A person falls in love with another person, even if he knows he is just a superficial, vain, empty second-rate - this is the story of "The Veil", and it is also the story of "You".
It all starts in that New York bookstore: Joe is a hunter who knits a net on a street corner, and the gears of the story start to turn as Beck walks to the Paula Fox shelf. Soon, Joe's scrutiny of Beck's superficiality and grief is revealed—her red spoon and Electra, her curtainless room and her desire to perform, her playboy and vanity, her plastic flower girlfriends and Pleasure, her psychiatrist and sex addiction, her crumbling schoolwork and laziness—all documented in Twitter ravings, Instagram corners, emails. And Joe, who has seen through everything, is still plunging into this quagmire. It sounds like a very blind and sad look.
As in Maugham's pen, love and respect are two parallel lines that can be carried out on their own. Too many love stories try to elevate the glorification of love - "No matter how ordinary people are, they shine in the eyes of their lovers." - they always say. Unfortunately, sometimes love does not have such magic. Love can't offset the dark side of a person's entanglement. It can't make Beck stop cursing at her friends, and she can't suddenly develop self-esteem against objectification; love can't be replaced by an Ivy League degree, an Upper East Side town house, an unlimited credit card, a ticket to Vanity Fair; A lazy man has talent out of thin air; love cannot offset the abandonment of his father in childhood. Love can't deceive all of this, and naturally it can't deceive the irrepressible contempt after seeing these secrets. Joe loves Beck of course, but when he opens up Shen Wei again and again and sees the side of her that she doesn't want to be known, he also has to admit that Beck is just a second-rate person. Contempt for contempt, love for love, both without the slightest falsehood and reservation. Perhaps the true core of a love story lies in deciphering superstitions about love.
The tone between "first-rate stuff" and "second-rate stuff" is nothing more than that. Joe's investment obviously won't reap the same return. As the so-called "eyes full of tenderness may only look like a whipped dog", too deep feelings will either scare people away or be despised, and Beck has done both at the same time. Even with the perfect everythingship between the two, Beck couldn't wait to rush to the inferior options, such as Benji or a psychiatrist, whenever he got the chance. Doesn't Beck know the sickness of doing this? But human instinct is to yield to instinct. Looked at it this way, Joe despised Beck, and Beck despised himself; Joe fell in love with bad people, and so did Beck. They are really like-minded.
Like-minded maybe Peach and Beck, or Peach and Joe?
"First-rate stuff" loves "second-rate stuff," and "second-rate stuff" loves "second-rate stuff." After all, maybe second-rate stuff is the top of the food chain.
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