“Life is spectacular. Forget the dark things. Take a drink and let time wash them away to wherever time washes away to.”
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
My thesis is this: Sutter tries to drag people down with him because he’s lonely as all hell. Aimee loves Sutter the way no one else ever has: unconditionally. Yet he is so afraid of being near a feeling like that, so afraid of the idea of being vulnerable, that when Aimee morphs from a passion project into a person, he pushes her away. Sutter is stuck between a rock and a hard place, desperate to be loved but deathly afraid of it, rejecting the future even as he hurtles relentlessly towards it, craving affection even as he pushes it away. That is Sutter’s paradox; that is how the ending of The Spectacular Now can feel so desolate when Sutter seems so content. More than anything, Sutter wants to be loved, but love means weakness. Love means letting your guard down. Love means giving a shit about people who may not always give a shit about you.
The Spectacular Now is a story about a boy who is stuck. Seventeen years old and content to stay that way, Sutter Keely champions a YOLO frame of mind and lives life from one thrilling moment to the next, hung up on nothing and completely unconcerned with the impending future -- but I saw through this façade immediately. Sutter is somewhat of a tragic character, shaped by the core event of his youth: his father abandoning his family. Two things gave him away: the fact that the story takes place in Sutter’s senior year, prime narrative real estate for a teenage existential crisis; and the fact that Sutter is an unapologetic alcoholic, more acquainted with whiskey than he is with any of his peers. Tormented by his father’s absence never being fully explained, Sutter wants to believe that his father loved him so badly that he compulsively lies to everyone he meets and maintains a constant buzz to keep the edges of those lies believably fuzzy. He is so obviously, and so deeply, in denial, and who can blame him? Who can blame him for trying to pretend that his father left for some reason other than the fact that he simply didn’t give a shit about him?
Likely filling the hole his father left behind with a millennial mutation of serial monogamy, Sutter has a string of amiable ex-girlfriends, all of whom have told him they love him and none of whom Sutter has believed. This theme of unlovability permeates the entire novel. It stems from Sutter’s abandonment issues; he blames himself for driving his father away, wondering if he left because Sutter himself is simply unable to be loved. I empathise with Sutter; he is clearly repressing a lot of pain, self-medicating with highball whiskey and living strictly in the now to ignore a past where his father left him and a future where he has to appropriately process that. I also find Sutter fucking deplorable. What disgusts me about him is the way he tries to drag people down with him. Sutter is not unlovable. That, in fact, is the root of the problem. Girls like Sutter because he is fun and fresh and full of heart, but he is so afraid of being abandoned again that he keeps everyone at arm’s length, terrified of getting too attached.
As a result, Sutter hurts people, and he knows it. He recovers from this guilt by claiming that he’s helping people, not hurting them. Sutter’s agenda is demonstrated on his love interest in the novel, Aimee Finecky: get the girl to like you, teach her how to have a good time, and then release her into the world a new woman, happy to have known you but happier to not still be with you. It reminded me of a line from BoJack Horseman: “My life is a mess right now, and I compulsively take care of other people when I don’t know how to take care of myself.” The thing is, though, that Sutter isn’t taking care of anyone. He teaches Aimee confidence, sure, and how to stand up for herself, but he also emotionally manipulates her, rarely tells her the truth, and turns her into an alcoholic, just like him. When he decides to leave her at the end of the novel (or, rather, decides to trick her into leaving him), he justifies it by telling himself that she’ll be better off without him; his emotionally nomadic lifestyle may be high school boyfriend material, but it certainly isn’t designed to last in a long-term relationship. I agree completely.
My thesis is this: Sutter tries to drag people down with him because he’s lonely as all hell. Aimee loves Sutter the way no one else ever has: unconditionally. Yet he is so afraid of being near a feeling like that, so afraid of the idea of being vulnerable, that when Aimee morphs from a passion project into a person, he pushes her away. Sutter is stuck between a rock and a hard place, desperate to be loved but deathly afraid of it, rejecting the future even as he hurtles relentlessly towards it, craving affection even as he pushes it away. That is Sutter’s paradox; that is how the ending of The Spectacular Now can feel so desolate when Sutter seems so content. More than anything, Sutter wants to be loved, but love means weakness. Love means letting your guard down. Love means giving a shit about people who may not always give a shit about you.
WORKS CITED
BoJack Horseman S02E12, ‘Out to Sea’
