Jonathan Dee's new book, The Privileges, made him sound worth reading, so I started earlier, with his 2003 Palladio. It was pronounced cynical, but compared to Mad Men, it's downright sympathetic. At least here, in this portrait of the advertising world of the new millennium, there's a self-aware character to filter all the bullshit. And as mild-mannered (and perhaps autobiographical) as John Wheelwright is, he redeems his blandness with honesty, compassion and a close, subtle observation of the stronger personalities around him. God help us, his surname might be deliberate--Dee does try a tad too hard at times. But there's comfort, nonetheless, in the steady if disastrous course he steers.
The structure starts to seem too deliberate, and the plot gets forced at the end, because in a shallow culture, the trajectories of shallow personalities don't go anywhere interesting of their own accord. But for me, that disappointment was negligible compared to the sustained interest all the way up to the denouement. Dee's central female character, Molly, is a type I've seen all my life and never understood: deliberately blank and incomplete, and therefore, to men, for reasons I still can't quite fathom, utterly compelling. Men of all kinds are drawn to her with a sort of violence, whether they want to imagine her self into being, claim her, get inside her, save her, or just figure her out.
Palladio's about art and memory, purity and symmetry, dissent and freedom, ideals and nonsense. It's also a fine portrait at the larger scale: a company town that falls apart, an industry that co-opts art for business' sake, a time that gives the brightest, most creative young people no good option for a complete and sane life. Bits of it sting; I've known these people. All of them. And unlike the Mad Men, they're all, in their various flawed ways, searching. If they seem preordained to fail, it's up to us to figure out whether to blame them or the world they inhabit.
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
