Page 14 - Boca ViewPointe - August '19

Page 14, Viewpointe August 2019
Book Review

Looking--Backwards And and celebrates the sociology of the smart set, its loose
morals, then and now. But it is a gripping account of the
Forwards relationship among dreams, art and mental incapacitation,
and the inexorable progress of mental illness and some of its
Sandra Newman. The Heavens, A Novel. New York: Grove failed therapies. As importantly, the author Sandra Newman
Press, 2019. in her Acknowledgement cites the importance and positive
David Eggers. The Parade, A Novel. New York: Alfred A role of care-giver to his patient, sometimes even at the cost
Knopf, 2019. of his own mental health and well being.
We are such stuff as Dreams are made on. Stuff and nonsense. A road in a war torn landscape where foreign contractors
who have been given fake names Four and Nine to conceal
By Dr. Ronald J. Meyers their actual identities, are engaged laying pavement at
about twenty five kilometers a day to rebuild the country
A lavish “rich girl’s” after years of civil war. Nine is new to the job, and Four
party with the smart set in is his officious boss. The place is not identified. It could
a New York City centrally This is where Kate, of mixed Hungarian, Turkish and be Syria, or a country experiencing turmoil like Sudan or
located apartment occupying Persian blood who has been abandoned by Nick for a mail Afghanistan, or it could be a variant on Suzanne Collins’
two floors, 12 rooms, and a order bride meets Ben short for Debendranath, a Ph.D. in Panem or Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead. The road
vast collection of African Geology working as a news reporter with an admixture of is a pet project of the president who sees it as necessary to
drums; then as we note, Bengali and Jewish ancestry. She immediately invites him connect the outlying country with the capital, but also to
as well in the today’s to the rooftop garden probably to engage him in sex, but the celebrate his rule with a parade. Beside the road are ruins
scandalous headlines, a moment is lost when they dispute whether all the containers and shanty towns.
fashionable cosmopolitan of potted grasses have the same chemical component, as he Four and Nine are a mismatched couple not so much
guest list consisting of political activists, artists, poets, garden argues, or have different chemistries based on interactions odd as perhaps a variation of Vladimir and Estragon also
designers, mining executives, ex-Navy Seals, and hangers- with the molecules of the pot, as she stridently insists. who also occupy A Country Road in their desperate state of
on, gay and straight. The upstairs rooms are available for use The novel celebrates their courtship and later marriage. near absurdity in Beckett’s play. Four is officious, diligent,
by the guests either solo or with their companions. Sabine, Kate is not working at present, but Ben invites her to live and Nine is curious, a slacker and skirt chaser who regales
the intelligent, happy-go-lucky but emotionally challenged with him, and they move into an apartment in Queens. his companion with his accounts of his interactions with
daughter of the American Ambassador of Hungary, is the Ben will try to persuade his reluctant girl friend to find a the natives. The food in the futuristic world is minimalist,
hostess; and her friend Kate whom she met as a child in job, and she finally does begin working as a mural artist in protein bars, vitamin tablets, or an occasional lamb meal
Budapest is one of the guests. Oksana, a Ukrainian, who Brooklyn. More seriously, Ben discovers that he is living with the natives.
herself was a mail order bride but now works on behalf of with a borderline schizophrenic who inhabits the world of The novel rumbles along like the R-80 a machine of
abused mail order brides, is not only a guest, but a performer. dreams suggested to her in Hungarian fairy tales. She seeks such efficiency that it can replace two machines requiring
Her shtick is to perform in the nude, a feat very much heaven on earth in her reality. In her dreams, she occupies four individuals. Whereas Newman’s novel describes the
anticipated by the male and female guests. an earlier existence as Emilia Bassano Lanier, a flute player impulse to escape from the real world, Eggers seeks to
in the 1593 court of Queen Elizabeth. Whereas the veritable project where the real world is heading. For all that, it is
Kate is in such a state of mental decay that she does not seem minimalist, a science fiction jeu d’esprit. Eggers, known for
Golf Carts to know who Shakespeare was, or what Ben’s company, his love of intellectual sport in his writing, here attempts to
very little, and he succeeds. The suggestion is that people
Exxon does, or what plastics or nuclear war signify.
She lives in the reality of the historical Emilia, identified
Please Drive by some scholars as the putative Dark Lady of Shakespeare in the future will live in an uninhabitable planet, the rivers
are polluted and where food and medicine are scarce.
As they pursue their destination, they confront the
Carefully! sonnets. Here we encounter the smart set of the time, the ravages of war, the hungry, the desperate and the lost
aristocrat Lord Southampton, patron, friend and lover, also
identified as the male begetter of the sonnets. Also cousin who are ignored so that the road can be completed, and
to the Queen, Lord Hundsdon, the Lord Chamberlain (and the pilgrims can wend their way to the capital. Four has
patron of Shakespeare Company in the 1590’s.) Lord to deal with the insubordination of Nine, who encounters
Hundsdon who is married and father of fourteen keeps the trouble with the native population and becomes ill almost
adolescent Emilia, who is pregnant, as his mistress. In this to the point of death. The other symbol is the mountain of
society are the acting members of the Lord Strange Men, accumulated plastics that lies along the road, the author’s
scribblers like Rob Greene, Thomas Nashe and John Florio. tip of the hat to an ecological time bomb. Both novels end
Emilia becomes Shakespeare’s lover and muse, and he in irony, a less satisfying conclusion for the reader, but
will use her Jewish origins in Venice and her infidelities as Eggers work is the slighter, perhaps culled from previous
significant themes in his future writing. Kate’s kinship with rejections.
Shakespeare is not uncoincidentally related to her perception
of their shared desire, if not obsession, to improve the world. Dr. Ronald J. Meyers, a resident of La Paz, is an
This very romantic historical novel not only depicts Emeritus Professor of English. rmeyers@esu.edu. 

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