Matthew Davis released his debut novel Let Me Try Again in August. Formerly a computer scientist for the multinational hedge firm Citadel, he has become a fixture of the New York alt-lit scene. He introduced himself to me via Instagram DM, a networking strategy I had never before seen from a novelist. This interview was conducted over email.

Why did you choose to write a novel?

I’d been writing fiction for a few years, and I knew I wanted to write a novel. I had another worse novel with a female protagonist I’d started writing in college but it was too ambitious and I wasn’t disciplined enough for it. So during the virus I sat down every day and wrote this one over the summer of 2020.

What was the transition from working as a computer scientist for Citadel to a fiction writer?

Kinda mentioned this above but I was actually already writing fiction when I got the job at Citadel, and I kinda reluctantly embarked on a software engineering career so I could make money and not have to depend on my parents after graduation. I was a pretty dope coder though and got a job at a hedge fund, but I wrote this book while I was at Citadel. It was nice to be working from home during the darkest days of that virus we had a few years ago, because it gave me extra time to read and write and go for walks during the day, which are all very important for writing a novel.

I really enjoyed the part about Ross’s bookshelf, especially because the books have almost no common theme despite the names of the authors. What does your bookshelf look like?

Used to have it organized chronologically but it’s gotten kinda messy. Might need to take some supplements and fix it. I’ll name a bunch of books and authors that I have physical copies of that I read and liked. Not gonna look at the shelf and just name from the top of my head. Starts out with some Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, ancient greek stuff. A little Augustine, some other church fathers, John Chrysostom. Then we gotta jump like 1000 years. Hamlet, Macbeth, Young Werther, Kant, Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, Russian stuff, A Hero of our Time, Gogol, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, The Kreutzer Sonata, The Double, Chekov, Madame Bovary, Oscar Wilde, Kafka, The Master and Margarita, Edith Wharton, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise (great book about a young guy), CS Lewis, Waugh, Chesterton, Graham Greene, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Vonnegut, a ton of Nabokov, Richard Yates, Walker Percy, bunch of Pynchon, bunch of Roth, Didion, couple Bellow, couple Amis, couple Updike, Bukowski, couple DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, bunch of David Foster Wallace, Woody Allen, Sebald, Tao Lin, Sheila Heti, Moshfegh, Alexandra Kleeman, Sean Thor Conroe, Jordan Castro, Madeline Cash, Bruce Wagner, Sally Rooney, Lexi Freiman, Olivia Kan-Sperling, Honor Levy, Nicolette Polek, Matthew Davis.

Elements of Ross’s character (finding it hard to respect women who have casual sex, looksmaxing) seem to be parodying elements of right-wing culture, this sort of Andrew Tate masculinity, is that correct?

Wrong, re: Tate. If you read the first chapter, you see Ross lose respect for this woman (or so he says) after she “puts out” on the first date, but what this really reflects is his deep discomfort with sex. He hates himself even more, and says as much. He’s full of a ton of shame. He’s not really a red pilled or pick up artist type guy at all. I actually think Ross would almost certainly hate Andrew Tate, who exists as this guru to help people have a ton of meaningless premarital sex. I get why this is tempting, but it creeps me out and I think Ross would really hate the idea of a shirtless pimp telling guys how to be mean to women in order to make them have sex with you. He’d hate the sex, he’d hate having to be mean, he’d hate all of it. So Ross isn’t really a “red pilled” guy at all, In fact his problem is often that he cares far too much about the opinions of women, is basically desperate for them to love him even when he has no business being involved with them.

As for looksmaxxing, it’s funny. I wrote almost all of this book in 2020, and that wasn’t a thing yet. It might have been a thing on incel forums, or whatever, but wasn’t a TikTok thing to do. It has more to do with Ross’s deep discomfort with his body, this feeling that his body is betraying him, that his mind is who he really is, and that if someone doesn’t like him, it’s because they’re mad at his body. Which is why he has this desire to radically change or improve his physical appearance.

You’ve also written short stories that parody left-wing or liberal characters, such as “Back to School 2” published in Hobart. Are all political affiliations equally worthy of satire?

