A Summer Reading List
My summer reading list is not as a "greatest of all time" or a
"desert-island list." If you haven't had The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas
Pynchon or White Noise by Don DeLillo recommended to you, well, consider
them recommended. Instead, I've selected three relatively unknown
novels, which deserve greater appreciation. One is a postmodern thriller, one
is a dystopian science fiction masterpiece and one is the story of a
closeted Irish lesbian mourning the death of her partner. All of them get
my highest recommendation.
Beauty
The narrator of Brian D'Amato's 1992 debut novel Beauty, Jamie
D'Angelo, is a successful young painter whose work deals with the aesthetics
of beauty. He also has a secret. Along with two co-conspirators from
his pre-med days, Jamie performs illegal surgery with "artificial skin,"
sculpting more beautiful and younger faces onto desperate and wealthy
women. The long-term effects of their invention are unknown, but in the
short-term, the synthetic skin gives Jamie complete control over the
look of his clients, as if these actresses and models were his
sculptures.
Beauty is a pitch-black satire of our image society, both at the high
ends of the pretentious New York art world and the low ends of
struggling actress/model/hookers and MTV videos. Although insightful in the
ways beauty can work as an intimidation, the book is also funny. According
to Jamie, models have entourages because of the consensus opinion that
"models are completely handicapped and irresponsible, mentally and
emotionally. They're another species, almost like cats,
beautiful, selfish, vicious, and retarded."
Eventually, Jamie wants to do more than make actresses look younger. He
wants to do a complete reinvention of someone into the Perfect Face.
Enter Jamie's girlfriend Jaishree, a performance artist and actress.
Jamie comments on the lines around her eyes, tells her the Perfect Face
would bring attention to her art and, when she won't listen, goes to a
Julia Roberts movie. Though slightly repulsed by the idea initially, as
she witnesses too many "fifteen-year-olds around the studio" getting
parts and as Jamie begins to prey on her insecurities, Jaishree considers
what she could do with the Perfect Face.
Jamie obsessively studies the idea of beauty in film, painting and
literature. Fully aware of the precedents, D'Amato drops references to
Frankenstein, Pygmalion, supermodels, Barthes and both Madonnas,
filtering this intellectual inquiry through his cynical, vain and cruel
narrator.
Beauty raises issues about gender and power, beauty and celebrity,
art and identity, but also succeeds as an original thriller. After all,
Jamie is a criminal. He must keep his clients quiet about the procedure,
hide his money and keep tabs on his co-conspirators.
When I first read Beauty, I expected it at the very least to catch on
with the collegiate, postmodern set. I anticipated that with its strong
characters and twisted plot, a movie adaptation would likely appear in
a few years. I would not have been totally surprised had it become one
of the most-talked about books of the decade, followed by D'Amato's
next books. (sadly, this appears to be D'Amato's only novel.) I never
would have believed that almost ten years later the only people I
know who have read Beauty are the ones I forced it on.
The Gold Coast
At one point in Beauty, Jamie considers that the Perfect Face could
usher in an era of global peace. Although without Jamie's vanity and
megalomania, Jim McPherson of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Gold Coast also
wants to push his world into an era of peace.
Kim Stanley Robinson has gotten a good deal of attention and awards for
his recent Mars books — Red Mars, Blue Mars and Green Mars — but
I'd like to trumpet the genius of The Gold Coast from 1988. Jim
McPherson and his friends live in Orange County, California early in the
21st century. The landscape is dominated physically by elevated highways,
spiritually by malls and half-empty corporate office buildings, and
politically by the military-industrial complex.
Why read The Gold Coast even once? Well, it's a fine coming-of-age
story. Jim McPherson, an underemployed would-be poet, enjoys driving
around with his friends, going to parties and taking recreational drugs. He
speaks out against the political-military system, but doesn't take
action until he's goaded into acts of minor vandalism. As this escalates
into sabotage, Jim begins to contemplate the repercussions of his actions
and how to keep his sanity in an insane world.
The Gold Coast is also a terrific depiction of community. Robinson
populates this dystopia with numerous and generally sympathetic
characters. Jim's friends — the responsible drug dealer Sandy, the generous,
disconnected surfer and hiker Tashi, the burnt-out ambulance driver Abe,
the beautiful Virginia, the politically-driven Arthur and the smart
painting teacher Hana — are all believable both as individuals and as a
group. Other characters, such as Jim's father, take us into the
military-industrial complex or, like Jim's grandfather in a nursing home, connect
us to Orange County's past.
