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In Review: March 25, 1998
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If there is a secret, is there love? Gary Krist '79's novel plumbs a marriage
Bad Chemistry In an era that reduces people to sound bites, Gary Krist has always conjured up characters with staying power, from wayward adolescents to the immigrant tribes of northern New Jersey. These are precise yet quirky portraits, miniatures with real depth. The author of two critically acclaimed short-story collections, The Garden State and Bone by Bone, Krist is out for bigger game in his compelling first novel, Bad Chemistry. It's a tale of drugs, computers, and ecology, from the suburbs of D.C. to the biochem labs at Johns Hopkins. Yet underlying the techno-twists is a basic issue of character, the paralyzing problem of how well we really know those we trust the most. The couple at the center of the novel, Joel and Kate Baker, are an alliance of different classes. He's an East Coast ex-hippie turned business entrepreneur, with the self-confidence and ease born of a privileged idealism. She's the sister in a midwest Greek family of cops, née Theodorus, remaking herself from an ex-policeman into a social worker. The catch is that Joel suddenly disappears one night, leaving a trail that gets murkier the more Kate follows it. The first corpse is revealed within pages of the opening, and the plot escalates from there. Complicating the trail are Adrianna, Joel's lawyer and a possible former lover from his activist days; Velma, his tight-lipped secretary at Rainforest Imports, Inc.; and Evan, a member of that emerging subspecies, the teenage computer geek, who helps and hinders Kate as she follows the clues to a rural town in Pennsylvania. In the end, this is no body-strewn thriller, but rather an intelligent read, and the real eye-catchers are the perceptions about the betrayal of affections. It also helps that Kate is no ordinary heroine, even when staking out a post office box: "To pass the time, she brought along some sociology books she was supposed to have read while getting her master's -- George Herbert Meade, Erving Goffman -- as well as a couple of Dorothy Sayers novels." As Henry James once noted, "What is incident but the illustration of character?" What's most impressive, besides Krist's utterly believable female lead, is the tight logic with which the narrative unfolds, as well as the way personalities can bend with the right push. Bad Chemistry is a thriller with a mind all its own. -- David Galef '81
Russian charlatans, businessmen, and politicos
Resurrection
In Russia today, where only a decade ago citizens were, in Joseph Brodsky's words, "equal in poverty," nothing is certain but a clash of extremes. A single long-stemmed rose auctioned nightly at Moscow's ostentatious new Silver Age club rarely goes for less than $1,000, and AK-47s are sold in Chechnya for about $100, the average monthly salary in Moscow. David Remnick '81, in his third book, Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia, focuses on the intrigues in Russia's new controlling oligarchies, which are at the core of this clash of extremes. Westernizers and conservative army generals in the Kremlin, leaders in the oil and gas industries, and power-hungry Muscovite businessmen are all scrambling to climb iz pod glib, as Solzhenitsyn puts it; that is, out from under the rubble. The Russia that Remnick covers, from the dissolution of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991 through the presidential elections in the fall of 1996, is a country where restraint is a matter almost entirely of personal, not of societal or legal, morality. The moral ambiguities inherent in Russia's controlling oligarchies are omnipresent and to some degree unavoidable because laws concerning the most basic matters of business barely exist. As a result, bribery is "a necessary part of commerce," and garnering the good favor of those in the political élite is essential if a businessman is to succeed in safeguarding his interests. Vladimir Gusinsky, one powerful Muscovite businessman with diverse interests in commercial banking, real estate, television, newspaper, and radio, recognized the importance of seeking such protection, asserting that the only defense against lawlessness is "an investment in politics." With that in mind, he had forged a close business relationship with Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. The headquarters of Gusinsky's bank, Remnick tells us, was located in Luzhkov's headquarters; "it was as if Citibank were inside Gracie Mansion." Furthermore, a large share of the city's account was deposited in Gusinsky's