{"id":141597,"date":"2019-12-31T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T14:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=141597"},"modified":"2019-12-17T12:25:27","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T17:25:27","slug":"on-classic-party-fiction-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/12\/31\/on-classic-party-fiction-2\/","title":{"rendered":"On Classic Party Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re away until January 6, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2019. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Irving Nurick, illustration from the 1920s<\/p><\/div>\n

In her 2008 review<\/a> of Cecily von Zeigesar\u2019s Gossip Girl<\/em> novels, Janet Malcolm quotes the eponymous narrator\u2019s \u201copening volley\u201d: \u201cWe all live in huge apartments with our own bedrooms and bathrooms and phone lines. We have unlimited access to money and booze and whatever else we want, and our parents are rarely home, so we have tons of privacy. We\u2019re smart, we\u2019ve inherited classic good looks, we wear fantastic clothes, and we know how to party.\u201d I\u2019ve never read the books myself, but on the CW show, which I was briefly obsessed with, we hear Kristen Bell\u2019s voice-over during the title sequence: \u201cGossip Girl here! Your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan\u2019s elite.\u201d The actors playing these trust-fund teens aren\u2019t just good-looking; they seem like genetic impossibilities. Blake Lively is perfectly cast as the, in Malcolm\u2019s words, \u201cincandescently beautiful\u201d Serena van der Woodsen. She\u2019s 5\u201910\u201d and usually wearing heels. Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan of the blog Go Fug Yourself used to call her \u201cBoobs Legsly.\u201d Serena and her friends and enemies (there is often little distinction between the two) have not only lucked into the 1 percent, they are also having an unfair amount of fun.<\/p>\n

Classic party fiction is often, if not always, a kind of wealth porn. When Emma Bovary arrives at La Vaubyessard, the chateau of the marquis, for dinner and a ball, the opulence blows her bourgeois mind: \u201cThe red claws of the lobsters overhung the edges of the platters; large fruits were piled on moss in openwork baskets; the quails wore their feathers; coils of steam rose into the air; and, grave as a judge in his silk stockings, knee breeches, white tie, and jabot, the butler conveyed the platters.\u201d Party scenes are full of these lists of foods and drinks and flowers, overloaded sentences that embody abundance, the fulsome displays of affluence. See Nick Carraway\u2019s first party at Jay Gatsby\u2019s: \u201cEvery Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York \u2026 On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors d\u2019oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold.\u201d Was Flaubert the first to use this listing trope, appalled by the excess? Jane Austen\u2019s balls are disappointingly devoid of visual detail, as if the evidence of money was just assumed. (Austen\u2019s novels adapt so well into film because the dialogue is all there, and costume and set designers can supply the surrounding lushness.) A truly expensive party should feel otherworldly; the marquis\u2019s ball, by putting her in \u201ccontact with wealth,\u201d leaves Emma utterly changed. It makes \u201ca hole in her life, like those great chasms that a storm, in a single night, will sometimes open in the mountains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Classic party fiction is often, if not always, a kind of wealth porn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60329],"tags":[51329,46551,3102,5764,51330,3034,27891,659],"class_list":["post-141597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2019","tag-a-handful-of-dust","tag-breakfast-at-tiffanys","tag-emma-bovary","tag-evelyn-waugh","tag-making-it","tag-nick-carraway","tag-norman-podhoretz","tag-the-great-gatsby"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn Classic Party Fiction by Elisa Gabbert<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Classic party fiction is often, if not always, a kind of wealth porn.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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