I wish more people would read that story. I was really excited writing it, thinking about how clever I was. It starts out making fun of this liberal guy, but he ends up being vindicated and uncovering a deeply nefarious right wing conspiracy. It’s inspired by The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesteron. In the story, the right wingers end up being the real victims of my satirical instincts, I think. I was sensing this growing discomfort with the way people on the right were acting, especially as they abandoned Christianity and were into doing weird pagan crap, worshiping Greek gods because it’s “based,” etc, etc. The idea of divorcing right wing politics from Christian values really creeped me out, it’s something I don’t understand or relate to and I think inevitably leads to unspeakable cruelty. When right wingers are Christian, they have this basically good value system to keep them from doing anything too crazy. So yeah, I like making fun of liberals, they do a lot of funny stuff, but right wingers do a lot of stupid stuff too. They fall for any conspiracy, they believe in dumb stuff about nutrition. They think Obama had gay sex in a limousine in 1999. Pretty funny.

Do you think fiction should espouse a political point?

Eh, not really. Nabokov used to make fun of people who thought his books had points or had to have points. I think there’s a place for that, maybe, but none of my favorite books or writers are very political. My book is really about loneliness and alienation (like all my favorite books), but politics comes up in it because everyone is obsessed with politics now. When I was a kid no one cared about politics, I used to watch presidential debates and The Daily Show and The O’Reilly Factor and I loved hearing about politics, it was like a fun thing for me, an autistic special interest. But now it seems like everywhere we go, it’s all politics all the time. The digital kiosks in the subway in New York City flash ads like “5 Tips To Help Debate Your Trump Supporting Uncle At Thanksgiving,” and it’s like, uhhh…. WHAT? Sex too, is everywhere. Why? Because it’s cool?

The Los Angeles Review of Books positioned Let Me Try Again as having been written in the tradition of the Jewish Novel. Do you agree with this characterization? Do you see yourself operating in a literary tradition, whether American-Jewish fiction or the contemporary alt-lit milieu?

Oh wow. So the guy who wrote that LARB review is also a Jewish Zoomer who writes fiction, and wants to be like Roth and Bellow, or whatever, so it kinda felt like he was projecting that onto me. I like him though, we’ve hung out a couple times because I wanted to berate him about how he took himself too seriously in that review (every other review in the LARB is just PR, top to bottom uncritical praise), but then this guy spent the whole time talking about how my book wasn’t as good as Herzog by Saul Bellow. And like, maybe it’s not, but I got like $750 after taxes for this book, while Bellow won the National Book Award for Herzog at 49 years old. So I was pretty annoyed, he was treating my book like it was the new book by Saul Bellow, and not a debut novel from a guy who’s getting no money or media attention. Oh, sorry, I’m ranting, I like the review, it said some nice stuff. It basically said I have “great promise,” but it felt kinda silly to be so desperate to find the flaws in my book, it’s not like I’m on TV or in the New York Times getting lauded.

But back to your very good question. I think this is a book in the tradition of Franz Kafka, Woody Allen, Philip Roth, Bellow, but also some goyish comic novelists like Amis and Updike. It’s not really in the tradition of the American Catholic novel, despite the Catholic themes and nagging moralizing worldview. It definitely is not in the tradition of the “alt-lit milieu” even though Tao Lin is my dear personal friend. This book is about a bunch of stuff I made up, none of it happened, and the prose style is pretty energetic, often frantic. It doesn’t really mimic the early 2010s deadpan prose style or “autofictional” narrative that I would associate with “alt-lit.” I still haven’t read any of that stuff, either, only Tao Lin’s books that came out on Vintage.

What is it you were seeking to accomplish with this novel?

I think David Foster Wallace said somewhere that when you write a first novel you kinda put everything you know into it, and you try to show the world how clever you are. I look back at a lot of stuff in this book with great shame, like, “damn… I was really insecure back then, really trying to show off how clever I was.” But I think it will age well, and it will seem like an author really getting into character, crafting a brilliant 23 year old protagonist who’s desperate to show off how smart he is, even if he really isn’t. So, I was trying to establish myself as a brilliant comic novelist and storyteller, so I could be taken seriously as a writer and not have to code anymore, and impress women in my life, too, I guess, now that I go to psychoanalysis I think everything is about impressing women. My mom really liked the book.

How did you know so much about the supplements Ross takes on almost every page of Let Me Try Again, are these things you take yourself?

I take a lot of ridiculous stuff. But there’s something funny about taking a lot of pills, they all have an associated ailment, so it’s a funny way to kinda subtly slide the narrator’s feelings into the story. There are a lot of books where the characters are blasting cigs, and chugging drinks, it kinda adds texture to a scene, grounds you. I don’t do drugs or drink alcohol but I take a bunch of pills, so I thought it’d be funny to have this guy who has a ton of pills he’s taking all the time.

How does your written work correspond to your political views, religious sentiment?

