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Fw: Thomas Pynchon & Vladimir Nabokov are other touchstones ...
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----- Original Message -----
From: Sandy P. Klein
To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
Cc: cangrande@bluewin.ch ; chtodel@cox.net ; galya@u.washington.edu
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 5:27 AM
Subject: Thomas Pynchon & Vladimir Nabokov are other touchstones ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/books/story/50430p-47338c.html
New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
The usual suspects
By SHERRYL CONNELLY
DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER
Friday, January 10th, 2003
A 20th century satire packs 'em all in
Tom Carson's latest novel is, at first, quite clever; then, too clever by half. What begins as an audaciously inventive frolic through the 20th century ("an era that stayed unimaginable even as it happened") becomes a forced march through a slush of word play, iconic allusions and anagrams.
"Gilligan's Wake" (the reference to James Joyce is fully intended, while Thomas Pynchon and Vladimir Nabokov are other touchstones) allows seven characters to narrate his or her own story, starting with Maynard G. Krebs in the psychiatric wing of the Mayo Clinic being informed by Dr. Kildare F. Troop that he has had a breakdown and, in fact, Krebs is not his name. He's housed in the Cleaver Ward with Holden Caulfield, who wants to get well and get out so he can shoot "a really, really famous musician," while down the hall a pregnant Nixon screams as he gives birth to a new self. He's Gilligan, of course.
The next chapter belongs to the Skipper, who's doing a tour of duty in the South Pacific as head man on a PT boat alongside McHale and John F. Kennedy Jr. Meanwhile, Nixon's a supply officer who's none too happy when JFK Jr. and the crew of the 109 are found alive. On board the skipper's boat is Algligni, an anagram for Gilligan, one of several used in the book as he plays a role in each of the future castaways' stories.
Thurston Howell, rich and sweetly dim, recommends an old social acquaintance, Alger Hiss, for his first job in government. His wife, Lovey, a morphine addict, was formerly Daisy Buchanan's lover. Their son is named Maynard and, for a time, sports a goatee.
The professor, who played a key role in the Manhattan Project, is a Cold War mastermind who's behind the curtain with Roy Cohn pulling the levers on every every international coup and conspiracy of modern times. His plan is to eventually make his escape among a group of strangers he arranges to have marooned on a desert island.
Ginger, a backwoods Alabama girl who came "from a long line of slatternly women," enjoys a night of ecstasy with Sammy Davis Jr. at Frank Sinatra's Palm Springs compound. Mary Ann makes her way out of Kansas to study at the Sorbonne. In Paris she acquires a boyfriend, "Jean-Luc something" ≈ she can't remember his last name ≈ who is a film devotee with aspirations to direct.
Carson, television critic at Esquire magazine, obviously has his references, particularly to pop culture, at hand. But while this is an ambitious book that can entertain, it also numbs. Not a good thing, that.
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