A novel without a hero. Hellscape with an infinity pool.Raj Ladlani is one of thousands in an unemployable actor. He has reasons to believe he is spectacularly talented (his beloved acting coach Anthony says so), a legend in every way but for the success.His anonymous life working at Yogurtland, obsessively reading Vanity Fair, and fantasizing about stardom, comes to an end when he answers a job ad detailing a relentless, laughable parade of menial responsibilities for a 'Hollywood Family'. So begins the astonishing decline and fall of Raj Ladlani.The Simp tells the story of Raj's momentous employment and the destruction that follows in the wake of his time with the with the H Jim, a macho director determined to prove himself as an artist; and Anna, his much younger wife who has ambitions of her own.And when the job reveals itself to be an absurdist walk through affluent domestic chaos and misguided engagements with identity politics, Raj might be about to lose it - on a very public stage.
The phrase "Vanity Fair" is taken from another book, Pilgrim's progress, a reference that would've been widely recognized in the nineteenth century but is widely irrelevant now. A "Vanity Fair,' according to Wikipedia, "is a never-ending fair held in a town called Vanity, which is representative of man's sinful attachment to worldly things."Raj dreamt and dreamt of this never-ending fair. Deep down, he felt he had been excluded from life's revelries. This was a persistent feeling; the sight of something simple-friends gathering at a café to laugh together-inflamed him, made him feel small and worthless. Raj wanted very badly to cross the gates into Vanity Fair. He wanted, simply, the bliss of pure, silly worldly attachment. He imagined specific scenes of this Fair in detail, sometimes writing elaborate dialogue, acted and produced only in his mind. And it was this combination of a vain desire for Vanity Fair and his ability to invent that led Raj Ladlani to his eventual downfall.
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