Reading notes: 'Banal Nightmare'

By Halle Butler. I am surprised that the book itself does not have a Wikipedia page. I've tried to read a bunch of books that broadly fit a certain description: A female Millennial narrator who is worried about climate change (inter alia) observes her friends posting on social media, navigates annoyances in entry-level-ish jobs for socially aware people, interacts with deficient men, and so on. Banal Nightmare is, by a long way, my favorite of these. It's intelligent and well-structured, and never takes cheap shots (although some of its characters do).1 Not coincidentally, Banal Nightmare takes art, moral growth, and the intersections between them much more seriously than a lot of other contemporary writing does. It's also unusually engaging (I read it in less than two days). I'm looking forward to any future books Butler writes. To be clear: I am, along many dimensions, not any kind of authority on this category of book. I found this novel because Jonathan Franzen recommended it, and…