Book Review: The Street Sweeper

The Street Sweeper: A Novel by Elliot Perlman (New York: Riverhead Books, 2012. 640 pp)

Born to second-generation Jewish Australians of East European descent, Elliot Perlman studied at Monash University. While working as a judge’s associate, Perlman submitted a short story that eventually won The Age Short Story Award. Upon becoming a full-time writer, Perlman’s debut novel, Three Dollars, won The Age Book of the Year and the Betty Trask Prize. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

History as the Spoils of War 

History is written by the victor. When peace arrives and diktats emerge, the narrative that develops often becomes one sided. For this reason, we can never conclusively know history because our narratives carry bias. I vividly remember surprise upon hearing my high school physics teacher—born and raised in the southern region of the United States—indicating unease regarding Abraham Lincoln. Although my teacher affirmed the goodness of liberating slaves from the South, he rejected the notion that Lincoln was a great president.

In The Street Sweeper, Elliot Perlman somewhat unsuccessfully seeks to tell the story of the marginalized.

The Street Sweeper 

Centering on two heterogeneous characters, The Street Sweeper explores both the holocaust and the civil rights movement. On one end, Perlman ponders the difficulties facing Lamont Williams, a poor, black ex-convict sweeping streets and taking out the trash at a Manhattan cancer center through a correctional pilot program. If Lamont lasts six months, he will earn full-time employment and the opportunity to focus his resources on finding his daughter, a metaphorical casualty of spending years in the joint. Would you want an infant to remain relationally connected with a prisoner?

Early during his probationary period, Lamont encounters a cancer-ridden holocaust survivor named Henryk Mandelbrot. Striking up a friendship, Henryk shares with Lamont the harrowing story of Auschwitz and his involvement in the Sonderkommando, a slave labor unit forced to work the gas chambers in the death camps.

At his core, Lamont is an innocent man. He earned six years in prison for a crime his friends committed. Having agreed to give a ride, Lamont’s life took a turn for the worst when his friends, unbeknownst to him, held up a convenience store. Describing Lamont’s obliviousness as a personality trait consistent from childhood, Perlman writes,

“Lamont liked to read the magazines but Michael had always been more interested in the candy. Michael was the first to steal and it had been candy, Now and Laters and Hershey bars, he’d stolen. Lamont had his head buried in a magazine and hadn’t known what Michael was doing until they’d left the store” (67).

The Historian

On the other end of the character spectrum, Perlman contemplates the civil rights movement and the holocaust through the lens of a Columbia historian named Adam Zignelik. The son of a prominent Jewish lawyer who contributed to the legislation that paved the way for the civil rights movement, Adam gained scholarly acclaim for a book praising the role of lawyers in civil rights.

“But worrying if [Adam] would ever have another sufficiently good idea was now a luxury he could no longer afford because it wasn’t enough to have a good idea one day. It probably wasn’t enough to have one even now. He really needed to have had one before now because, having spent five years at Columbia with only one book to show for it, an untenured academic seeking tenure was in very big trouble” (52).

Desperately in need of an idea and with his job on the line, Adam inspects a lead from a close friend regarding the potential link between black World War II soldiers and the liberation of concentration camps. If the link exists, it’s possible that World War II could function as a harbinger that provided the necessary strength for returning African-American troops to stand up for civil rights.

During Adam’s search, he uncovers original wire recordings of displaced persons—the title before holocaust survivor—created by a Chicago psychologist, Henry Border. With the wire recordings unveiling potentially the earliest historical record of the holocaust, Adam’s research begins to shift toward these stories. In learning more about the psychologist that traveled to Europe in the summer of 1946, Adam draws nearer to Henryk Mandelbrot and Lamont Williams.

Overt Racism 

For the most part, Perlman’s prose is engaging and at times masterful. Especially in the early stages of The Street Sweeper, I marveled at Perlman’s ability to link stories and to write poetic sentences. But as the novel developed, I found certain holes difficult to overcome.

First and most worrisome, Perlman sets the current events in this novel in a somewhat parallel state where Columbia University is willing to host Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and race relations are tense.

“The day before, someone had left a noose hanging on the door of a black professor from Columbia University’s Teachers College. The professor, a woman who hailed from a disadvantaged southern background, now a professor of psychology and education, was known for her particular interest in the psychological effects of racism on victims. Now she was a victim of it herself” (411).

Lithograph by holocaust survivor Leo Haas

Yet descriptions such as this one refuse to probe deeper, existing as a hanging thread. Despite heartbreaking explanations of the holocaust and the civil rights movements, Perlman refuses to expand on these imagined current issues. To a certain extent, Perlman’s densely packed narrative provides little space to expand on these complicated parallel issues. In my mind, the novel would have been better served without complicated current events.

