century of dislocation
The collective anxiety of Manhattan life portrayed in Speedboat, along with the more personal anxiety and paranoia experienced by Kate Ennis in Pitch Dark, are ones that are still resoundingly relatable to our lives today. Substitute Xanax for the Valium and Percodan scattered throughout Speedboat and Pitch Dark, and one has our world, a world in which external realities affect our inner states of mind, a world we inhabit with others whose differences in some way become part of our own story: “As much as this is the age of crime, after all, this is the century of dislocation. Not just for journalists or refugees: for everyone.”
K. Thomas Kahn reviews Renata Adler’s‘s newly reissued novels Speedboat and Pitch Dark.