Raise RAFFI
First 5 years
Keith Gessen
244 pages. Viking. $ 27.
When the diaper is turned back, Marshall McLuhan notices and spells “repayment.”
When writers Keith Gessen and Emily Gould had their first child, a son named Rafi, seven years ago, they expected a mellow presence. Instead, they got a destroyer, a furious man, and a little warlock constantly testing his power.
Raffi’s list of actions can trigger execution in the condom aisle among young readers. He scratches Gessen, butts his head, kicks violently between his legs and hits his nose. Raffy never sleeps, constantly screams and is kicked out of day care.
He tears flowers from the community garden, eats giant dead cockroaches, collides with other children, throws food on the floor, flies away, and is not caught. All children do these things from time to time. Raffy seems to always do that.
Gessen’s reaction is often cartoon. (“I didn’t want to hit my nose!”) But Rafi also scares him a little. Raffy seems to know most of what he is doing. His laughter can be disturbing. Is Gessen less behaved than other children? Is he a bad species? If so, decisively, “How much of that was our fault?”
Gessen couldn’t accomplish anything else, so he decided to write a memoir and parenting book, Raising Raffi: The First5 Years. It’s a wise, gentle, enviable and clear book about chaotic scenes. If I were Rafi, I would be afraid of subtitles. That means Dad has an update in mind.
Is it okay to get your child out like this? Art Buchwald joked that if the family couldn’t provide him with at least two rows of material a week, he would throw them out of the house. “Everything,” Nora Ephron said, “It’s a copy.”
This book is not a completely dark portrait. Raffy is not only sometimes adorable and adorable, but also beautiful, brilliant and loved in Gessen’s story. Still, this memoir would be better if, decades later, Rafi was happy and healthy and could read it aloud to his children, laughing at his a little maliciousness. It will look like an idea. special.
If you don’t know who Gessen and Gould are, you’re probably not involved in journalism or publishing. He is the founder of the literary magazine n + 1, has published two novels, and is a New Yorker contributor. She is the editor of Gawker, performing a feminist publishing imprint, writing two novels, and providing a lively and enthusiastic mama bear commentary on Twitter.
If they are not famous, they are at least borrowed from Joshua Cohen’s novel “Book of Numbers”, “writerly anti-unfamous”.
Like all parenting memoirs, “Raising Raffi” is about the realization of ideals and expectations. Gessen was born in Russia. He wants Rafi to be bilingual. Alas, Gessen said, “I found Russian to be more angry than English.”
Attempts to get Rafi interested in ice hockey, played by Gessen enthusiastically, were unsuccessful. Gessen is a smart parser of children’s literature. “Once you read a book, you get some opinions,” he writes. “If you read a book 100 times, very strong opinion. He is also good at parenting manuals.
Gessen and Gould live in Brooklyn. Like the unique enlightenment and complacency parents of the autonomous region, they plan to raise their sons as if they were laying the foundation for a new, better society. They are often in trouble here as well.
For example, when it comes to choosing a school in an isolated city, the options for doing the right thing are narrower than they wanted. They use disposable diapers that they vow not to use. They keep the ugly plastic swings as they put Rafi to sleep.
“Raising Raffi” gives you a glimpse of what it’s like to live a literary life at the intersection of the Trump and Biden administrations. At home, Gessen and Gould, together to the world, are reminiscent of Kenneth Tinan’s literary party’s account.
They have Ikea furniture, live on the bar and have money problems.Gessen explains the dispute among married people completely: “Our battle is the surrounding environment and the product of a certain level of humidity. The humidity rises for a while and then it rains.”
Gessen’s family emigrated to the United States at the age of six. (His brother is the writer Masha Gessen.) His family lived in Newton, Massachusetts. His mother was a literary critic who worked at Harvard’s Russian Research Center. Gould grew up in Maryland.
They met in New York City. Gessen used to get married easily. They dated and broke up — “she threw me away at Starbucks in Cobblehill” — before getting married. Gould gave birth to Rafi at home because the couple were afraid to give birth to a taxi. She was scared and bloody.
Rafi was a kid who had a hard time getting home during a pandemic. He, like his children, disputed Gessen’s thoughts on himself, especially when it came to money. Gessen writes:
Before Rafi, there was nothing I really wanted for those who had more money. I was there now. Our friends who have money can and actually hire endless childcare, including at night. Some sent their children to private schools. They lived in their homes, so they didn’t have to worry about the landlord complaining about their bark. Our lack of money did not hurt at least anyone, if not because of us, but now we are denying our children what other children had. I did. I felt it was unfair to him. But he was stuck in us.
Throughout history, needing money for one’s child has made parents desperate — apparently even writing a memoir of their parents.
Gessen’s short book absorbs, not to provide an answer, beyond bland comments such as “time is the only solution.” Gessen is a gentle and careful writer, and if he was a singer, it’s fascinating because he was always a little behind the beat. He is struggling to raise the right questions about himself and the world.
In the end, the book reminded me of Joy Williams, who did deadpan in one of her short stories. They are in another lane. “
