I’m struggling right now with Torrey Peters’ new novel Detransition, Baby, and it’s making me think a little about how I approach and relate to fiction.
The novel centers on three people: Reese, a trans woman living in New York; Ames, her ex-lover who detransitioned back into male; Katrina, Ames’ boss and new lover, who’s pregnant via Ames. They are three people who are varying degrees of insecure, messy and mean: they speak cattily of other trans people, they look down their nose at more vulnerable people and they spill secrets after a few drinks. They’re messily human in a way fiction - in particular trans-centered fiction - aren’t always.
But I keep thinking about what British Marxist literary critic Raymond WIlliams said when asked why he stopped reading The Times: “Why would I let those people into my home every morning?”
Detransition, Baby is well written. It’s well-paced, actions logically follow each other and the dialogue is crisp. Peters is a heck of stylist. But like Pynchon’s lesser novels - Inherent Vice, VInelane - for me, it just doesn’t have that spark that sets great fiction alight. It’s easy to see what’s happening on the page, to hear the characters speak. But I can’t just make myself start to really care about what’s happening. I’m finding I have to go over pages two, three times before I register what’s going on - it’s a book I’m finding it easy to start skimming and skipping through. Indeed, I jumped over the “Glamor Boutique” section because I read a different version of that when it came out.
I think part of it comes from myself. Unlike Ames, I never had someone “mother” me when I came out; I sort of figured out what worked for me by trial and error, the sort of autodidactic approach I’ve taken to writing (unlike Peters, for example, I have neither a MA or a MFA, and I never actually went to university). I’ve never done poppers, been someone’s kept man or had a phase in high school where I’d have dissassocitive sex.
I was, and still am, the kind of trans person Reese would have laughed at in public. And when I read this book, I think about how I relate to how she expresses herself and think: she’s definitely, as one character put it, a bunch of personality disorders, but she’s also a bully. She teases and taunts, shouts and yells. She’s the kind of person I spent my teenage years getting called a fag and a sissy by.
Again, to quote Williams: why would I let this person into my house?
I think it’s facile and lazy to look at a book, think “I don’t like her,” and throw it at a thrift store. It’s not the point of fiction to make books you can relate to, to have a read where you like the protagonist. I can think of lots of books where the hero’s the kind of person you’d never want to be associated with. For example: nobody in Andrew Vachss’ books would be welcome at a dinner party of mine. Doesn’t mean I don’t think Flood is a gripping read.
So why am I struggling so much with this book?
It can’t be as easy as saying I don’t like someone, so I’m not liking this book. It can’t be as easy as just writing it off because it doesn’t have a spark for me. And I don’t think it’s Peters’ writing, because I’ve enjoyed her other fiction: The Masker and Infect Your Loved Ones… are great, and I wrote positive things about them when they came out.
I think it has something to do with where my mind’s at, and how I approach a novel.
Normally, when I write up a book, I go out of my way to read anything about it. Part of this is I don’t want to accidentally repeat someone’s argument and open myself up to that line of questioning, but it’s also so I don’t have any prior conceptions of the book when I dig into it. With Jackie Ess’ novel Darryl, for example, I had heard it was good, but went out of my way to find out any more than that (I agreed it’s good, too, as I’ve previously written).
With Detransition, Baby, there was a flood of press and tweets; a Discord group I post in occasionally talked about it a bunch; Twitter was filled with positive reviews. There’s write-ups in magazines and it’s part of Roxane Gay’s book club. I was looking forward to this book - I really wanted to like it, which I think is exactly the wrong way to approach anything, let alone something I’m supposed to be writing about.
The other thing is, well, I’ve had a detransition call of my own.
Last fall my transition got so hard that I decided to stop everything. There was an incident at work where a customer was rude, and I was told I made it into a situation by not handling it well. That was the tipping point, but it had been going on for a while. I was gross, ugly and my mind said I look like a pig in lipstick. I stopped wearing anything femme, instead living in jogging pants and my work uniform. I stopped both wearing makeup and my skin routine. I gave things away - donated clothing, gifted unused makeup to friends. I eventually stopped shaving. If it was my fault a customer looked me in the eye and said “You don’t look like a girl to me,” then who was fooling whom?
One day in September, I cut off all my hair, the very thing that at least made me look feminine. I can still remember the feeling of lightness as the kitchen shears sliced through my ponytail, the clicking sound as I clipped off the sides of my hair. I thought about dumping all my estrogen down the toilet, but I worried it was dangerous to quit cold turkey.
I looked in the mirror and started crying. I ended up sleeping on my parents couch for a week, crying almost the entire time.
Unlike Ames, I’ve never been beat up for being trans (other things, yes). But that week was enough for me to crave the security of my old self - I was unhappy inside, yes, but at least I could handle day to day life without crying.
I eventually decided not to go back - I feel like I’ve gone far enough and burned too many bridges to successfully go back - and I’ve gone down a road of self-acceptance. I don’t do voice training anymore, and I only wear makeup once in a while. Even now, I’m wearing jogging pants.
But it was a close enough call that reading about Ames, and his reasons for going back, were enough to bring that flood of emotions back; I was telling someone the other day about how I was in a bad mindset and Detransition, Baby made it worse. “Oh, okay,” they said. (Remind me not to be so open with people I’ve never met offline.)
So, back to the book. I’m thinking now maybe I’m not the ideal reader for it, and maybe parts of it strike a little close to home, while other parts are so far removed I have to take Peters’ word for them. I don’t think it’s as easy as saying I like/dislike someone, as it is the emotions they unlock for me - bullying, detransition, etc. I don’t think it’s the novel itself, as how I’m interpreting the novel and that I’m looking for something - an experience I can relate to - that isn’t there.
I’ve said elsewhere that Peters writes about messy people in complex, fucked up situations. I think I need to remember that when I read this book. It’s not about if I like them; it’s about if I like the work.