Narcissism in Reflection
Can you look away? A review of The Portrait of a Mirror by A. Natasha Joukovsky.
Greek mythology is known for its fanciful explanations of the world. Explanations that seem to excavate humanity’s shared subconscious. But of the many great myths, there appears to be just one with such resonance that it’s finagled its way into the pages of the DSM. Not to mention the fact, that any casual social media user has likely stumbled across the near bottomless reservoir of complaints1 that invoke the eponym this myth birthed, narcissism.
Now, it is unclear whether the originator of the myth of Narcissus was keen to force humanity to take a (harsh) look in the mirror. He or she may simply have meant it as a clever origin story of the daffodil and the echo. Regardless, it has been transformed into a broader commentary on human nature, specifically the peril and power of our tendency towards solipsism. Narcissus has also had quite the hold on the minds of artists. This (perhaps abusive) relationship can now be numbered by millennia.
A Retelling
It is possible that some readers may be new to or need a refresher on this ancient myth so I will provide a recapitulation. My recap is informed by the most well-known version of the myth; the version told by the Roman poet Ovid from his Metamorphoses III.
Narcissus, a young man of extraordinary beauty, was the son of the river god Cephisos and the sea nymph Liriope. He was so attractive that both men and women were captivated by him, but he spurned all romantic advances, harboring contempt for those who loved him. One day, Narcissus encounters a nymph named Echo. Echo, cursed by the goddess Hera to only repeat the words of others, falls immediately in love. Narcissus roughly rejects her, leaving Echo heartbroken. The blow is so deep that Echo withers until she is nothing but her voice. As punishment for his reckless scorn, Narcissus is cursed by the gods to fall in obsessive love with his own reflection, a reflection he sees in a clear spring. He becomes so transfixed by his own likeness that he is unable to leave the waterside, ultimately dying. In his place, a flower springs up, bearing his name— the narcissus, commonly known as the daffodil.
The ways in which we conceive of ourselves has grown increasingly individuated. There is intriguing research that has traced this psychological phenomenon to the disruption of kinship networks by the medieval Christian church. More recently, there is growing concern about the social costs this atomization and subsequent turn inward has incurred. Social scientists like Robert Putnam have chronicled a sharp decline in measures of social connectedness and communal participation. These concerns have been extended to the technology that appears to intensify this trend towards self-absorption. Jon Haidt, another prominent social scientist, has been on an affable crusade against the bubble-wrapping, digitization, and online gamification of childhood. Regardless of where today’s supercharged individualism (often characterized as narcissism) arises and what it’s doing, this related package of ideas won’t go away and likely will remain of special interest to us. Moreover, it seems that art and literature have not lost the plot here. They are still probing the depth of human solipsism even as their cultural power is being disrupted by the inspiring technology. In fact, as author A. Natasha Joukovsky would have us believe, the production of art is an expression of our self-serving desire to be recognized now and into the distant future - ideally forever. This sad but often beautiful part of humanity animates Joukovsky’s debut novel The Portrait of a Mirror (2021).
The Portrait of a Mirror is a modern re-interpretation of the Narcissus myth. It’s an examination of the lives of enviable young professionals that asks provocatively questions. How authentic are our identities and desires? Are the personas we construct actually a subaltern plea for imitation? Do we truly love reflections of ourselves more than the authentic presentation of others? Does the vacuity of the substance of modern life matter, if, in the end, it looks pretty, fun, and enviable?
The Portrait of a Mirror operates on many levels, Matryoshka doll-like if you will.2 For instance, this modern Narcissus myth doubles as a work of autofiction, wherein the author distributes an exaggerated version of herself across her four main characters: Charles Wesley "Wes" Range IV, Diana Whalen, Vivien Floris, and Dale McBride. This is just the first couple of related layers as Joukovsky tries to push the limits of our ability to track the numerous thematic and narrative echoes. Let’s meet the author via her characters.
Wes and Diana are a recently married couple living in New York City. Dale and Vivien are a couple in Philadelphia who are soon-to-be married. Wes, a golden-boy type, is the CEO of new tech startup company called Ecco, which has had a positive recent valuation. He’s blessed with an unreasonably unflappable handsomeness and a privileged patrician pedigree (signaled by the Roman numerals in the name of course). Diana works as a management consultant at a firm called Portmanteau. Diana has willed her way to success from a more modest upbringing via dazzling wit and charisma; she’s from a family of two academic parents. Vivien is an art curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art but is currently the visiting curator at The Met. Vivien is also of wealth like Wes; they attended the same prep school before heading to different colleges. Dale, like Diana, works as a management consultant for Portmanteau. Also like Diana, he comes from a family of academics. As is probably already evident, these dyads mirror each other, and the driving friction concerns the potential reordering of the current couplings.
