Let Me Try To Understand Again
Davis writes Ross as unaware of his desire to be understood and obscuring that desire in his cultural identity and compulsive interest in self-improvement.
“[W]hen you are a true incel novelist, it's nice to write in the early evening, after a shower. ideally you haven't seen another person in real life all week,” writes Matthew Davis on X.
As I read Davis’ debut novel, Let Me Try Again, I did not interpret its author as an incel novelist. Instead, Let Me Try Again is an effectively cold reprisal of the Alt Lit Masculine. Davis engages core elements of the genre - interpersonal relationships, illicit substances, feelings of disconnectedness - but presents them through an innately Gen Z Jewish paradigm, engaging a sense of Otherness that rejects the politics enmeshed in the concept of Other.
Rather than a simple victim of inceldom, Davis writes his protagonist, Ross, as unaware of his desire to be understood and obscuring that desire in his cultural identity and compulsive interest in self-improvement. Ross moves throughout New York City and Los Angeles with the icy ease that Caroline Calloway wishes her prose held, finding himself among many people throughout the novel, while never fully able to explain himself to any of them.
When Ross broke up with Lora Liamant, the first pages of the novel reveal that it comes from his desire for her to level up alongside him. Ross wants her to quit smoking, to quit drinking, to marry him and bear his children. Ross’ interest in health isn’t geriatric and it’s lazy to call it Bateman-esque. The Los Angeles Review of Books quotes Ross’ line about becoming the apex of his capital R “Race”. Ross wants to be the highest achiever out of the thrill of denying it to others. When Lora begins to choose those other people, men who are completely unlike Ross - he malfunctions, evidenced by the novel’s many half-page long diatribes about Lora making a grave mistake in abandoning him. Ross attempts to connect with his peers, but the text always characterizes him as Different in a Bad Way. Some fundamental personality flaw prevents him from participating in whatever everyone else his own age is interested in - when asked about polyamory, Ross once again (as he does at least thirteen times in the work) says he would rather put a gun in his mouth. Upon admitting this, Davis fleetingly shows Ross’ loneliness that he so desperately tries to conceal: “They both looked at me and laughed, as if I were the silly one, as if I were the one lacking some grasp of essential truths about life.” (150)
Davis writes a lot about Lora, but does not reveal much about Lora outside of her desire to have sex with people that are not Ross. The narrative returns to this idea of cuckolding over and over, but in Ross insisting that Lora’s poor decision making drove them apart, Davis goads the finite judgement of misogny rather than directly pointing to Ross’ spiritual wound of disconnection. There are fleeting references to Lora’s misalignment with his male Goop lifestyle that reveal Ross’ innate feeling of frailty:
“You treated me like dirt, Lora. And I feel sorry for you. Because sooner or later, you’re going to look terrible, from the diet, and the lifestyle you live… I’m only going to keep getting better, more wealthy, more strong, more knowledgable, mroe impressive. All you have are your looks, which are destined to wither… I can’t believe you don’t care.” (262)
In the same breath, Ross tries to come up with plans to recapture Lora in “a moment of Jewish scheming” (265) playing with the idea of self-hatred but simultaneously protecting its acknowledgement through lines like “Anti-Defamation League automatic recurring donations” (48). His idealization of Lora (on page 272 he refers to her as his “white whale”, which I interpreted as Davis once again taunting readers to cry objectification) is centered in his idea that she will complete his perfect mind and health, but his desire to attain those things is based in a whole-body belief that he is already not enough. When Ross laments that he can’t have her, he is remorseful that he cannot lift weights or eat “four thousand calories a day” to correct her absence. (274)
Ross’ attachment to Lora, his health, and achievement protects his deep need to assert dominance over others. Ross shines in his relationship to Emily, who appears to routinely bring him out of his self-flagellation. I was most struck by the marriage of Judaism to biohacking. I also enjoyed the Jiv Johnson reference, exclusively for the cursed scenesters.
Let Me Try Again disguises itself. Matthew Davis’ novel is not an expression of incel ideology, but instead reflects on the feeling of inadequacy that Ross cannot safely admit to others or even himself. In one scene, a female character exclaims: “Ross has the imagination of a boy… that look in Ross’s eyes just tells me.” (200) I read the book. He’s not like this.
Let Me Try Again by Matthew Davis is available from Arcade Publishing.