Reviews by Alison Case
Plays Well With Others
By Allan Gurganus
His friends are now dead. Seeking to memorialize them, narrator Hartley Mims, Jr. creates a portrait of Manhattan in the early 1980s, just prior to and during the AIDS crisis. Only hinting at the magnitude of the epidemic, he focuses almost exclusively on his "dear ones" – his small clique of ambitious, attractive, talented friends. A celebration of the lives of the soon-to-be-afflicted rather than an emotional recounting of their untimely deaths, the book is a series of episodes that focus on the fun and friendship experienced by the group. The narration is engaging, and the dialog is sharp and witty, if sometimes a bit arduous. If the novel suffers, it is not from the writing, which is unique and skillful, or from the subject matter; rather, it is from the lack of sentiment. However much the novel purports to be about friendship, it is driven much more by the characters’ desire for fame and success. The main characters are vain and determined, having fled the Deep South to redefine themselves as Bohemian New Yorkers and to make a name for themselves as artists. They share an unconventional and affected manner of speaking that renders the reader an observer rather than a member of their exclusive club. They are believable, but one-dimensional. In the face of death, we are not shown fear, remorse, resistance, or any depth of emotion. Instead, we are shown their final grasps at success – frantic painting, desperate self-promotion – as though we are supposed to be more profoundly affected by the loss of the musical scores or pieces of art they might have produced had they survived than by the loss of the person. Their final days seem pathetic, not courageous, and the book kept me at an emotional distance – something that didn’t quite seem appropriate for a novel that, at its core, is about tragedy and loss.
Cosmopolis
By Don DeLillo
One April day in 2000, Eric Packer, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager,
steps out of his 48-room apartment in the tallest residential building in New
York City, determined to travel cross-town for a haircut. Undeterred by traffic
that "speaks in quarter inches," Eric conducts business meetings and
even receives a medical exam in his limo, refusing at all costs to abandon his
course – a course stalled intermittently by a presidential motorcade, a
rap star’s funeral, a violent and ambiguously socialist protest, a movie
set, a pie-hurling stalker, and various sexual trysts. Eric, highly intelligent,
selfish, and self-obsessed, experiences most of these events dispassionately.
To him, other people are merely functions to be manipulated like he manipulates
numbers, gathered as he gathers information – there for amusement, advice,
spiritual guidance, sex. Potential subplots flicker in and out, but they are
hollow distractions; even the climax is a side story, weak and unemotional. One
senses that even DeLillo is unaware of what Eric will do next, allowing his main
character to determine the action – an appropriate arrangement, since Eric
is more interested in his story than he is in being alive. The young billionaire’s
journey across town is also a pilgrimage, an homage to his father’s tenement
roots, and a possibility to find meaning in the Cosmopolis world of numbers,
charts, and endlessly streaming ones and zeros. But this is not a story of redemption.
Nor is it a novel for readers seeking depth of character or a neat plot. Told
through staccato conversation and lyrical prose, Cosmopolis is a bleak commentary
on wealth, society, and humanity – and on hurling oneself toward death
in an attempt to escape it. It is smart, absurd, and often funny: pure DeLillo.
©Copyright 2008 Libretto,
Inc. |