bank, and Gusinsky had made profitable real estate deals with the city. It is extremists, both nationalist and communist, who fill the existing moral void with extravagant claims and assurances. The nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the communist Gennady Zyuganov each won a sizable portion of votes by appealing to the nostalgia of the Russian people; they conjured up an idealized, untarnished Russian identity for citizens grown tired of ambiguity. Remnick conveys to us the absurdity of these two charlatans. Zyuganov, in an all-encompassing effort to unite bolshevism and Slavophilic nationalism, asserted that "Christ was 'the first communist,' since both Jesus and the Party came 'from the same principle of social justice on earth.'" Zhirinovsky, who appealed to the frustrations of workers, peasants, and the elderly, assured voters that "Television will be different.... There will be no sneakers, no chewing gum, no beaches....You will be spoken to by Russian broadcasters with good, kind, blue eyes and fair hair." As the sterile, oppressive atmosphere of communism has disintegrated with the fall of the Soviet Union, so has the moral role of the writer. Writers like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Andrei Sakharov offered guidance throughout Russia's history, but those of the present day offer none, save Solzhenitsyn, who, Remnick tells us, is not taken seriously by anyone. At a time when there is no longer an immense force of evil to combat, for intellectuals "the worst sin is to seem naive or woolly or bookish or hopeful." Instead writers offer satiric comment on the evils of the past and the confusions of the present, like Dmitri Prigov, who pins slips of paper to trees with aphorisms such as "Comrades, the faces of children and kittens remind us of eternity." By focusing on specific personages, Remnick holds the reader's attention through the chronicle of tangled events. He includes the serious and the amusing, showing their uneasy coexistence. Resurrection's richness satisfies completely. -- Christen Kidd '96
Under construction: Literary highway
Coffeehouse: Writings From the Web
The World Wide Web
was invented in 1990
by a Swiss physicist. Eight years later, the Web has
transformed our society. Along the way, people eager to share their
thoughts and emotions began posting works on-line, and literature on the Web
was born. Coffeehouse: Writings from the
Web (Manning, $24.95) edited by Levi Asher and Christian Crumlish '86, is a
real book, with paper made from trees, that shares with readers this new,
eclectic world of electronic publishing.
What, then, makes these works of fiction, poetry, and visual art "from
the Web"? First, one should know, every piece is available (free!) at
www.coffeehousebook.com. And one is tempted to look for something special
about the works, something that perhaps breaks ground. Reading through
the 46 pieces -- most bad, but some interesting -- one also searches for
an all-encompassing theme or mission that holds together this "new genre"
anthology dedicated to Allen Ginsberg. Could it be a warmed-over
Beatnik anthem about counterculture?
Fortunately not. The strength of this collection lies not so much in
the innovation or the artistic merit of any particular work, but in the editors'
tone. It is down to earth, and their only aspiration is to help
open-minded readers find new writers -- and vice versa. They do not pretend to
present an avant-garde that The New Yorker will eventually recognize, and they
are not pushing the literature as an underground form of expression only
read by Star Trek fans. One of the best aspects of the book is an
appendix of other venues that offer a broad range of Web writings.
In Web literature, structural experimentation is the rule, and
meticulous character development and well-crafted narratives are difficult to find.
Many would say this is bad literature, but a surprising number of people
disagree. Of course, there is writing worth reading on the Web, and a bit of it is
in Coffeehouse. Look at Walter Miller's "Intervention"; it's wickedly funny.
-- Mark Rambler '96
Orchestra on tour
The Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Hobart Earle
'83, is on national tour through the end of March. Its final
performances are in Williamsport, Pennsylvania; Orono, Maine;
Worcester, Massachusetts; and Brooklyn, New York.
Earle has been associated with the orchestra since 1991, when
he moved to the Ukraine to accept the job of guest conductor. He is
credited with reinvigorating the orchestra and leading it to greater
professional recognition. For more information phone 718-549-1673.
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