Additionally, Perlman’s race discussion teeters between relevant and dangerous. A white Australian of Jewish descent, Perlman’s depictions of the African-American condition could easily be mistranslated. Interestingly, Perlman admits the danger in the acknowledgement section of the novel confessing that any description of another race inherits risk although he intends not to offend.

What Is Life if We Can’t Remember? 

Nevertheless, The Street Sweeper portrays some compelling characters. The reader wants Lamont and Adam to find success in their endeavors and such a position is the first order business of a good story. The Street Sweeper asks us to remember people when we consider history. Certainly, events exist on an institutional level, but we should always remember that history happens to people.

“Lamont Williams was desperate for people to remember other people. If they didn’t, what did anything mean, what had anything been for” (553)?

Despite certain reservations, The Street Sweeper is an entertaining and enveloping read. If you are interested in historical fiction and willing to read about heartbreaking topics, The Street Sweeper is for you.

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: Hark! A Vagrant

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton (New York: Drawn and Quarterly, 2011. 160pp)

Kate Beaton was born in Nova Scotia, and has a degree in history and anthropology from Mount Allison University. She publishes a new comic to her website about once a week.

Call Me Pretentious 

Call me pretentious, but I don’t do the whole graphic novel/comic book thing. It conjures up images of greasy-faced nerds with coke-bottle lenses eating potato chips, their mom doting on them, hand and foot, while they play another “fascinating” game of Dungeons and Dragons. Literary supremacy it most certainly is not. But, an English-teaching friend of mine instructs a graphic novels course. Upon learning of this course, I figured if it’s good enough to be taught at school, I might as well give it a shot. Hark! A Vagrant has been getting a lot of hype in the press lately, so I thought I’d check it out.

Having read the book, I face the hard truth: I liked Hark! A Vagrant quite a bit. I probably liked it because of its satire, the purpose for which the graphic novel was intended. In the introduction to the book, the author states,

“I think comics about topics like history or literature can be amazing educational tools, even at their silliest. So if you learn or look up a thing or two after reading these comics, and you’ve enjoyed them, then I will be pleased” (5).

History and Literature Made Fun! 

Historian-turned-comic-cartoonist Beaton presents a giddy romp through history in a Monty Python-esque nature that is silly to its core. The comics she writes are nonsensical, and yet at the same time somewhat educational. To give some sense of connectivity, I’ve kept the review only circulating around The Great Gatsby, but there’s more comics circulating around literature, general culture, and history. Here’s an example from page 154 of the book.

I think that comic gives you an idea of the content within the book. There’s no real plot, but there is a theme: history and literature constructed in pretty laughable and interesting terms. She also offers author’s commentary throughout the book, providing a generous backdrop to her comics. On the following comic, she writes,

“Everyone has had to read The Great Gatsby in high school because it’s the best example of constructing a novel with themes and symbols, like legos, only not legos but The American Dream and the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg. Fifteen-year-olds can really get behind an essay on what the green light means, which is good, because they sure as heck won’t relate to any of the characters, who are all huge jerks with enough money to be wasted most of the time on top of being miserable” (151). 

Give it a Try 

Hark! A Vagrant changed my mind about comics and graphic novels. I learned through reading it that there is some satire, humor, and intellectual benefit from some comics. Much like anything else in life, hasty generalizations don’t work. So, to my nerd friends, I apologize. I sincerely recommend you either check out her website (which has all these comics available) or purchase the book. It’s great for a laugh.

Verdict: 4 out of 5

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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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Book Review: The Lifespan of a Fact

The Lifespan of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 128 pp

John D’Agata is the author of About a Mountain and Halls of Fame, and editor of The Next American Essay and The Lost Origins of the Essay. He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Jim Fingal worked for several years as a fact-checker at The Believer and McSweeney’s, where he worked on the titles What Is the What, Surviving Justice, Voices from the Storm, and others. He currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he designs software.

Evaluating Truth

Recently, I engaged in an existential debate regarding the meaning of book evaluation. My considerations began in December as I compiled my year-end lists. Surprisingly, I found that I rate fiction higher than nonfiction. As I explored the reasons behind my presuppositions, I learned that the rating scale is calibrated differently per genre. On fiction’s side, I rated a book on entertainment value, quality of language, and character development. On nonfiction’s side, I based my rating on the truth value of the thesis. The more closely I found a nonfiction work aligned with my view of reality, the higher I rated the book.

