#MeToo, with Twists
A Complete Fiction (IG Publishing, $18.95 ) by R.L. Maizes is a very smart #MeToo novel that empathizes with male victims of sexual harassment without trivializing the experience of women. It asks us to consider big questions about whose stories are ours to tell. And it weaves a meditation on the thoughtlessness of social media into the mix.
The point of view in A Complete Fiction alternates between P.J. Larkin, a novelist with several unpublished manuscripts in her drawer who makes rent by driving for a rideshare company, and George Dunn, an editor for a small publishing house who is also an aspiring novelist. Their stories intersect when George gets a plum deal for his #MeToo novel about a senator who sexually harasses an intern.
P.J. is incensed, because the general plotline follows the novel she submitted to George’s publishing company. While George clearly admired her work, he ended up passing on it. Without much thought and even less evidence, she accuses him of plagiarism and decries his male privilege on social media. Her accusation goes viral. A comparison of the two novels shows that they are significantly different, and George has drafts of his work that prove his manuscript existed long before P.J. ever submitted her novel to him. Nonetheless, his publication contract is in jeopardy of being delayed indefinitely, and he loses his job.
These characters are neither demons nor angels, so the plot thickens. George is not a plagiarist, but he did hold back on P.J.’s novel fearing that a literary market saturated with #MeToo narratives would make his own less marketable. Struck by her inclusion of the harasser’s point of view, he adopts that technique in his own work. Of course he cannot admit to such literary influence, since that would fuel the fallacious plagiarism charge.
More crucially, he also does not want to admit—at least at first—that his fiction is based on first-hand experience. He had been a page to a powerful female senator who sexually harassed him as well as other young men. Traumatized by this experience, George has a less than salutary sex life with his wife, and he lives with the shame of the harassment as well as the knowledge that his parents did not support him when he finally told them about the abuse. Given P.J. ‘s accusation, the only way that he can hope to have his novel published is to come out publicly as a survivor, an act that results in legal wrangling with his abuser. Those who have read Maizes’s Other People’s Pets, a wonderful novel about an animal empath, will not be surprised that George’s growth as a man is, in part, charted by his relationship with a rescue dog.
P.J.’s literary process is also complicated. Her sister, Mia, was an intern for a state senator who sexually assaulted her. Mia uses alcohol to deal with her shame and trauma, and eventually ends up in rehab. Although P.J. does a great deal of research on sexual assault, the germ of her novel is her sister’s story, and she is forced to admit that details that Mia shared with her “gave the book its authenticity.” When Mia learns about P.J.’s novel via social media, she feels betrayed and retraumatized. But PJ’s false plagiarism charge finally gets her a book contract, an offer she can’t refuse even as it threatens to break her family apart.
The destructive role that social media plays in this #MeToo plot is brilliantly and entertainingly rendered. Maizes creates a platform called Crave: posters are “diners” who offer “nibbles” that are “munched,” a sound that resembles “that loud crunch like someone eating potato chips in a movie theater when you were trying to hear the dialog.” While a munching mob swoops in to cancel George, there is resounding silence when P.J. eventually posts an online apology to him as well as an admonition to believe victims. And the diners readily eat her alive when someone posts that she has told a story not her own. Crave ultimately becomes a site for cannibalizing literary merit, reputations, and the truth.
Maizes is the rare writer who manages to provide potent social commentary with a balance of sharp wit and earnestness. Her eye for the ridiculous details that mark our age is matched by an empathy for those who genuinely suffer and who wrestle with ethical perplexities. And her outrage for those who opportunistically and flagrantly abuse power is palpable. Social justice and literary culture are interrogated from the inside, with commitment and even love.
Helene Meyers is the author of “Movie-Made Jews: An American Tradition” and the forthcoming “English Majors at Work: Career and Life Pathways” (Rutgers UP).
