Dating Tips For The Unemployed

by Iris Smyles

Overview

One of the Believer's Best Books of the Year: One woman's journey through that awkward period between being born and dying.
 
A modern odyssey about trying to find one's home in the world, this collection of wickedly funny and offbeat vignettes touches upon quantum physics; the Donner Party; arctic exploration; Greek mythology; Rocky I, II, V, IV, VI, and III respectively; and literary immortality. Dating Tips for the Unemployed "melds novel, autobiography, and all manner of asides as [the author] flails at art, love, and friendship with the wry intelligence of someone just wise enough to realize they have no idea what they're doing. A flat-out joy to read" (O, The Oprah Magazine).
 
"In engaging episodes, Iris-the-character neurotically navigates dating in New York City, smokes pot on Greek islands with hapless lovers, drinks too much, deals with disapproving family, and eats a lot of cannoli. Smyles's surreal, lyrical voice elevates these everyday scenarios into the realm of the fantastic and absurd. Included in the book are hilariously stylized advertisements full of false promises, such as 'Health Secrets of the Roman Empire' and 'Have Your Portrait Painted By An Elephant!' all for a price. Smyles is sharp, melancholy, and wickedly funny. She is unafraid to reveal and revel in her character's flaws because it is what makes them so achingly, relatably human." —Interview
 
"Something like a cocktail of Dorothy Parker, James Joyce, and Philip Roth iced, sweetened, and blended." —The Nervous Breakdown
 
"Whimsy, satire, and rollicking social commentary . . . Ms. Smyles is a misanthrope-of-the-people, a standout on the order of Fran Lebowitz." —The East Hampton Star
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544703681
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/28/2016
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Iris Smyles's stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, BOMB, the New York Observer, Best American Travel Writing 2015, and other publications. Her first novel, Iris Has Free Time, was published in 2013. She lives in New York and Greece. Visit her at www.IrisSmyles.com.

Read an Excerpt

BOOK I
 
SOCRATIC DIALOGUES
 
On the airplane, I sat next to a sixty-two-year-old Greek American woman named Kiki who got married at thirty-seven. She told me so within five minutes of my sitting down, before adding that it’s not too late for me either. By the time I got up ten hours later, I knew all there was to know about the struggles of Kiki’s son in AP Physics, his engineering degree from Cooper Union, the car accident four years ago that rendered Kiki unable to wear stilettos, how Kiki met her husband at church, how he scuba dives like her, about her father’s shipping company where she worked before marrying, and recent renovations Kiki oversaw to her house in Astoria. I told her my name when she asked upon landing. I said, “It was nice talking to
you, too.”
   The drive from Athens airport to the bus station took an hour. I took a taxi and the young driver helped me with my bags. Tired from the last ten hours of talking, I pretended I couldn’t speak Greek, hoping this might exempt me from polite conversation. “Is okay. I speak English very good.” He told me the islands were very nice, have I been? That if I wasn’t married, I shouldn’t worry; this summer, here in Greece, I might meet the love of my life. “You are a kind girl, I can tell,” he said. “My business is peoples; I know.” After being riddled as to why Greece is better than America ​— ​“I love the quiet,” I answered ​— ​we arrived at the station, where he proceeded to overcharge me ten euro. And because I didn’t want to talk anymore, I gave it to him.
   My parents picked me up five hours later from a connecting bus station in Volos. Eager to make conversation, they said, “How was your trip?” I told them about the bathroom attendant at the bus stop, a little old lady with a tip jar on a folding chair outside the door, dispensing wads of single-ply toilet paper from a lone roll. “No cologne.” I told them about the porcelain footprints inside the stall, the elegant hole in the ground over which I squatted. “It got me thinking; I should have my toilet removed back home. Go minimal, modern, make a statement.”
 
“How long will you stay?” some friends of my parents asked over the roar of the boat’s engine the next day. A small party of us was motoring to the island of Skopelos.
   “I’m here for the month of August,” I yelled back.
   Tired from my trip, I was at first excited by the roar of the engine, anticipating a few hours’ lull in conversation.
   “She doesn’t talk much, your daughter!” our host yelled to my father.
   “What?”
   “She doesn’t talk much, your daughter?”
   “What?” my dad yelled back.
   Then they put the radio on, turning the volume high enough for it to be heard over the engine. Then they raised their voices so they could be heard over the radio. They talked about the view, about the sea and the sky. “It’s so relaxing,” they yelled in agreement.
 
Back at the house, every room is filled with guests, aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. In the afternoon, after lunch, I slip off to my room for a nap. Drowsy from the midday heat, I shut my eyes and listen. Eventually the voices drift away. I dream of a long conversation, but when I wake, remember none of what was said.
   In the early evening, I step onto the front patio and find Dimitra, my cousin’s four-year-old daughter, dancing before an audience of our family. They clap and laugh as she wiggles from side to side. They call her “i micrí,” which means “the little one.” It’s what they used to call me. My mother stops clapping and says she doesn’t like my dress. “What’s wrong with it?” I ask, looking down.
   “It looks old.”
   With Dimitra, conversation is easy. When she stops dancing, she sits next to me and I ask, “What color is the sky?” She says, “Blue.” I ask, “What does the rooster say?” “Koo-koorikoo,” she sings. “And the dog?” “Ghav, ghav,” because Greek dogs bark in Greek. Then she, Mamoù (her stuffed monkey), and I sit for coffee. Mamoù drinks too much too fast and becomes sick. I tell him I understand; sometimes I drink too much coffee, too. The micrí reprimands him, and I jump to his defense. I say, “Give the monkey a break, i micrí! He’s had a
long day.”
   In the kitchen my aunt flips on the radio, and the voices of a Greek talk show waft out. Dimitra jumps up and begins dancing to an argument about the Greek economy ​— ​Dimitra can dance to anything. Eager for some silence, I head down to the beach and stare out to sea. The wind is loud. The trees, too. The leaves rustle furiously as if urgently relating an opinion; everyone’s got something to say.
 