One of the criticisms I’ve seen leveled at The Portrait of a Mirror is that it is one of those boring novels where nothing happens. This is an obvious misreading. The action of the novel is the interaction among the cast of characters and the intrigue of their romantic possibilities. Moreover, if today’s adult readers are coming to novels expecting pulpy plot machinations solely for entertainment, then they need remediation and refinement.3 We should at least aspire to something partially edifying when devouring dessert. The Portrait of a Mirror is quite transparently attempting a contemporary iteration of a common plot found in the bourgeois heyday of the novel (the 19th and early 20th century), works like The Age of Innocence, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Great Gatsby. Subsequently, everything is about the conversations between the characters, their decision-making, and the psychosocial and emotional currents that wash over us as we bear witness.
Peeling back the layers, we can also understand The Portrait of a Mirror as a novel of manners. It follows the everyday lives of four quite similar people as they become uncomfortably intertwined. Joukovsky is intensely interested with the customs of affluent urbanites. This is often explored via detailed, ritualistic descriptions of their morning toilettes, sartorial choices, hangout spots, and diets. However, the revealing portions of this anthropology are the conversations the author let’s us eavesdrop on. We, as readers, suffer through the hollow and martial boardroom strategy sessions, cringe through sociopolitical exchanges among limousine liberals, and giggle at the youthful sparring of romantic duos.
As with many novels of this type, there is an arrow of satire aimed squarely at our characters, including some colorful ones in addition to the main four. These bolts periodically arc toward various targets, but each shot seems to come with some ambivalence. I say this because the satire seems to come alongside or be punctuated by outright celebrations of the elements purportedly being ridiculed.4 I think there is awareness, on the part of the author, of the paradoxical impact of attempts at satirical takedowns of the wealthy and attractive. It is hard to inspire contempt for subjects that we can’t quite look away from. This awareness appears to shape the writing in ways that sometimes make what's presented to readers as an indulgence in pretentiousness for its own sake. And though it may be unfair to argue, I think The Portrait of a Mirror may at times function as an example of what the writer Justin Murphy has called "Caviar Cope" or “a kind of VR immersion” for the “over-educated but under-employed” into the lives of the rich and glamorous. Instead of the ungodly rich, Joukovsky is using the top of the professional managerial class (PMC) as the model; but isn’t this is my “narcissism of small differences” talking?
On top of the seductive voyeurism, witty repartee, haute-bourgeois ethnography, and the usual will-they-won't-they tensions that sustain the surface action, Joukovsky layers in her intellectual preoccupations, including art criticism and the concept of recursion. Recursion simply describes a phenomenon where a concept or process depends on a simpler or prior version of itself. Joukovsky likes to give the example of an observer between two mirrors (mirrors of course figure prominently in the novel not just the title). Joukovsky sees recursion as a principle at work in art, including that which literally appears in the novel and as something inherent to the act of artistic creation. In other words, in the latter case, she's arguing that art is an often selfish ploy for immortality animated by mimetic desire, the desire birthed by our peers and idols. Also present in the novel is the implication that technology like smartphones and social media has democratized and thus intensified this ultimately narcissistic venture. Increasingly, we are incentivized to curate a persona and perform according to these expectations. In fact, the denouement of the novel is essentially an extended exploration of such an act.
Consistent with these thematic elements, Joukovsky inserts chapters with alternative formats: instagram posts, text chains, email correspondences, wedding notices and invitations, wikipedia entries, etc. These are breezy chapters that punctuate what are sometimes lectures on art criticism. These lecturers are voiced by Vivien and walkthrough a fictional exhibit at The Met. Vivien’s exhibit is curated using real pieces of art, including Narcissus by Caravaggio (the cover art). Generally, each chapter follows the POV of a character as we become acquainted with them and their lives begin to intersect. Only later does Joukovsky start to cross-cut between their perspectives in the (anti-)climactic gala showdown among the couples (with of course ancillary consequences for their professional ambitions). One of the chapters worth highlighting here is one in which three characters (Wes, Diana, and their flamboyantly gay friend Julian) debate the hit podcast Serial while having brunch. The conversation makes for high hilarity. The reader enjoys both the schadenfreude of witnessing the characters desperately attempt to be clever critics and good liberal-progressives and the cringe-worthiness of the self-serving maneuvering inherent to sociopolitical debates among bobos in paradise.