This debate of art versus fact becomes realized in John D’Agata’s and Jim Fingal’s, The Lifespan of a Fact. The tome announces the dialogue around a rejected essay submission on a teenager who committed suicide in Las Vegas. In 2003, an essay by John D’Agata was rejected by the magazine that commissioned it due to factual inaccuracies. In The Lifespan of a Fact, that essay appears in full with the argument between D’Agata and fact-checker, Jim Fingal, dotting the margins.

Accuracy and the Meaning of Suicide 

The essay, in short, speaks of Levi Presley, a teenager who committed suicide in 2002 by jumping off the Stratosphere in Las Vegas. While detailing a true story, D’Agata’s essay flows impressionistically around the cultural climate of Las Vegas and the meaning of suicide.

The text of The Lifespan of a Fact

By privileging artistic expression, factual accuracy becomes a secondary concern. For example, Fingal and D’Agata argue about the number of seconds it took Levi to fall from the tower:

“’We therefore know that when Levi Presley jumped from the tower of the Stratosphere Hotel at 6:01:43 p.m.—eventually hitting the ground at 6:01:52…’ Factual Dispute: Although the incident did happen at ’18:01,’ according to the Coroner’s Report, Levi Presley’s fall supposedly only took eight seconds, not nine. So the actual time frame would be more like ‘6:01:43-6:01:51.’
John?
John: Yeah, I fudged that. It doesn’t seem like it should be that big a deal, though. It’s only a second. And I needed him to fall for nine seconds rather than eight in order to help make some of the later themes in the essay work.
Jim: John, changing details about stuff like Tobasco sauce bottles and thermometers is one thing, but it seems a tad unethical to fiddle with details that relate directly to this kid’s death. In my book, it just seems wrong, especially since the coroner clearly states that Presley’s fall only took eight seconds.
John: I don’t think it’s unethical, particularly because I wasn’t alone in assuming that his fall took nine seconds. For a while his parents also assumed that he had fallen for nine seconds. In fact, that’s where I initially got the number from. Do you think I’d just change this willy-nilly to suit some sort of literary trick I wanted to pull off? His parents and I had a fairly explicit conversation about these nine seconds with Levi’s old Tae Kwon Do coach. So with that little bit of information, I began thinking about some of the ways that the number nine could play a thematic role in the essay.
Jim: OK, I’ll grant you that at one point you didn’t know the correct number, but now you do know better, so shouldn’t it change?
John: ‘Nine’ is too integral a part of the essay at this point. And I admit that I’m wrong about ‘nine’ later on anyway. So the essay’s not changing. It would ruin the essay.
Jim: It would ‘ruin’ it to make it more accurate?
John: Yup” (19).

Must History Be Accurate? 

Photo by O Palsson

Strikingly, D’Agata finds the artistic representation of the number nine more important in the essay than the fact that the actual event occurred differently. Depending on your view of art and the purpose of truth in communication, your response to such an idea will differ. For some, the truth factor matters above all else because the event is real. Fingal, the fact checker, takes this stance:

“I don’t disagree that these facts are trifling, John, but don’t you think that the gravity of the situation demands an accuracy that you’re dismissing as incidental? This isn’t just about the name of one slot machine. I mean, even if there was no inherent meaning in these details, you’re giving them meaning by calling attention to them… You are writing what will probably become the de facto story of what happened to Levi, and so every detail you choose to [alter] will become significant, because your account will be the one account anyone is ever likely to read about him. And that’s why to me this is serious business, because the record you’re creating now, however minor, will be regarded as the authoritative one, if only because there is no competing narrative anyone else is likely to read or write about this kid” (107).

Artistic License Draws Upon Deeper Themes in Life?

Others more inclined to the thematic artfulness of creative writing will contend that the truthfulness of the event does not change. Whether Levi fell for eight seconds or nine seconds, he still committed suicide. D’Agata would argue that through an essay, a life can be memorialized whether or not it tells the story with accuracy to the second.

“An essay is not a vehicle for facts, in other words, nor for information, nor verifiable experience. An essay is an experience, and a very human one at that” (111).

Ultimately, I find it difficult to choose between the two sides. Accuracy matters. Nonfiction as a genre prospers on the foundation of truthfulness. To intentionally alter facts with artistic license is to insert falsity into a true story. Yet, the narrative function of a story requires emotion. When accuracy forces a story into clunky prose and too much detail to qualify a story’s progression, is not artfulness capable of maintaining the theme and keeping a story readable?

The Lifespan of a Fact: More Dadaist, Less Rembrandt 

Fountain by Marcel Duchamp

For me, The Lifespan of a Fact feels like some of the early 20th century dadaist art. Much like Duchamp’s Fountain or In Advance of the Broken Arm, The Lifespan of a Fact elicits an intellectual response. In my mind, I laugh and say, “I get it.” But that response about covers the topic. The Lifespan of a Fact does not offer the depth of an intricate Rembrandt painting where each subsection of the piece carries interest to the smallest brushstroke.

