Review: “The Wendy Award” by Walter Scott – Voice of a Bewildered Generation

My enjoyment of Walter Scott’s brilliant Wendy books, featuring a millennial arts graduate with a self-destructive streak as wide as the Yukon River, is almost indecent at this point. Truly, I could not enjoy them more if I tried. They are painfully funny, teetering between slapstick and existential crisis. Wendy, like everyone else, is addicted to her mobile, and her life, much like her art, is increasingly abstract. They’re also valiant. Scott, an artist himself, satirizes our chaotic culture with daring rarely seen in publishing. Poor Wendy. Often, all she needs to do is speak for the identity police to descend, questioning her pronouns.

In her latest adventure—the fourth book in the series—Wendy’s comic strip, Wanda, gets nominated for the National FoodHut Contemporary Art prize. However, the path to stardom is anything but straightforward. Generation Z simply does not play nicely with her. “More cis woman nonsense,” reads the first comment below her interview, conducted via Zoom with an overworked intern. “The amount of unchecked privilege this artist flexes, I am literally shaking,” reads the next. Aside from her longtime friend Winona, who is also nominated, her fellow prize contenders are terrifying. What to say to Zima, “a 3-spirit artist of Indigenous and settler descent known for their seed-mailing collective”? How to react to Moonstone’s forthcoming collaboration (“Zendaya follows me on Instagram”) with Crocs?

Is Wendy getting old? Maybe. In a bar, she meets two fans and metaphorically feasts on their youthful energy as she gets increasingly drunk. This continues until one of them, exhausted by her talk of “vibe shifts,” asks her to leave (“Litchi has C-PTSD and if the topic changes too often, it’s really destabilizing for them”). Wendy sublets her apartment in Toronto during a New York visit, only to return and find her tenant, Kaylee, utterly transformed: “I have a gallery now and a solo show next week,” Kaylee announces coolly. “It’s been crazy. I’ve had to hire assistants.” Meanwhile, Wendy’s presentation for the FoodHut prize—which consists of some slow-motion mobile phone footage of herself while extremely drunk—strikes even the idiotic Sandy, who is compering the award, as career suicide.

Loneliness comes in like the tide, reducing her world to a shared studio and the blue-green screen of her phone. Where is everyone? What has happened to the Wendyverse? Zav, the man she once kidded herself she was in a polyamorous relationship with, is long gone. Her frenemy Tina has had a baby with Jeff, the guy she used to obsess over. Even Winona is moving to Berlin. Abandoned like this, what will happen to our silly but sweet-natured heroine, a character beloved by Roz Chast and Zadie Smith alike? Scott has stated that The Wendy Award will be the last volume in the series, but I refuse to believe it. In her confusion and cowardice, Wendy is—the authentic voice of a bewildered generation. We demand, at the very least, a brand new multimedia installation.

Source: The Guardian