Performative Self-Absorption

The real-life advertisement that inspired The Simp (and that is reproduced with minor variation at the beginning of the novel) is a piece of astonishingly self-absorbed obtuseness.

Entertainment family is seeking a highly qualified executive assistant who is meticulous, discreet, consistently professional, unobtrusive, warm but not overly familiar, posses the ability to multitask in a rapidly evolving environment, is not overly focused on personal advancement, and can respond to feedback without defensiveness. The ideal candidate understands the very dynamic nature of the household and is focused on reducing stress for the family.

For a salary of $45,000, this ‘ideal candidate’ is expected to create, manage and update a complex family schedule for multiple people, oversee a flock of household staff, look after the dog including ‘scraping eye gunk’ and tracking its food, babysit the 5-year-old when the nanny is unavailable, run errands in and out of the house, manage their household bills, act as a travel agent, manage and fix their electronic gizmos, and schedule their medical appointments. And work ‘outside of conventional hours’.

It’s really worth reading the original (genuine!) announcement, which a self-described ‘art world family’ published in 2023.

In this novel, Raj Ladlani is an aspiring actor who has never broken into the tightly-controlled LA film world. Born and brought up in a conventional middle-class household in Delhi, Raj is gay. When it became obvious that he was unlikely to ever take over the family business, he was allowed to study abroad at USC, and stayed on in hopes of Hollywood success. Now he is thirty-one, and has discovered the hard way that there are few roles for actors who look like him, no matter how much talent he may have.

So, in desperation, he replies to this ad. The opening is subtly clever, with Raj’s enthusiastic, then increasingly anxious emails getting no response at all. Then he sends another email signed ‘Ray’, and promptly gets a reply inviting him to an interview. The point is made.

In that same first few pages, though, a lot of information is provided about Raj/Ray.

He was a primitive, quivering mass of ambition who also, somehow, came off as abject and helpless. Like a wet cat, he seemed both pitiful and a little unsettling, skittering too fast all over the place. [..] His CV [..] contained largely invented years of professional experience and a variety of personal references, obscure Hollywood figures for who he claimed to have worked. Every phone number led back to his cell phone.

It would have been so much better if all these characteristics had been exposed to the reader via actions or thoughts, instead of being rather stolidly described.

This, alas, is the major flaw in this novel. The subtlety of the opening emails is, rather sadly, the exception rather than the norm. The novel does well when pointedly describing racial dynamics in Hollywood, but is much poorer at making its characters three-dimensional.

The fussy, egocentric couple who are hiring this magical assistant are Jim L. — a successful macho-film director — and his wife Anna, a couple of decades younger who has been writing her first script for years. In interviews, Anna describes herself with entertaining self-importance.

How would you describe your fashion style?

Performative feminity. I like to play with the conventions of gender, exaggerate them, and toy with your misconceptions. Basically, the stuff I’m wearing is both a repudiation and embodiment of the patriarchy if you’re alive to the subtext.

Anna would like to see herself as kind, and announces that she ‘cares a lot about this being a positive, humane workplace’, while being constantly passive-aggressive, demanding and critical. Jim is performative in his own way, throwing out racial insults while claiming that age-old excuse of a joke.

“I’m sure Hollywood is an easier place now than it was [..] when I started. Especially for a minority. You guys have all the power now.”

“Hahaha”, Raj said. “I guess we do.”

“I was joking,” Jim said. “It’s good you recognized that.”

‘The Simp’ is what Jim calls Raj — simpering, “like a butler who is too easy to please”. Later, he is nicknamed Maharajah, sarcastically. Over the next few months, Raj becomes the perfect assistant (almost too easily, for someone with no experience as a servant), worms his way into their lives, starts exploiting his access and squirreling away secrets until it all, inevitably, explodes. It’s like The Talented Mr Ripley and Parasite combined, but nowhere as good as either.

Why does Raj put up with all this? Having been unsuccessful as an actor, he is desperate to enter the ‘inner circle’ — those who are members at the exclusive Hollywood clubs, those invited to the Oscars, those who know the A-List — and tagging along as Jim and Anna’s assistant is as close as he can get.

The novel pays many, many homages to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. It also expects that the majority of readers of The Simp will not be familiar with Vanity Fair, so that over and over again, there are sentences describing or explaining that novel. A small sampling:

In Vanity Fair, much of the plot is consumed by romantic machinations. Miss Amelia falls in love with an untrustworthy young man, George, who betrays her emotionally and then physically (the novel is coy on this point) and then dies. [..]

Raj had inside him both a Miss Becky Sharp (active social climber) and Miss Amelia Sedley (passive, trampled society woman).

This becomes exceedingly clunky.

There are acerbic comments about race and success:

White people have always held onto their power in the arts with clenched fists

but also some tortured sentences:

Anthony reminded Raj that Anthony’s first-ever performance had been reserved for a mirror in a cramped room he shared with his two brothers.

The book has entertaining moments, but the enjoyment comes more from sneering at the narcissistic Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous than for its literary merit.

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