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Is Rejection the First Great Incel Novel?


Tony Tulathimutte’s second book is a hilariously brutal story collection about elder millennials grappling with their sexual failures.

When the eager progressive is arguing with the druggie cynic, or the tall bipolar scientist with the short insecure tech guy, it tends to read like a single person (the author) playing devil’s advocate with himself. The inner lives of Thai American men are an ongoing concern in Tulathimutte’s writing: In both Private Citizens and Rejection, we enter the headspace of these characters while they obsess over porn and their assumed inability to satisfy a white sexual partner. In the voice of this fictional publisher, Tulathimutte tears himself a new one for his use of many characters as an “attempt at misdirection, as you smuggle your own hang-ups into theirs.” He accuses himself of literary crimes equivalent to “giving a speech and then clapping for yourself.” Much like the rest of the book, this frantic anticipation of critique would be so annoying if it wasn’t also so smart.

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