I think I have political views that most people would find annoying or confusing, to the extent that I have them. I basically think politics is stupid and a big theme in my book is this feeling that everyday life has become far too sexual and political, and more so than ever before. Ross alienates people throughout the book with his complicated centrist views and intricate wonkish policy proposals (he mentions briefly that he interned at Vox.com). I probably have some traditionally conservative values that come from my religion (Traditional Catholic) but I’m also a Jewish guy living in a deeply secular world whose approval I crave… pretty complicated, huh?

So yeah, I am a Catholic, I deny exactly zero teachings of the magisterium of the Catholic church. And I basically think most problems (for individuals) aren’t political, and that their lives would improve if they started believing in God and started going to sleep an hour earlier. Like, cutting out sugar will improve your life a lot more than Trump winning and deporting all the Hondurans, or whatever.

But yeah, sure, I’m kinda a liberal guy, you know, I live in New York City, I like going to the movies. Black and white movies, foreign language films with subtitles, all that stuff. I got lesbian friends, gay friends, bisexual friends, transgender friends, black friends, Muslim friends, a Latinx mother, all that stuff. Because I’m a 30 Rock / Bill Maher style liberal. 30 Rock to me has great politics. It’s a show about how we all gotta get along. I know a lot of people on the (post-2016) left roll their eyes at it because it’s doing like, “civility politics” or something, but it’s actually a show with a very good message. That you should get along with your Republican boss.

So uh, I kinda care about politics, I can’t help but watch it, but I don’t really have any hope in politics as a means to meaningfully improve anyone’s life.

~~~~~~~

Came back to my laptop after a few hours with some new ideas about what my political views are. I hate war, war is bad. Is there someone I can vote for to make wars stop? I’m not really sure. Doesn’t seem like it. Is there someone I can vote for who will force people to be on GLP-1 agonists? They cured obesity but people refuse to take it. Or maybe it’s too expensive for them to take. Am I fascist because I think people should be forced to take these drugs that cure obesity? Or am I socialist because I think the obesity cures should be free and research into new drugs should be funded by the government? Blah blah blah. I find labels inherently silly and reductive, but I’m very open to creative, unorthodox, heterodox ideas like that. Maybe people shouldn’t be forced by the government to take drugs, in practice, but I think we’d be better off if some politicians went on TV and said “if you have a 30+ BMI, you’re not allowed to buy soda with high fructose corn syrup anymore. And you’re not allowed on an airplane if you’re obese and not on tirzepatide. Unless you gotta go to a funeral or something, or your tirzepatide side effects are really bad. Or you’re really rich.”

You, uh, kinda see ideas like this in my book. These kinda cruel technocratic ideations that come from an allegedly well-intentioned consequentialist place, but would be deeply unpalatable to any normal person. But why not? Why not a BMI tax? My Bloomberg is showing. My eating disorder is showing. Ahhh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I was just kidding. But maybe not. Maybe we should pay people money to lose weight, and then we could save like, a trillion dollars a year in healthcare costs. Did you know 45% of hispanic adults and 49% of black adults in the United States are obese? Compared to like 39% for whites. We should heavily incentivize every obese adult to take new drugs that cure this. It would be a great way to improve health outcomes that disproportionately affect black and brown bodies. But I feel a great shame and self consciousness even typing this, I feel like I’m breaking into shtick. But other than this vague feeling of “obviously it’s impolite to say stuff like this aloud,” I actually don’t know why these are bad ideas. I’m not doing a fatphobic rant, I’m talking about health. Ah, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… Can you tell me why you don’t like it? Seems like it would work way better than the stupid stuff they talk about on TV, like giving people $3000 for having a kid, or whatever.

What am I really revealing here? Maybe something that comes through in the book, this youthful hubristic impulse, this idea that all our problems are easy to fix, that we’re just one more pill or injection away from solving every issue, but everyone is too stupid (unlike my narrator, Ross!) to even come up with fresh and bold ideas like this. Read my book. It’s all in there.

Why do you write? Who do you write for?

Started kinda doing it to make myself and my friends laugh, but then they were reacting positively to it, and I feel compelled to write or tell stories or entertain. But beyond that, fiction really feels like the best and most compelling way to articulate certain feelings I have. There’s this Flannery O’Connor quote: > “A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story.”

And this is basically how I feel. A story is a great way to express an idea. I’m obsessed with communicating, expressing myself, and sometimes you need a whole story or a novel to do that.

Get Let Me Try Again here.