Linda Rosenkrantz: Talk

Other aspects of the sixties are:

ROCK AND ROLL. “Do you realize,” Emily says, “that [the new dancing] makes the woman equal to the man for the very first time? She doesn’t have to follow him anymore, he doesn’t control the rhythms, the music is something they share.”

THE DRUG CULTURE. None of Talk ’s three characters is a druggie in a twenty-first-century sense, but in one of the high points of the book, Emily tells Vincent about her experience on LSD. The passage is pure sixties: “I was intimately a part of every pulsebeat of every sun that came up on everybody’s life. There was a huge opening of the sky, I saw God…. I get all the vibrations. You know I called Marsha up when I was under LSD and she said I was talking pure poetry.”

THE “SCENE.” Our three are on a scene populated by the famous and the almost famous. There is a lot of talk about Andy Warhol and Susan Sontag and who is and is not recognized on the beach. Parties, parties, parties. Literary parties. Art parties. Dinner parties. (The eating that goes on in Talk is memorable: see the chapter called “The Clam Dinner.”) We see very little action in Talk , but it seems that parties are where the action is.

CULTURE. Emily and Marsha are cultivated, sixties style:

Emily: Let’s see, I love Fitzgerald— Gatsby is one of my favorite books, and Tender Is the Night ; the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, The Sun Also Rises , the poem Kaddish . I love Proust, Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, Durrell, Robert Creeley, I like Rilke, I like Martin Buber, the idea of I and Thou, even though I don’t know much about it. I like Bob Dylan and I love the Beatles.

A more perfect reading list for sixties smarts would be hard to conceive.

PSYCHOANALYSIS. Psychoanalysis is the intellectual touchstone of the book. In virtually every episode, there is talk about relationships and analysts, with a lot of talk about people being “sick” and “major breakthroughs.” Every emotion, every fumbled relationship, every moment of bliss, every pang is (sometimes brilliantly) “analyzed.” These three think in psychodynamic terms.

The funny thing about Talk is that despite being rooted in its time — the youth culture of the sixties, the sexual revolution, LSD, psychoanalysis, rock and roll, and the rest — the novel, seized from that distant moment, does not feel dated. Twenty-first-century readers of Talk who are themselves “punching thirty” will be able to hear, in the conversation of people from another generation, ringing echoes of their own lives. Therapy? The “scene”? Rock and roll? The elusive but powerful bond between a heterosexual woman and a gay man? The friendship of two beautiful women pushing thirty and going a little crazy over who is and is not “out there” and “available”?

Does any of this sound familiar?

— STEPHEN KOCH

MARSHA: Don’t forget I did sleep with Zeke long after you slept with Michael Christy.

EMILY: You’re crazy.

MARSHA: I am not.

EMILY: I slept with Michael about three weeks ago, when I got drunk at that party. So it’ll be four weeks this Friday that I slept with Michael.

MARSHA: That’s tomorrow.

EMILY: Right, four weeks tomorrow.

MARSHA: Well, it was two weeks for me yesterday, so it’s twice as near. By the way, is the thing you brought me a dessert or a snack?

EMILY: Both.

MARSHA: Is it something that goes with milk?

EMILY: Yes.

MARSHA: Oh that’s great, just great.

EMILY: I’m sorry, I didn’t have enough money to get milk because the thing was so expensive, but I love the question about the milk. What do you think the thing is?

MARSHA: Chocolate-chip cookies.

EMILY: I had to go to two stores to find it.

MARSHA: Brownies, fudge brownies. And there’s no tea in the house either. How do you expect me to eat fudge brownies without milk or tea? It was a sweet thought though.

EMILY: Drink water.

MARSHA: Brownies with water. I’m not too keen on how many underpants I have.

EMILY: How keen does one have to be about a thing like that?

MARSHA: I just don’t think I have enough.

EMILY: Enough for what?

MARSHA: A summer of drips.

EMILY: Those are my favorite underpants of all time. How much do they cost?

MARSHA: A dollar.

EMILY: Where?

MARSHA: Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, one of those.

EMILY: Oh, I love them, I love the nudette color. How much money do you think I have altogether?

MARSHA: A thousand dollars.

EMILY: Let me see that bra. I think that’s my favorite bra of all time. Can I have it?

MARSHA: No.

EMILY: I want to discuss something with you. I was thinking about it this morning, about Michael. I thought here I am going back into analysis and if I really look at it, I am running after such an utter waste of time, something so destructive to me. I mean can he ever really be a love object at this moment in my life? I decided no, and all my thoughts got very positive, but then I also realized that if I were to take a single drink over it, my feelings would run away from me, I wouldn’t be able to rationally deal with the problem and know what was good for me, because the one drink would bring out all my psychotic self-destructiveness.

MARSHA: Do you think every time I call Zeke it’s self-destructive?

EMILY: Not necessarily. I don’t think calling him has to be self-destructive at all, do you?

MARSHA: Works out that way.

EMILY: Why? He calls you too.

MARSHA: Yah, and I call him very little.

EMILY: Michael hasn’t called me in a long time.

MARSHA: Let me ask you — does one carry a gray bag at any time in the summer?

EMILY: Definitely not. Heavy gray leather?

MARSHA: I’m taking it. You never can tell.

EMILY: Now would you explain that to me, please?

MARSHA: What?

EMILY: About phone calls, self-destructiveness. Michael’s separated from his wife — it’s obviously not a good time to get involved with him. On the other hand it might be a very good time to get involved with him.

MARSHA: Well it’s not, obviously it’s not, it’s not working out that way.

EMILY: Oh, I didn’t tell you what happened today. The bell rang and I got furious because I’m in the middle of a gorgeous rehearsal for a scene in class and in walks this guy I knew in Paris, who told me all about Philippe. He said don’t expect Philippe to bring anything over for you when he comes because he’s going to have a lot of books on him and he’s only allowed twenty kilos. That’s about fifty pounds, you know.

MARSHA: On the plane?

EMILY: Now I have been writing Philippe constantly, saying Philippe please if you know of anyone coming to New York, please give them my things. If he doesn’t know I want those properties after all my letters and everything else, if he doesn’t bring them when he comes, I’m not going to look at him, I’m not even going to see him.

MARSHA: I don’t blame you.

EMILY: Be curious seeing him again.

MARSHA: How do you think you’ll react to him?

EMILY: I’ll react, for one thing, I’m so fucking immune to him, I don’t give a shit about him.

MARSHA: Wait until he comes in and starts to cry. Or do you really think you’re completely immune?

EMILY: I won’t use the word immune. I’ll use one word and that is healthy. I may cry when I see him, I may cry because it’s a very sad thing. He did abuse me. We couldn’t love each other and that’s the end of it. It shows me that I really have terrific problems which I’ve got to solve. I literally threw out three years of my life on him. That’s a long time. You said I was nicer since I got back from Europe. Do you really think I’m nicer?