I take my bike into town after and am stopped by a flock of sheep blocking the narrow path that leads to the village. I stand and wait for them to pass. When they see me, all the sheep behh; they disapprove of my outfit ​— ​I should have worn the green dress. “Sometimes, Iris, it’s like you don’t even want to get married,” the sheep say. Then the sheepdog emerges from the crowd, a big shot barking orders.
   An old mustachioed shepherd watches silently in the distance. Single? Eventually they pass and the road is clear again. The sheep clink off with their ears marked for slaughter.
   “You don’t have forever,” the last sheep tells me before he turns away.
   I shrug. “Neither do you. You’re gonna die, you know,” I say. “And your jacket’s old-fashioned.”
 
I spin through the olive groves and the wind fills my hair. How old am I?
 
I pull my bike across the gravel path an hour later and find my parents on the porch with their feet up. I join them. Dimitra sits beside me and asks why my feet are so large. “To match my nose,” I tell her.
   My mother complains that I’m antisocial, that I should make more of an effort to see my friends here in town, to talk with them, or else “they might stop talking to you, too. You don’t want to become a hermit,” she warns. She says, “Why don’t you go out tonight?” the same way she used to say, “Must you go out every night?”
 
The road to and from our house is less a road than a narrow dirt trail cut out from some trees that leads to a clearing by the beach where our house rests. The “road” passes olive groves, orchards of plum, pear, and quince, and farms with chickens and roosters and their guards ​— ​more asshole dogs. After an evening at a café in town talking with friends, the sky is black and littered with stars like empty soda cans and the embers of discarded cigarettes.
   I drive back in a gold 1982 diesel Mercedes we call “the Tank,” which my parents shipped here ten years ago. It is the car with which I learned to drive, the car I took to and from high school, the car in which I had sex with my first serious boyfriend. The Tank rolls slowly through the trees, pushing rogue branches out of the way with its nose. A few horses grazing near the “road” see headlights and approach. They, too, want to talk.
   I roll down the window. The one that looks like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman sticks her head in. She thinks I’m lonely. She asks, “You lookin’ for a good time?” She wants to be taken up to my penthouse. “I don’t have a penthouse,” I tell her. She wants to be saved. “I don’t have a penthouse, and even if I did, what do I want with some hooker horse?” I honk a few times to usher her out of the way, but she’s stubborn and thinks I’m honking compliments. I nudge my way past and see her in the rearview mirror, watching me leave. She’d look better with less makeup. Someone should tell her.

Editorial Reviews

Thurber Award for American Humor, Semi-Finalist One of the Believer's "Best Books of the Year" One of the Nervous Breakdown's "Best Books of the Year" “The prodigiously inventive Smyles melds novel, autobiography, and all manner of asides as she flails at art, love, and friendship with the wry intelligence of someone just wise enough to realize they have no idea what they're doing. A flat-out joy to read.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Dating Tips for the Unemployed is a charming (yes, charming!), bravura performance by a writer whose comic chops, literary inventiveness, and crisp prose produce the smoothest of literary smoothies, something like a cocktail of Dorothy Parker, James Joyce, and Philip Roth iced, sweetened, and blended.” —The Nervous Breakdown “Especially if you power through it in one sitting—or one 'lounging'—this collection of rambling and loose-jointed vignettes perfectly encapsulates the feeling of being mired in the strange muck of the late '20s and early '30s, stuck between 'fake adult' and 'actual adult.' Interspersed with amusingly bizarre vintage advertisements for books like Crafting With Cannoli Box String, Smyles' book feels like leafing through an extraordinary personal diary, at times both blunt and lyrical.” —Elle, "8 Next-Level Beach Reads" “Whimsy, satire, and rollicking social commentary… Ms. Smyles is a misanthrope-of-the-people, a standout on the order of Fran Lebowitz.” —East Hampton Star “The title isn’t just a cuteness, this is a practical book for impractical people. In this chronicle of one woman’s navigation through the creeping normalnesses of 21stcentury life, you will find helpful tips like 'Never date someone more or less miserable than you,' translations of party talk, and ideas for board games amid advertisements for home courses in snake handling, dream interpretation guides, and a novelization of Weekend at Bernie’s 2. And yet, there’s so much more than novelty at the heart of Dating Tips, which is ultimately a classical reckoning with modern love and a sure way to turn a disappointing day around or find solitary delight while fully clothed.” —Believer, "Our Favorite Books from 2016" “Structured in small episodes like Homer's Odyssey, which serves as an epigraph for the book, Smyles' adventuress calls to mind a Jane Bowles heroine who's read Ulysses while scrolling in despair through 10 open apps on her iPhone. Smyles' portrayal of Iris in all her weirdness offers much to recognize, fear, and embrace. Walking the line between self-obsession and thoughtful portraiture, Smyles explores an inextricable link between sex and loneliness, self-loathing and self-acceptance in contemporary New York.” —Kirkus Reviews  “In engaging episodes, Iris-the-character neurotically navigates dating in New York City, smokes pot on Greek islands with hapless lovers, drinks too much, deals with disapproving family, and eats a lot of cannoli. Smyles's surreal, lyrical voice elevates these every day scenarios into the realm of the fantastic and absurd. Included in the book are hilariously stylized advertisements full of false promises, such as 'Health Secrets of the Roman Empire' and 'Have Your Portrait Painted By An Elephant!' all for a price. Smyles is sharp, melancholy, and wickedly funny. She is unafraid to reveal and revel in her character's flaws because it is what makes the

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