Big Machine by Victor LaValle

An enjoyable enough novel by the author of The Ecstatic, which I admit I preferred. LaValle is very very good at generating suspense to start (it was the plot in the middle where I kind of flagged)... he uses a classic mystery set-up and places a number of strangers in a remote location all gathered by some strange man with a plan. Because LaValle is so good with voice you'll happily go for chapters not knowing what's up because you like the narrator so much and so he can withhold information for quite awhile. Not to mention, about fifty pages in you meet a new character who has no connection to the narrator whatsoever until he describes her as"my future wife." So you can't help but read on to find out how on earth they go from the position they're in to being married in two hundred pages.

But what I wanted to mention is for a long chapter in the last third of the novel the point of view switches from first person to third person and relates the past history of the wife character. It's set up so that you understand she has told the narrator this story--but it's not told to the reader via his first person or hers. It's just set apart--given a title of its own--and dropped in. Which made me think you can get away with this kind of thing if you own up to what you're doing. Just switching without announcing the switch would have bugged me more. But this seemed okay. In my adaptation class we've been talking about handling flashbacks and I have a similar theory about them--they work best when the film acknowledges the change and doesn't try to make that flash seamless. In a number of ways LaValle is up front about writing a comic book in the form of a novel, and I suspect this third person section--a side adventure for a secondary character--may have also been under the influence of comics.

Bookforum

Victor LaValle has an essay on Black nationalism in the current issue of Bookforum. Bookforum is always online in its entirety. Check it out.

The Ecstatic by Victor LaValle

Anthony, the narrator of LaValle's 2002 novel, may just be the evolutionary step between John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly and Junot Diaz's Oscar Wao. He is morbidly obese, mentally unbalanced, and really really funny. LaValle's acknowledgments page ends with "Last, I'd like to express my affection for fat people and crazy people everywhere," and that affection which the novel wraps its narrator in is really what carries the book.

The flap copy claims the novel is in the tradition of "misfit picaresques" --a tradition I did not know existed but enjoy the thought of -- and while The Ecstatic has more of a one-thing-builds-on-the-last quality than I think of most picaresques as having, it's not exactly hooked on plot. Which means, to keep going the reader really has to attach to the narrator who holds it all together. My undergraduates and I recently tried to discuss creating likeable characters but the conversation felt a little too clinical (1 tsp. character flaw, 2 tsp. character strength, mix in one lightning scar ...)...but LaValle, in an interview with the journal Hobart has helped me see the issue in a new way. It's not likeability that characters need; it's personality. He defines voice as personality, which for my taste leaves out an aural quality of voice that feels important, but I very much like the idea of creating personable characters rather than likeable ones. After all, we often are drawn to the people who when looked at logically aren't likeable at all. And Anthony's personality is partly drawn by his physical traits (looks and actions) but much more by the things he thinks. This is what I think LaValle means by voice--what Anthony has to say is what makes him most interesting.

For example: p.44, "Disposable income was wasted on the dumb." and p.32, "To me women were like the perfect model of government: paving the roads and protecting the weak. Omnipotent. Boys without fathers say that kind of thing a lot. About their mothers. About their wives. Comparing ladies to goddesses and gold. But still I think we hate women even more than the average guy," and p.108, "...a little neon always makes me feel like I'm near people I understand."

And another small thing I appreciated--Anthony works cleaning houses. A lot of fictional women clean houses, but not a lot of (any?) men. Sometimes it's the small things that add originality.

And one last bit of trivia: Mos Def has named his latest album The Ecstatic after the novel, which he describes as a favorite. If only Mos Def wasn't so skinny, I'd pitch him for the movie. But I strongly approve when public figures reveal themselves to be fiction readers. I like it when characters in movies and tv read novels (Sawyer reading Watership Down is really what sold me on Lost) and I get peeved when I hear public figures make a point of mentioning that they don't read fiction (keep your shame secret, please). I had mixed feelings, for example, when even the intellectual/musician Andrew Bird, when asked what he read by New York magazine referenced the terrific Cabinet magazine and Saul Bellow, but made a point of saying he didn't "go for" much modern fiction. Mr. Bird, if you're out there...give The Ecstatic a try.