Zach Schiffman: Nathan obviously was a very stereotypical neurotic Jewish guy, but I found a lot of the minutia with him really funny. The stuff with him thinking Alyssa’s cheating on him, but it’s just the renovation, was obvious in a way, but then also surprising in little ways. I loved really living in a neurotic Jewish guy and not letting it just be a throwaway character or a joke. And his neurosis with his family makes perfect sense in a way that’s obvious but satisfying.
Emily Gould: I also really appreciated the contrast with Beamer. I thought it was really interesting to contrast someone who probably has a lot of baseline anxiety that he treats with handfuls of drugs, compulsive overeating, and having sex workers shove things up his butt and reenact kidnapping fantasies with someone who has a lot of anxiety and deals with it via ineffective apps and breathing and just taking some Zoloft every day. Nathan has all of these deep-seated problems and he is determined to tough them out and accommodate them by making his life and his family’s lives as much of a padded cell as possible. Which is actually in a way so much crazier than Beamer, but it looks really functional from the outside.
I also thought the land-use stuff and going deep into the specifics of the rules surrounding the Yellowton Giant’s was really interesting. I think that’s why Adelle Waldman wrote such a positive review of this book, because she is the world’s leading expert on the inner workings of big-box stores. That was one of my favorite parts of the book, and oddly, the minor characters who populate that aspect of the book — like the dickhead committee members of this small town who are blocking the incursion of this big box store — actually seemed more like real people and more closely observed than the minor characters who populate some of the other parts of the book, like the neighbors in the first section or the sex workers in the Beamer section.
Kathryn VanArendonk: I find the stakes of the Nathan part to feel both bigger and smaller in ways that work really well. The Giant’s land-use story is actually a huge, important, meaningful role that this family plays in this community, as does the factory, which Beamer is also so distant from. Nathan’s inability to cope with any of what’s sort of surrounding him — you can feel the magnitude of what happens when these people’s lives collapse in a way that actually is real unlike Beamer, where it’s this hole that he is just himself digging deeper and deeper and deeper into and the only other people who are caving in are just his immediate family. At the same time, the stakes of how Nathan is failing this are so plausibly small. He lost money in a way that is extremely believable and makes total sense for his personality and his need to have this one thing that felt cool and risky. His wife needing to renovate the kitchen is so funny and so correct about how this would actually play out — it is not that you need the money to save the world, it’s that you need the money because you can’t tell your wife that she cannot have this kitchen reno and it’s blowing out of proportion. In general, the proportions of what is happening inside of Nathan and outside of him feel so much better suited to tell the kinds of story about dysfunction that Taffy wants to locate in this character.
Again, the factory is also so clearly at the heart of what this story is. Styrofoam as a metaphorical substance for them to be making — how it takes up so much space and it weighs nothing and it means nothing and it is about protection but it’s also the flimsiest object imaginable. All of it. I’m like, yes, give me this. Nathan is so much closer to it and Beamer just feels like he’s spinning out into this other place in ways that I have a much harder time connecting.
Emily: I talked earlier about whether we have any hope that the characters are capable of pulling themselves out of the situation and whether they are capable of change and how we invest in them more if it feels like there is some glimmer of ability to fix their problems on the horizon. Of all the characters, Nathan had the most opportunities to take the other path, swerve away to not fuck up any of the three or four different situations that he is simultaneously fucking up in his life. That made it feel like the stakes were more meaningful.
Zach: The way that the wealth affects him is also the most interesting. It’s not Jenny who can just be listless. It’s not Beamer who can be a fuckup. It’s Nathan’s ability to not excel but still keep working. He’s good at what he does but he’s not getting promoted and keeping his nose to the paper and not being a go-getter. It’s like the wealth gives him a level of comfort to stick with the status quo. There’s a way more interesting thing about the security of the money there than in the other two.
Jason P. Frank: I also had a much stronger reaction to this section. Is there a reason why it couldn’t go first? I think it’s a stronger section. It would make sense to run down the siblings in order of age. I think that the reason that Beamer goes first is probably because if you’re writing it you think that it’s going to capture the audience more because there’s the glamour of Hollywood and there’s a shock thing. It’s stylistically a lot more flashy. I think there’s a lot more style — and I don’t mean that positively or negatively — to the Beamer section. So I understand in that way, but would it work if Nathan went first? Would it work better?
Kathryn: I was thinking about this also because one of the big ideas here is that it’s not really the kidnapping that’s the trauma, it’s the money that’s the trauma. The way the book is constructed, Beamer is kind of furthest from the money, and as you get closer through this order of siblings, you are also getting closer to that idea. Beamer’s thing, it’s so wrapped up in the kidnapping. He can’t stop writing the kidnapping stories and he’s fucked up in these big dramatic crime-y kidnap-y kinds of ways. Nathan is apparently the most financially secure — or seems like he should be — and yet you realize his inability to take risks, his deep anxiety about all this. And then, as you get closer to Jenny, you are getting closer to the idea of money as the center of what’s happening. So that order does track to me, but I agree with you that when you’re starting with Beamer, it’s this kind of complicated inversion plot where you’re starting further away from the thing you actually care about.
