Flat Earth Review by Annika Jade Levy – Fear and Loathing in New York | imaginary

There is a long tradition of stories about artists that are also about how life is represented in art; Novels about artists who have toxic female friendships are even stranger.

Enter Anika Jade Levy’s lean, sharp debut film Flat Earth, which shares its title with a film made by a woman narrator Avery knows as her best friend. Frances is a wealthy, beautiful young woman in her twenties who becomes a “reluctant celebrity in certain circles” after her film, “an experimental documentary about rural isolation and right-wing conspiracy theories” in the contemporary United States, premiered to critical acclaim at a gallery in New York. Meanwhile, Avery struggles to write what she calls “a book of cultural reporting.”

Frances’ success is not easy for Avery. The two women met when they were college students, but Avery did not have access to the family money. She has maxed out her credit card and does occasional escort work to meet her tuition payments. But what makes her even more upset is that Frances left graduate school to get married. Back in New York, after panicking about her prospects, Avery goes out with a group of guys — none of whom she refers to by their real names — and ends up getting a job on a right-wing dating app called Patriarchy.

Although this is Levy’s first book, she made a name for herself—in certain circles—as a founding editor of Forever Magazine, a contemporary magazine for alternative literature and arts. “What’s important is style, not plot. We really care about language,” Levy said when describing his editorial preferences. This approach is reflected in Flat Earth – and some passages from the book are edited versions of stories Levy wrote for the magazine. The prose, for the most part, is simple and precise, interspersed with bursts of images (“I fluttered around the windowless room like a dove in an airport”) as well as short excerpts from what appear to be Avery’s cultural reports, which read almost like poems — strange visions of an apocalyptic present or near future.

It’s also true that there’s not much narrative here. Levy sneaks a joke about this, with Avery admitting that “when I could write there was no plot, just prose. I told myself it was because I was a socialist or something, and uninterested in the commercial potential of books.” There is a wedding, a funeral, an exhibition opening and other events – but in fact these are occasions for Livy to describe the world in which her characters move.

The book itself is, in a sense, a cultural report. Sometimes it gets overly specific, as in the satirical depiction of the downtown New York art scene. But the bigger picture – capitalism on its last legs transitioning to technological feudalism, environmental pessimism, and a moral arc of a universe that seems to bend not towards justice but away from it – is grimly relevant to us all.

Perhaps the most telling aspect is the extent to which Avery internalizes the worst values ​​of the contemporary moment, especially in the way she sees herself and Frances as competing objects of sexual commerce. She has no time for the feminist movement, which she notes is no longer fashionable. “It feels good when our romantic relationships are once again shaped around regressive ideas about sex,” she wrote in one of her reports. She takes advice from an online life coach on how to act as feminine as possible so that men will want to take care of her. She is afraid of aging. At one point, she wore a cow-print outfit to a party to “signify fertility.”

It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad. Avery is, of course, miserable, and cynical participation in a rigged system will only get you so far. Not surprisingly, Flat Earth is not a cheerful book. But somewhere in all this cynicism we may find a glimmer of hope: a hint from Levy that there may be other ways of seeing the world, which the narrator has not discovered. For example, the therapist suggests that you work on “cultivating your inner life.” Avery may feel as if her youth is already waning, but she’s only in her twenties. There is still time for her to mature.