Indiscretion

Indiscretion

By Charles Dubow

Note: This review also appears over at I Read a Book Once. Go there. It's where all the cool kids hang out

Adultery is boring. I think one gets to a certain age and realizes that the entire idea of adultery as an offense is as predictable as it is hurtful. The entire affair tends to happen in a prescribed order of events and rarely strays from that order. As a narrative theme in literature, it's as dull as dishwater. As a subject for a novel, it is the proverbial dead horse. If an author chooses to go down this path, tread carefully lest thou fall victim to cliche.

That's not to say that authors should not explore the subject, but one has to be careful. There are only so many ways in which to make infidelity an interesting topic. As a backdrop for other narrative streams for instance or as a plot twist. But as the central focus of a novel? Egads! No! Adultery as the central action of a novel is nothing short of banal.

Which makes Charles Dubow's new novel Indiscretion somewhat of a surprise. Rather than try to reinvent the wheel, Indiscretion is banal to its very core. It revels in its banality. It glories in cliches and predictable outcomes: the carelessly ignored credit card bills, the thinly veiled web of lies. The banality of adultery is the part of the point. The predictable outcomes are as much part of the theme of the novel as the adulterous action. Indiscretion is banal by design but dull it is not.

Well played Mr. Dubow.

The novel explores the relationship between Harry and Maddie Winslow, a couple who have everything they could possibly want. Harry is a former college athlete and a successful novelist. Maddie is independently wealthy and fills her days learning the culinary arts and taking care of their nine-year old son. Together that have an apartment in Manhattan, a house the Hamptons and a jet set lifestyle that enables them to spend winters in Rome and weekends in Paris. In their spare time they enjoy long walks on the beach and taking Harry's Cessna for a spin. Life has been good to Harry and Maddie. As Jack Donaghy once put it, the Winslows are living in "the bubble." They are the 1%. We should all be so lucky.

But twenty years of (more or less) blissful 1%-style marriage is apparently not enough for Harry. Like everyman who has it all (including an airplane for Chrissake!), he doesn't. Enter Claire, stage right. Through a series of chance meetings over the course of a summer, Claire, a tried and true 99%-er, ingratiates herself with the Winslows and is instantly welcomed into Harry and Maddie's world of martinis, slacks and chèvre. Claire is dazzled by the unbuttoned wealth of old money and Harry's tractor beam personality. It's only a matter of time.

You've read this story before. Thousands of times. And don't expect any surprises. The reader is acutely aware of the direction of the narrative at every turn. And why shouldn't we be? Dubow is intelligent enough to understand that he is not going to surprise us when Harry and Claire invariably end up in bed together or how the affair progresses to its logical and painful end or the fallout and aftermath. The emotions involved are nothing new. It's all been said and done before. In books and movies and television. There's no reason to attempt to trick the readers when there are no tricks forthcoming.

But Dubow is a craftsman. Even though we all know where this novel is heading, his characterization and pacing make even the most telegraphed action interesting. Dubow stops to savor the moments, relish in the tension or passion or tragedy. In that respect, Indiscretion is a thorough examination not only of the adultery theme but of adultery itself. Dubow mulls over the age old adage: we don't really know what we want until we've already lost it. We are all inherently selfish. We can blame it on youth, middle-age, old age, sex or even tragedy but selfishness is the driving force in how we interact with the world.

But I don't want to imply that this novel is a cliche simply because it explores a cliche. Indiscretion is something more, something different from the piles of other novels on the subject. What sets this novel apart is the quality of the narration. Indiscretion is told from the perspective of Walter, a Manhattan lawyer and a man who is secretly and hopelessly in love with Maddie, which, by my count, makes four in this increasingly mis-named love triangle, though Walter remains a discreet outsider to the event unfolding though out the book, or so he says.

The lawyer in him gives the novel an objective, almost clinical tone. There is an emotionless quality to the narrative in its present tense and straightforward sentences. He neither vilified nor victimizes any of the players in the drama. He is reticent about laying blame on any particular person or event. Rather he lays out the narrative in such a way as there are no good guys or bad guys.

Indiscretion works as a novel about adultery precisely because it is banal. These sorts of stories rarely, if ever, culminate in boiled rabbits and attempted murder in the bathroom. The reality is far more protracted and mundane. It is a testament to Charles Dubow that he has written a decidedly readable novel on the subject of adultery in a manner that mirrors reality as opposed to a Hollywood fiction.

A Visit From the Goon Squad

A Visit From the Goon Squad

By Jennifer Egan

Jennifer Egan broke my heart. She broke it long and she broke it hard. But more on that in a moment.

A Visit from the Goon Squad is a acute piece of loose-fitting fiction that follows the lives of two generations of friends and acquaintances of varying degrees of connection. The narrative centers around Bennie, an aging punk rocker turned record producer and his mysteriously alluring assistant Sasha. Both Bennie and Sasha have secrets that won't tell and the novel simultaneously unravels and wraps them up tighter. The book starts in the middle and moves from the past to the future with jarring frequency, yet exquisite ease. Over the course of the book, the characters lives are intertwined into a Gordian Knot of wrong turns and lost opportunities. Yet somehow through sheer perseverance (in the sense of not dying) it all turns out and, like all great stories, ends with a concert (don't worry, this is not a spoiler).