My evaluation of literature remains schismatic. Fiction leans toward evaluative tactics that require consideration of writing technique and plot development. Nonfiction needs a level of truthfulness. But, The Lifespan of a Fact alters my perception in the principle of accuracy versus truthfulness. Levi Presely tragically chose to commit suicide in 2002. If D’Agata’s essay sheds light on his life in a respectable manner (of note, all profits from this book go to Levi’s family), I’m at peace with sacrificing accuracy.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5

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Posted by: Donovan Richards

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Book Review: West of Here

West of Here: A Novel by Jonathan Evison (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2011. 496 pp)

Born in San Jose, California, Jonathan Evison moved to Seattle and formed a punk band named March of Crimes, which included future members of Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. Before writing professionally, Evison worked as a laborer, caregiver, bartender, and syndicated radio host. His first book, All about Lulu, garnered critical acclaim winning the Washington State Book Award. Evison was awarded a Richard Buckley Fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation in 2009. Currently, he lives on Bainbridge Island in Western Washington.

Prior Tenants

Have you ever considered the history around the place you live? Since the earth is older than us (I know; strange right?), the land upon which we live knew other plants, animals, people, and structures before us. What did the prior tenants do in that apartment? Did the previous owner of a household struggle with addiction? Strangely, the places we know so well possess a past we can never truly grasp.

With West of Here, Jonathan Evison explores the history of the fictional town, Port Bonita (interestingly, Evison uses some interesting viral marketing for the book by creating a city of commerce website for Port Bonita) located on the Olympic Peninsula of Western Washington. The narrative splits between characters in a frontier settlement during 1890 and those in a fully developed town during 2006. Coupled with characters familialy linked between the centuries, West of Here discusses grand themes of development, environmental degradation, and exploration.

Dam Days

In 1890, the fledgling commonwealth at the edge of the world encounters the very thing it is trying to escape when Ethan Thornburgh sets his sights on building a dam. In 2006, Jared Thornburgh struggles with the last keynote address at “Dam Days” before the Thornburgh Dam gets decommissioned and torn down.

Speaking about Ethan and the drive for development, his love interest complains,

“How was it that destiny forever attached destiny forever attached itself to men? How was it that men presumed destiny to choose them? And what was the act of this presumption but to relinquish responsibility for their actions? And who was left to shoulder the burden, to suffer the consequences of these actions? While men carried on about putting the river to work and illuminating the darkness, what great destiny had attached itself to Eva, if not domesticity” (102)?

Not only does Evison address issues of gender in this new community, he also speaks about relations between Native Americans and the American pioneers. Referencing the building of the dam, the natives discuss,

“’If the river were meant to be stopped,’ she said, ‘then it would not be a river.’
George nodded his affirmation. ‘That is true,’ he said. ‘But a river is easier to stop than a white man’” (282).

Frontier Expeditions as Escapism

With the Olympic Mountains mostly unexplored, Mather begins an expedition into the great unknown. Meanwhile, the 21^st century finds Timmon Tillman skipping parole and trekking the same path the first explorers undertook 100 years earlier.

Speaking of Tillman’s desire to escape, Evison writes,

“Surely, somewhere out there, on the banks of some nameless stream, at the foot of some nameless mountain, was a home for Timmon Tillman, two-time loser; a sun-dappled place where he could pass his days unencumbered by the existential hell of the other people, a place to be left alone, a place so remote that the smoke of a campfire would not betray his existence. No more offices, no more leering desk clerks, no more meaningless toiling in body shops or clam factories. No more Gooch, no more walls, no more cells. Just wide-open spaces and bountiful wilderness, a place where he could engage the circle of life, no matter how grueling the business of survival might prove to be” (188).

In short, these time periods reveal deep symmetry behind humanity’s actions.

Born Haunted

West of Here ultimately details the various ways in which humanity seeks escape. Whether by hiding behind machismo while conquering the great unknown, running from typical gender roles, escaping a dead-end job, or finding comfort in sex and recreational drug use, the many characters highlighted in Evison’s work labor tirelessly away from what is known toward what is unknown.

Evison eloquently states,

“’We are born haunted,’ he said, his voice weak, but still clear. ‘Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don’t remember.  We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly,’ said Lord Jim, ‘we are haunted by ourselves’” (465).

A big book focusing on the many facets of life, West of Here unites grand themes with a readable plot. With a masterful weaving between centuries, the reader gets a glimpse of how progress does not necessarily mean change. Such themes lend observations regarding how humans inevitably try to escape themselves. Set in the pristine forests of the Evergreen State, West of Here is an excellent book and highly recommended.