Julie Kosin: I thought she had to work so much harder in the Nathan section to get you invested in Middle Rock. The way that Middle Rock is set up in the intro, I did want to stay in that bubble of this very tightly knit community, and then she pulls you out of that. I’m honestly almost more interested in what’s going on back there — I don’t care about Hollywood in comparison. So Beamer is a detour you’re going to read to get back to Middle Rock.
Cat Zhang: I wonder if Beamer’s section comes first because she wants to introduce Charlie as fast as possible as the outside observer. This also makes me wonder how everyone feels about Mickey — I think it does track that Nathan would move his money solely out of fear of being bullied.
Zach: I also think Mickey tracks with that suburban Jewish thing of like, this friend that you made as a child in your tightly knit Jewish suburb — unfortunately, you’re gonna give him your money one day. I sort of bought that. To me he looked like RFK Jr. That relationship made perfect sense to me. I did think it was over-the-top with the kangaroo, but I never once doubted they stayed friends.
Maybe the bullying is a segue into considering Nathan’s status in his workplace alongside his fumbled attempt at blackmail. What did you think about his attempt to take over the narrative?
Jason: I think it was fun to see that he has some vision of people who operate through the world normally as, “they’re blackmailing and they’re doing all this crazy stuff.” So when he tries to just get something done, his way is like, “I’m going to have a beta blocker and then I’m going to get this thing done like my co-worker would,” but his co-worker — who is shady — isn’t blackmailing people. I thought it was an accurate version of what Nathan would think his co-workers do in order to be normal around human beings. I enjoyed that.
Emily: Maybe Nathan’s fatal flaw is that he overcorrects in these situations. He’s so risk-averse and so incredibly anxious that when presented with the opportunity to take action, he’s taking the biggest action possible rather than just taking a sane action. Rather than giving the money to his middle-school bully he could just choose a different broker who has a slightly less risk-averse investment strategy. Instead of blackmail … I don’t actually know what he could have done instead of blackmailing. He was sort of painted into a corner in that whole situation. He was clearly set up to fail by his company by being given that assignment in the first place, they have no reason to not want to get rid of him. What actually gives this character genuine pathos is that he, within his limitations, is doing his best in these situations, trying to please other people, keep his job, not alienate himself from his wife and children. And he’s just missing the mark over and over again, but he’s not off by miles the way that Beamer is, he’s off by crucial inches.
Julie: I think the depiction of anxiety and OCD in this is pretty convincing. I loved the line about the fact that he was gonna have to say this prayer to keep his family alive for the rest of his life. That felt extremely real and exactly what a character like him would do. The OCD part about buying all those insurance policies, I was like, Of course if you are somebody who is that mentally ill and had that much money, that is exactly what you’re going to do to ensure the future of your family.
Zach: Nathan in some way seems like the least affected by the kidnapping. Nathan’s thing is about needing the approval of his mother and not in the same way as Jenny. It is divorced from Carl in a way; it’s like he’s just a man with neuroses that come with everything in this family and it’s not so weighed down by this need to address Carl.
Kathryn: His marriage is also believable and a meaningful form of characterization in a way that’s not true for Jenny or for Beamer really. Like the dynamic that plays out in his marriage explains so much about how he interacts with other people in the world, the kinds of choices he has made, the kinds of things he needs. Plus you have this person who is, like all of them, flawed, but who clearly does actually love him and see things in him, his flaws and good things. And so just having her as a part of who he is as a character gives you this way of being like he’s a fucking mess and there’s this person who is also a mess and they work together and she likes him and she really can see some of the dysfunction that’s happening here. It allows you to feel warmth toward him even though you are just as aware of how totally messed up he is. And the absence of any kind of close relationship like that that really works for the other two characters is so challenging. And I think actually the same is true for Mickey. Mickey’s whole existence helps explain who Nathan is in a way that Charlie is supposed to be doing for Beamer and instead you’re just distracted by the fact that he’s stolen the story and he’s making this TV show and it’s all warped by this kind of Hollywood thing.
Jason: I would say the flashback to college-age Nathan and Alyssa — I just felt so situated reading that, like it felt good. And maybe that’s also because I went to Brandeis, I know those couples who literally met on the first day. I know where they met on campus. But the moment on the train where she looked at him and said I would give up all my Orthodoxy if I could be as wealthy as you, that was one of the few moments in this book that I really felt hit by something — by a piece of dialogue, by just a sentiment at all. And maybe that’s because it was coming from a non-wealthy character looking in but there’s a lot of non-wealthy characters in this book and none of them said something as impactful to me as that.
Kathryn: It helps so much that Alyssa is messed up about this. Whereas Charlie is like, I’ve figured it out. I’m on the outside and I know that you’re broken and I’m able to create this whole story about your brokenness. Alyssa’s complicity in the whole project of it really explains so much about all of their functioning toward each other.
Zach: Nathan’s is really one of the only parts where Jewish religion is relevant and not just Jewish culture and history. I think that’s actually really compelling when this book is about, what is Jewish American culture? And what is actual Jewish religion?