As a work of fiction, A Visit from the Goon Squad is a prickly, sardonic ball of literary yarn. Prickly in the sense that it is possesses a hyper-intelligent self-awareness that reflects the emotions and reactions of the characters right back on the reader in terrifying clarity and sardonic in the sense that the novel seems to be hyper-intelligently self-aware of its self-awareness. Its a sort of meta-self-awareness that almost makes the novel too clever for its own good. Almost.

Just as an example, consider this maddeningly astute thought from a writer interviewing a young movie starlet:

I would like nothing more than to understand the strangeness of Kitty's world - to burrow inside that strangeness never to emerge. But the best I can hope for is to conceal from Kitty Jackson the bald impossibility of any real communication between us, and the fact that I've managed to do so for twenty-one minutes is a triumph.

By the end of this novel Egan has me reassessing the depth of my emotional responses. When I cry, am I crying because I am truly sad or am I deeper inside myself watching myself cry in order to illicit sympathy from the closest available acquaintance? And if I cry and think about crying at the same time, which one is the real me? Is there another me even farther back that watches myself watching myself? and so forth...

Like I said, this book is often too smart for its own good. But it's fantastic examination of life and hope and carrying on. As Egan writes: Time's a goon.

But I mentioned that she broke my heart. Well yes indeed she did. But it requires me to delve into what some might consider trivial (and for those of you who do think it's trivial, you don't know me very well). Much of this novel centers around the music industry and specifically the punk rock scene, a scene that I was never part of (too young) but a huge fan of (via unhealthy infatuations with The Velvet Underground and The Ramones that spiraled out of control). In one particularly avant-garde chapter entitled Great Rock and Roll Pauses by Alison Blake (written in a series of slides rather than in narrative form, I might add), Egan discusses an issue near and ear to my heart: Pauses in rock songs, those sudden false endings that sit in the middle of songs to add emphasis, a musical exclamation point via the absence of music.

She cites some exquisite rock and roll pauses including the one in "Good Times, Bad Times" by Led Zeppelin, "Roxanne" by the Police and "Bernadette" by the Four Tops. Great songs and great pauses, no question. But she completely neglects to mention the single greatest rock and roll pause of all time:

Waiting Room by Fugazi

Oh, Jennifer. For someone who name dropped a veritable buffet of my favorite punk rock bands from Black Flag to the Circle Jerks to The Cramps how could you have left out Fugazi? How could you overlook the pause that carries more gravity than all the other pauses in the history of rock and roll? How, Jennifer? You call yourself punk? Shame!

Such a formidable novel, such a criminal omission.

Pariah

Pariah

By Bob Fingerman

What is it about the zombie genre that makes it such a tenacious sub-genre in our popular culture? Certainly it is not the nuanced characterization of the walking undead. From the opening scene of George Romero's 1968 genre-setting film Night of the Living Dead  to present, zombies, with very few exceptions, have been rather two-dimensional in scope. They are reanimated corpses who have a singular existential urge: to devour human flesh. Not the most rounded characters. And yet they seem to have more staying than vampires, wizards and werewolves which lend themselves to complex characterization.

So what gives?

The difference is the secondary characters. While other similar styles of horror focus the narrative on the specific creature (be it vampires, werewolves or what have you), what many people fail to understand about (most of) the zombie genre is that the zombies are actually inconsequential to the story being told. Zombie lore, at it's finest, is social satire. The writer or director uses the notion of a zombie apocalypse as a way in which to render society down to a microcosm of our complex social networks. Zombies focus the multitude of humanity's ills and places them under a microscope for the writer or director to examine in detail.

The zombie element is simply a clever and visually exciting backdrop to the real story: the human drama unfolding in the farm house or the shaping mall or the tenement building. When zombie lore strays from this nowhere-to-run motif it often falls flat on its face (note: this does not include anything that is written or filmed from the perspective of the zombie... that's genre deconstruction and worthy of its own discussion. See Dust). George Romero himself is guilty of straying in some of his more recent work, especially Day of the Dead.

All this is not to say that those working within the zombie genre are entirely reined in with respect to how they tell their story. There is still more than enough creative leeway within the genre to sustain it for years to come.

Case in point, Bob Fingerman's novel Pariah. The novel begins months into the apocalypse. The streets of New York are wall to wall zombies. A group of people living in a building in (or near) the Bronx have barricaded themselves inside their own building and are slowly starving to death and/or going crazy. As with so much zombie lore, each character represents a specific social stereotype that the author wants to throw into his own personal meting pot. What would happen if we put a misogynistic jock, an elderly Jewish couple, an artist, a woman who has recently lost her husband and infant daughter, the son of a mid-western Jesus freak and a middle aged black dude all together in a tiny space? What if they couldn't leave? How would that pan out?

