, Mimi (Bloomsbury USA, 2013).

While I waited in the queue at the Brooklyn Public Library for Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport (I cannot resist the idea of one sentence that is almost 1000 pages long) I read her earlier Mimi, a novel that makes up in passion what it lacks in narrative drive, with three main characters:  plastic surgeon Harrison Hanafan; his sister, artist Bridget Hanafan; and his lover and speaking coach M.Z. Fortune (Mimi).  There are plenty of other characters, including Harrison's cat Bubbles, and a great deal of neuroses to go around, including Harrison's lists, my favorite being Why I Hate Bathrobes ("1. The belt never stays tied").  There are also numerous references to films, books, art,classical composers (including actual sheet music) literature and art, some of the references are even relative to the narrative, what there is of it.

In its often dark humor Mimi reminds me of Peter De Vries, whose many books in the sixties and seventies skewered that period as effectively as Ellmann does our own, though De Vries's books were somewhat more genteel and less angry than Ellmann's, for good reason in both cases; De Vries published many stories in The New Yorker before profanity was allowed.