Incredibly, Robinson follows these characters through interconnected
stories and various settings without bogging down the plot or hitting a
single false note in tone or believability. Whether describing the joys
of a hedonistic party, the fun of a pick-up ballgame, the stunning
complexity of congressional appropriations or the anguish of a father-son
confrontation, the writing is beautiful and clear. You should read The Gold Coast because these characters are likeable and their stories
interesting.
You should read The Gold Coast because of the politics. This is the
best book written about "autopia" and "mallsprawl." Whenever I come
across the postmodern tenet that capitalist societies can co-opt rebellion,
I think of this book. The depiction of the military-industrial complex
is scathing, but without predictable rhetoric. The industry will take
contracts for a price they have no intention of keeping to build a
system they know won't work to fight wars with no discernable
objective. Robinson connects the underground drug trade, small-time
revolutionaries, an unworkable missile defense system and a grudge between
generals and links it all to the actions of one young man. The Gold Coast is a story about the impact of community, history and individual
rebellion.
A friend of mine claims that reading Robinson will make you a better
person. I'm not sure if this is true. But really, it couldn't hurt. Small
synchronicities and deft touches are revealed with each new reading, so
I could say you should read The Gold Coast more than once, but I
don't want to seem pushy.
[Although it depicts a dystopia, The Gold Coast is ultimately hopeful
and fun and thus perfect for summer. If I were doing a winter list, I
might have gone with Robinson's Icehenge. It explores similar themes
of community, history and rebellion. In the future, we live to be 800
years old or more but our memory hasn't expanded with our lifespans. We
take up journal writing and become amateur historians to discover who we
are and who we have been. This is a somber, sad, beautiful and
criminally neglected book.]
Hood
As with The Gold Coast, I can't claim Emma Donoghue's Hood is
completely unknown, but it never achieved the mainstream success in America
it deserves, either. Perhaps it never broke out of the ghetto of being
a "gay and lesbian book." The first blurb on the back of the book, from
The Guardian — "The issues she tackles are not just gay ones" — is
true enough, but it comes off as a plea.
Hood takes place over the course of a week. The seven chapters
correspond to seven days, beginning on Sunday, the day Pen learns that her
lover Cara has died in a car accident. Pen tries to reflect on the loss
and define the complexities of their relationship, which began in
school. In their conservative suburb of Dublin, the girls did not speak of
their love even to each other for years. This secrecy denies Pen some of
the normal comforts of the bereaved. In public, she must act like she
lost "only" her housemate. And private space hardly exists for Pen,
considering she lives with Cara's father, who never learned about Pen and
Cara's relationship. Also, Cara's sister Kate, similarly in the dark,
arrives from America for the funeral.
Donoghue describes real, powerful grief of the sort we don't normally
encounter in books or movies. There is no mystery to be solved or killer
to bring to justice and no ghost to tie up loose ends. Cara does not
return with a tale of mistaken identity. There is just loss.
Flashbacks and memory dominate Hood. For much of the novel Cara is
alive and funny, charming and frustrating until we return to the present
and her inescapable absence. Cara is beautiful, kind, outspoken
(although closeted at home) and unapologetic about her pursuits of freedom. In
the flashbacks, we get a sense of Pen and Cara's long relationship. Pen
relives the banal moments, the sexual highs and the confrontational
lows. Cara and Pen both have good senses of humor, making Hood a funny
book, but one tempered by tragedy. Donoghue's achievement is bringing to
life a love already lost and expressing the humanity of a character
often denied it.
By presenting a non-idealized relationship between Cara and Pen,
Donoghue avoids button-pushing and sentimentality. Cara had no use for
monogamy. Although she kept her excursions discreet, Cara forced Pen to
accept her occasional infidelity. In fact, she may have been returning from
one of these forays when she died. Cara was often obsessed with
unattainable things, making Pen's accommodation and availability a bedrock of
their relationship.
Pen even considers Cara's wishes after her death. She wonders, "(I)f
you ran after the one you love into death, like a squalling child, she
might easily be angry and say, you're always following me, give me space
to miss you in, back off a bit, all right? If I stayed here . . . and lived
out however many years were allotted to me, then surely by the time I
got to heaven Cara would be impatient to sweep me off my feet?"
Rather than plot twists, Hood derives its power from the honesty of
its emotions, the beauty of its writing and the humanity of its
characters. Given its depressing subject and rain-soaked locale, Hood might
not make ideal summer reading, but most people don't spend the entire
season on a beach blanket anyway.
I've recommended these three books again and again in the past and I
can't remember a disappointed reader. Enjoy!