This story could just as easily take place on a lonely spacecraft in deep space or a collapsed mine or an Antarctic base during the winter. Really, it would work in any local that offered no immediate escape. It would just be difficult to explain how an elderly Jewish couple ended up in Antarctica. That's where the zombies come in handy. It doesn't hurt that they are creepy and gory and scary as well.

This is what Fingerman understands so well. Rather than try to re-invent the wheel, Fingerman stayed true to the spirit of that old farmhouse in Romero's original film. Pariah is very much about humans trying and failing to co-exist in times of extreme duress.

But if that was all there was to Pariah, why would it merit such a lofty discussion on the nature of zombie lore? Thankfully, Pariah brings more to the table than simply another retelling of the same rat-in-a-cage trope. Fingerman, in what can only be described as a moment of undead clarity, introduces the concept of zombie immunity. What if specific individuals, for whatever reason, repelled the walking undead? What if certain people were simply unappetizing to zombies and could walk among them entirely unmolested? How would that work?

Pariah isn't a perfect novel. I found that Fingerman threw far too many pop culture references into his dialogue and internal monologue. While I fully understand the pervasive nature of books, music, films and the like, I don't think that people living under these conditions would reference SCTV or Dumb and Dumber that often. A lot of the pop culture references felt shoehorned into the narrative as a way for Fingerman to sound off about his own views rather than develop his characters. Unless, of course, he was insinuating that the sum of our culture doesn't amount to anything more than what we know about The Addams Family. In that case, this book is even more depressing than I initially thought.

But that's a minor inconvenience to an otherwise thought-provoking addition to the zombie oeuvre. I'm not one for spoilers so I'm just going to urge those who enjoy all things zombie to read Pariah. I'll admit that if you aren't a fan of the genre I don't think this will be the novel to turn you on to zombies, but if you, like me, crave all things living dead, this is a can't miss novel. It maintains all of the standard features that drew you into the zombie sub-genre to begin with, stays true to the mythology established by George Romero and throws just enough monkey wrench into the cogs to leave you asking more questions that it answers. Pariah is certainly a next step sort of work and, in time, should be considered canon for the keepers of zombie lore.

Let The Great World Spin

Let The Great World Spin

By Colum McCann

Multi-protagonist novels that change voices each chapter can be extraordinarily problematic. The writer must capture the reader, build an engaging story around a particular character and then follow through with the story in a matter of twenty to thirty pages before doing it again. And then again. And then again. An emotionally exhausting endeavor, I would imagine. The writer then has to weave all these stories together in a way that denotes a complete novel as opposed to simply a collection of short stories with an over-riding theme. It's a style I enjoy when the author is talented enough to employ it (for example Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell) but in the hands of less talented writers, the results are often nothing short of a train wreck. So I'm often wary at the beginning of such reads.

From the reader's perspective, these sorts of novels can be emotionally taxing. The reader becomes heavily invested in a character that may or may not appear in any of the subsequent chapters (and then, often only in passing). While this sort of reader baiting offers tantalizing morsels of context outside the character's primary story, starting over ever chapter with a new protagonist often takes the wind out of a novels sails, and quickly. Again, if this sort of novel is written poorly, reading it can become a burden very quickly.

Not so with Colum McCann's 2007 novel Let The Great World Spin. McCann seems to understand this style of writing well. I have not read anything else by McCann but I would hazard a guess that this isn't the first novel that he has written in this style. Despite feeling emotionally drained following the end of any specific chapter, I found myself falling hopelessly into new chapters almost immediately after starting them. By the middle of the novel, I could almost guess as to who might be the main character of the next chapter given the characters that had appeared in passing in the previous ones, each character fleshing out the over-arching story, and I couldn't wait to see what more I would learn about the central veins of the story.

McCann weaves a tapestry of stories that not only encapsulates the lives of his characters, but establishes New York City as the primary character of the entire novel, making the characters simply bits of a larger theme. The protagonists (there are 11 in total) survey the heights and depths of the city from Park Avenue and the Financial District to the dankest recesses of the subway lines and the grimiest slums in the Bronx. While each character's story is itself a window into the human experience, the collection is a delicious cross-section of life in one of the world's most dichotomous cities, a city synonymous with reinvention and new beginnings. In this respect Let The Great World Spin is similar to Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides in the way that it establishes the setting as a primary character in the novel, making it a living, breathing character. One with both compassion and cruelty.

The novel wraps itself around the real life events of August 7th, 1974. On that day a man named Phillipe Petit somehow managed to string a tightrope from the North to the South Towers of New York's recently completed World Trade Center. In an act of unlicensed artistry, Petit proceeded to walk the length of the rope several times much to the delight of New Yorkers and much to the chagrin of the New York City Police Department. This real life episode becomes the lynch-pin for the fictionalized stories that appear in the novel. While love, redemption and forgiveness are all central themes to this wonderfully crafted novel, what McCann seems to be telling us is that while Petit's captivating antics were elevated hundreds of feet above the city, what we don't see are the millions of people walking their very own tightropes throughout the city (and one presumes throughout the world) each and every day. We all take our risks, defy and deny ourselves and each other and walk that precious line for all we are worth.

Excellent book. Highly recommended.