![]() ![]() Amidst the rapid currents of Palo Alto’s gentrification, Veblen defends her ramshackle cottage. ![]() (The squirrels, for their part, have a lot to say back, and quite a good vocabulary.)Īlso like Anderson, McKenzie creates characters who live in a sphere set apart from contemporary culture. Her heroine Veblen (named for Thorstein Veblen, the anti-materialist economist and coiner of the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’), loves typing, translating Norwegian texts, and talking to squirrels. Like Wes Anderson, McKenzie has a bent toward the surreal, the madcap, and the bizarre. And in one lived a woman in the slim green spring of her life, and her name was Veblen Amundsen-Hovda.” ![]() In the opening lines, one can almost hear the Andersonesque voice-over and see the camera zoom in for the set-up shot: “Huddled together on the last block of Tasso Street, in a California town known as Palo Alto, is a pair of humble bungalows, each one aplot in lilies. Reading Elizabeth McKenzie’s winning new novel, The Portable Veblen, feels a bit like jumping into a Wes Anderson movie. ![]()
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