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Reviews
"Run Catch Kiss"
Another view of Sohn's roman à clef finds it an emotionally deficient Bridget Jones clone.
By Lori Leibovich
[07/22/99]

Reviews
"My Russian"
A serious novel that's almost a thriller tells of a woman who assumes a disguise and hunkers down 11 blocks from home.
By Stephanie Zacharek
[07/21/99]

Ivory Tower
Who killed literature?
An aging professor offers his last pleas to help his expiring vocation.
By Jose Klein
[07/21/99]

Reviews
"The Dragon Hunt"
In his first collection in English, an expatriate Vietnamese author tells grueling (and highly original) stories of suffering.
By Judith Coburn
[07/20/99]

Dear Mr. Blue
case dismissed
women who write using only lower-case letters must be careful about love. they'll fall too easily for a cabbie, a pizza boy or a poet.
By Garrison Keillor
[07/20/99]

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The aggressive showiness and utter retardation of these bon mots, coupled with Sohn's no-details-spared narration, suggest her hell-bent determination that people know her name at whatever cost to her personal life. This is a writer's right, of course, and I don't object to it on moral grounds -- but even as a fellow byline-loving gal, I just can't empathize. Say what you will about a columnist's responsibility to lay herself completely bare: I have never felt an obligation to mine every last thought, fantasy, person and tryst (replete with positions and orgasmic utterances). I don't tell all; I tell as much as I and the people I care about most can tolerate (which is still a lot more than is the case with the average Jill).

There are other reasons why, prior to reading "Run Catch Kiss," I had determined that I probably wouldn't like Sohn very much if I ever did wind up meeting her. For someone who kick-boxed "The Rules" (in an admittedly funny retort called "The Drools"), she sometimes seems awfully willing to scheme for a mate, even if the prospect in question is a prodigious loser. Then there is the recent New York Post article in which Sohn described Candace Bushnell, the glamorous creator of "Sex and the City," as "the bane of my existence," because Sohn's column is always being compared to the one Bushnell wrote for the New York Observer. The way Sohn then pointed out the age difference between herself and Bushnell -- ostensibly to differentiate their perspectives -- seemed a nasty bit of intra-gender competition to me, especially since Sohn should consider the comparison a compliment.

And yet, while Sohn's column ain't my cup o' whatever bodily fluid she's writing about, I would be guilty of professional envy if I didn't salute her kamikaze bravery. The extent to which she is willing to risk censure is almost mind-boggling. And as self-aggrandizing and self-destructive as she is, Sohn is also self-deprecatory and self-aware. (Still, just because somebody acknowledges her narcissism, as Sohn has, doesn't mean that the trait becomes any more palatable.)

Imagine my surprise then to discover upon reading "Run Catch Kiss" that Sohn is a helluva comic writer! This touching, funny book operates on three levels. It's a warped story about a young woman's doomed endeavors to empower herself through a brazen, exhibitionistic sexuality. If we can believe Simon & Schuster's press release, it's also a roman à clef about Sohn's experiences as a sex columnist at the New York Press. And, last but not least, it just might be a confession that her most wince-worthy columns were utterly bogus. On all of these levels, it works.

"Run Catch Kiss" tracks the rise and fall of Brooklyn-bred Ariel Steiner, who is -- like the author herself was three years ago -- 22, fresh out of Brown, a temp and an aspiring actor when she becomes a weekly columnist at an alternative downtown paper. (The way Sohn skewers her own N.Y. Press employers and colleagues by limning the Press' fictitious counterpart, City Week, is at once affectionate and impudent).

Ariel is intellectually but not emotionally sophisticated, and even prior to landing the writing gig, she displays a masochistic penchant for horrible men -- for instance, a Rogaine-using, ex-junkie musician who sends her out to forage for food while he bathes and who won't even kiss her as she masturbates him. She rewards these cretins with physical favors and far more chances than they deserve.

Her self-abasement is partially a counter-phobic response to insecurity about her attractiveness and sexual competence (caused by belated orgasmic capacity), but it's also fueled by a competitive brand of egotism. Indeed, on some level, these unpleasant liaisons are failed power plays: As she explains, "I have always been a sucker for guys who think they're hot shit because I want to be the one woman to turn them into the weak fucks they really are." And Sohn is onto something here: How often do women willingly augment a slimy Don Juan's rap sheet because they're seduced by the ego trip, the ostensible coup, in the prospect of playing Annette Bening to his Warren Beatty? Suckers.

The opportunity to pen sex columns seems a logical answer to Ariel's dual longings for fame and sexual power: "I was a hopeless romantic trapped in the body of a seething hussy," she says. "I wanted passion and companionship and deep discussion ... sidewalk embraces and hand holding and hair caressing ... But I didn't know how I was supposed to get it ... If I couldn't beat the boys, wasn't it wisest to join them? And get paid for it in the process?"

Next page | An anti-bimbo, lowbrow-by-choice sex kitten