The very picture of the leading lights of "prestige media"

A beautiful and moving essay by my friend Honor Jones, who is also the most talented editor I've ever worked with: https://t.co/0CISVghEkg

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) December 28, 2021

Look at that ratio - Some 900 comments, almost all vituperative condemnations of the essay and 200 loves.

I read the essay, How I Demolished My Life by Honor Jones.  The title of the essay can be read as either a statement of accomplishment or a statement of regret.  The essay mostly comes down on the side of accomplishment.

I had wanted, I thought, soapstone counters and a farmhouse sink. I had wanted an island and a breakfast nook and two narrow, vertical cabinets on either side of the stove; one could be for cutting boards and one could be for baking sheets. I followed a cabinetry company called Plain English on Instagram and screenshotted its pantries, which came in paint colors like Kipper and Boiled Egg. Plain English cost a fortune, but around a corner in the back of its New York showroom you could check out the budget version, called British Standard. But it cost a fortune too. I wished there was a budget British Standard. I wished there was a room behind that room, the cabinets getting flimsier and flimsier until a door opened and let me back into my own shitty American kitchen, just as it was.

My husband talked to the architect; my husband talked to the builder. And I kept paring the plans down, down, making them cheaper, making them simpler. I nixed the island and found a stainless-steel worktable at a restaurant-supply store online for $299. I started fantasizing about replacing the counters with two-by-fours on sawhorses and hanging the pots from nails on the wall. Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this kitchen. Slowly, I realized, I didn’t want this life.

I didn’t want to renovate. I wanted to get divorced.

You never know what is left out when someone presents their life to the public so perhaps there is a more appealing or justifiable side to her story than we can see.  As presented, though, Jones comes across as an indulged, privileged, upper income, unreflective, self-blind, self-absorbed, narcissistic, obnoxious person, consumed by her own ever-shifting, unmoored wants and needs and oblivious and/or dismissive of her actions on others.  

Complaining about the burden of home ownership, Jones produces one of the most repugnant sentences possible.

But the upkeep: oh my God, the upkeep. I hired a woman named Luba to clean once a week. 

Unwilling to leave such privilege unadorned, Jones then denigrates Luba.

I loved talking with her. She was full of sensible advice, like how I should really stop washing the cleaning rags along with the children’s clothes, because the chemicals could irritate their skin. She was likewise full of conspiracy theories and evangelical religion. She was worried about microchips in COVID-19 vaccines. Humanity had a few more years, she thought, probably seven. Then: apocalypse.

Of the people in this little morality tale, all of the others seem reasonably good people, other than the author, and Luba seems one of the especially good ones.

I’d been pregnant or nursing for most of the past seven years and had finally lost all that baby weight, so my closet was full of drapey clothes that no longer fit. I gave them to Luba, and she mailed them to a church in Ukraine.  

Jones can't be bothered to do the little work needed to make sure giving away things will help.  She gives them to Luba who then does the work to find a place where they will make a difference.  

Then there is the poor husband.

I didn’t have a secret life. But I had a secret dream life—which might have been worse. I loved my husband; it’s not that I didn’t. But I felt that he was standing between me and the world, between me and myself. Everything I experienced—relationships, reality, my understanding of my own identity and desires—were filtered through him before I could access them. The worst part was that it wasn’t remotely his fault; this is probably exactly what I asked him to do when we were 21 and first in love, even if I never said it out loud. To shelter me from the elements; to be caring and broad-shouldered.  

 

The whole essay is packed with self-sabotage as Jones reveals one narcissistic, self-indulgent episode after another.  At first you have the feeling that she is deliberately casting herself in a bad light to then reveal a deus machina moment when she discovers just what she has done and wants others to learn from her mistakes.  But no.  She just keeps going, revealing a worse and worse self.  

Since The Atlantic offers no comment section to the essay, people seem to have used Weiss's tweeted endorsement instead.  

As a person of a certain age, I’ve seen this over the last several years. People - men and women both - nuking their families for seemingly no other reason than wanting something new. 

It’s hard to fathom.

This is a depressing description of a woman who uprooted the lives of her (now ex) husband, children, and herself because of same vague notion of boredom or being restless

Under no circumstances should this story be looked upon in a positive light, it reeks of selfish nihilism 

 

You think the rest of us don't have these thoughts here and there? It's called "temptation." You don't indulge in temptation. Now, it's one thing to stumble but keep trying, there but for the grace of God, but defending your failing? Kiss my ass. 

 

 

Trite story with a painfully grafted-on literary tone. "I was married too young, became bored/anhedonic, now I'm experiencing new things and my family is collateral damage" is about as mundane as it gets. No new insights here despite the fawning NYC media support circle 

 

 

There should be a 12 step program for this class of woman to realize that no one wants to hear about how spiritual her divorce is 

 

 

This doesn’t even hold water. She’s been writing pieces for NYT and the Atlantic for years. So how, exactly, is her husband holding her back from “thinking about” art/sex/politics/patriarchy? 

 

I’m sure she’s a wonderful editor, but this story is a giant smoking crater in the ground where a stable family used to be, and that’s a damn shame. Don’t think I saw a single positive response to this tweet either, which ought to tell you how this looks from outside NYC. 

And there are the abbreviated indictments.

She is your friend and you encourage this?

Rarely does it get any worse than this piece

Abandoning one's family isn't beautiful or moving; it's selfish.

Not moving at all. Profoundly sad.

And so on.  

I am guessing that Bari Weiss was merely attempting to be a good friend, bringing attention to her friend's work.  Possibly she believes that the essay is moving and beautiful but I would prefer, out of respect for Weiss's talents, to think not.

The replies constitute dozens of condemnations for every endorsement.

The whole scenario, the original essay, Weiss's endorsement of the essay, everyone's righteous revulsion - not the best face of humans.  It is bleak, petty and sad.

But as often happens, there are nuggets of humor and wisdom in any of these negligible storms-in-a-tea-cup.  I

Click to enlarge.

The three picture panel supports the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.  The entire misery and futility of the 3,095 word essay is captured in the three pictures.  

Someone mentions this sensible C.S. Lewis piece, We Have No Right to Happiness, the last published before his death in 1963.

A little humor, a little wisdom.  And a terrible instigating essay.