American Purgatorio by John Haskell

American Purgatorio is John Haskell’s first novel, after the story collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock. It’s a novel that effectively subverts notions of genre classification. It packs small emotional punches, and while often compelling, it’s an ultimately uneven journey into the darkened heart of its protagonist, Jack.

Jack’s journey begins when his wife, Anne, vanishes from a New Jersey gas station. Haskell sets this up in the first sentence: “I was in the middle of living happily ever after when something happened.” Following a fruitless search for Anne, Jack returns to their apartment in Brooklyn. Unsure what to do, post-traumatic acts overtake him: he tears up his garden, for instance, with uninhibited force. Realizing he is paralyzed by grief and uncertainty, he begins his journey.

This set up is near-identical to George Sluizer’s 1991 film, The Vanishing whose first scenes depict a woman disappearing while at a roadside service center. In that film, the main character, over the years, fails to recover from this loss, a failure that eventually results in his demise. I adore this film; it was difficult not to think of it through the first few chapters of this novel. The film presents the horrific scenario of the disappearance of a loved one, and refuses simple exits from personal disturbance and grief. The Vanishing depicts the banal horror of this modern tragedy most effectively.

American Purgatorio also celebrates the banal, but quickly sets itself apart from Sluizer’s film. The structure is divided into seven chapters based on the seven deadly sins, and what starts as an efficient thriller takes a sharp turn to become an account of Jack’s transformative personal ride. He buys a car and sets out along an outlined roadmap he finds in a pile of Anne’s belongings. This map, he thinks, holds clues as to her whereabouts. He travels, stopping in Kentucky, Colorado, and California, analyzing his varied states of mind as he encounters other Americans. His logic is loose and open: he lets the world “tell [him] what to do”.

This is the novel’s the philosophical core. Jack is initially driven by uncertainty (and the indefinable sense of loss), but then lets the “world” — and the people in it — draw him along. In this sense, he lets go of rationality. As this happens, he ruminates on what his desire for Anne means, and just what constitutes their happiness together. His cross-country journey is his attempt to find a place in his post-Anne world. By the time he reaches California, he is stripped, literally, to his core.

The journey, abstract and undefined, can be frustrating. Haskell uses an internal monologue device to draw the reader into Jack’s experience, but the monologues tend to be vague and inconclusive. Understanding Jack becomes increasingly difficult. Haskell’s deadpan writing style suffers from a lack of generosity. The reader is forced to guess at the intended meaning of passages and scenes. Character resolution, too, is hard to come by.

Eventually, though, the significance of Jack’s quest becomes clear. He notes: “Clouds, people, buildings, laughter, darkness. It all happens, and then it’s gone.” These final thoughts are exquisite, resonant, and rescue an elusive book.

Early in the novel, Jack describes himself as “good at making adjustments”. American Purgatorio is his trip into hell when forced to make the most drastic of adjustments — coming to terms with the loss of his life partner. Haskell’s book portrays alienation and redemption unevenly, a road novel that travels an uneasy path towards release.