For those who are not avid readers, I’d tempt you with The Portrait of a Mirror by calling it a novelized version of The White Lotus. The big differentiators here perhaps being an attempt at a more tragic sensibility and a bit lighter on the satire. There is also essentially only one main character (refracted four times). Plus, Joukovsky exercises quite a bit more restraint than is possible given the incentives of a televisual medium. The ending of The Portrait of a Mirror is clearly meant to hit readers abruptly like a dead weight. It doesn't personally have this effect on me as I feel psychologically distant from the characters (despite being of a similar enough extraction). This is possibly because I have a sense of myself as being a dropout from the college of mimetic warfare.
As suggested above, the main characters are largely echoes of each other. They are young, affluent, and attractive strivers angling to be "masters of the universe," or, in the patois of The Wire rather than Tom Wolfe, hoping to hear their name ring out in the streets. In terms of restraint, there is an effort made by Joukovsky to avoid leaning into eroticism or absurdness. In this respect, it is very reminiscent of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, though Wharton’s artistry in that novel is impossible replicate. She aims to thrill readers by not indulging our ids. We have a tantalizing vision of what could be, what could happen, but our characters demure.5 The point is the self-control, indulgence à la superego, which paradoxically operates just the same way as if a torrid physical affair was the centerpiece of the novel. Not pulling the trigger on such a setup would be nigh impossible in television today.
Despite the careful control over the character action, Joukovsky's diction is a little inconsistent. She bounces jarringly between pretentious jargon like art-related Greek terms or vernacular common to wealthy subcultures and a sort of co-ed patois reliant on four-letter words, vulgar jokes, and rap lyrics. This is not just a function of the inclusion of different textual formats. Some of this play with language is fun. I love this kind of thing in many ways. I’m just not sure this was the type of novel for it. There may have been some intended effect here that just missed the mark with me. In my view, it seems Joukovsky's many acknowledged influences simply ran together, and there are simply too many to fit into a small book.6 Joukovsky tried to do a bit of Oscar Wildean or David Foster Wallacean belletristic gymnastics inside a drawing room novel for Millennials - the form-content mismatch was insurmountable. I think a more clipped and understated style would have more aptly suited the novel's content.
Nonetheless, I feel comfortable strongly recommending The Portrait of a Mirror to readers. It manages to entertain and to address itself to salient but evergreen ideas. We get a fresh look at what a return to the novels of old could be when filled with the manners of today. We also get a sense of what the project of actually developing an identity and culture of Millennial yuppies could look like. This is not something the novel is actively intending; it is more a reflection. However, I think this throws in sharp relief the need for such a foundational project. Lena Dunham’s Girls was certainly a resoundingly loud (and accidental) call for such a project, and I (surprisingly) agree that it is needed. Millennial, despite coming into economic success, have not quite etched a coherent mark on culture and politics. There is sometimes a vacuous feel to all of this, which I think reflects a few things. First, we are currently in a wilderness when it comes to this project, Second, our cultural forbearers have often enabled our worst tendencies being guilty of much destructive narcissism themselves. Third, in some ways we are living in a recursive world, one so deep into the subsequent layers that coherence is breaking down or we’ve become stuck in a loop. If we are all facsimiles, how can we ever get to the real? How can we ever manage to understand ourselves without getting trapped by the process?
Ironically, these complaints are thrown about with little self-awareness or of a pseudo-self-awareness that should be aware the complainer is guilty of the complaint
This is an image the author certainly would like reader to conjure and contemplate.
The author has made comments to the effect that she think attempts at (literary) fiction should try to entertain readers as well. I think this novel very much qualifies in this vein. It is a more targeted at an audience of educated young-ish women (one of the few demographic groups that still appreciably buys and reads fiction), but it still represents a balancing of literary goals and commercial viability.
It is possible I am misreading the author. It is often said that satire is not a natural mode for Americans, being earnest types.
This is a bit of a misrepresentation as there is an illicit coupling that occurs. However, this is an evanescent salacious moment that exists for an obvious narrative purpose. It provides contrast for the potential relationship that is never consummated. The author has discussed this as comparing “innocent-seeming guilt” with “guilty-seeming innocence.”
Quite bravely Joukovsky supplies all of the influences on the book in the appendix with a knowing reference to Harold Bloom’s famous Freudian-like literary theory, the anxiety of influence.