Netherland

“With echoes of The Great Gatsby, Joseph O’Neill’s stunning new novel, Netherland, provides a resonant meditation on the American Dream.” - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Exquisitely written...one of the most remarkable post-colonial novels I have ever read.” - James Wood, The New Yorker

“Many have tried to write a great American novel. Joseph O'Neill has succeeded.” - Joseph O'Connor

“A dense, intelligent novel.” - Publisher’s Weekly

“Netherland is suspenseful, artful, psychologically pitch-perfect, and a wonderful read.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

“I devoured it in three thirsty gulps.”
- Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

         F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, his great American novel, is a sacrosanct work of literature in the English language. Few dare toy with such comparisons, for one would immediately question the critic’s palate (and perhaps sanity). When I read the initial wave of compliment Joseph O'Neill's latest, "Neterland" (Pantheon, 2008), received, I thought it impossible to ignore. Critics across the country were dropping Gatsby like the name of a famous friend. Madness, right?
         While Fitzgerald, like Nick Carraway, idolized the opulence of the 1920s, he was uncomfortable with the unrestrained materialism and declining morality which saturated the decade. Joseph O’Neill, born Irish and raised primarily in Holland, manages a similar rapport with his narrator, Hans. Hans van den Broek is an indecisive equities analyst of similar breed living in New York City. Hans, his British-born wife Rachel, and their son Jake, lived in a mod TriBeCa loft until the events of 9/11 forced their family further up town. O’Neill uses the characters and events around Hans to at once exhibit the intricacies of a faltering marriage and reveal an unassuming sub-culture of cricket players embedded in the new Big Apple, a city at heart stricken with paranoia and anger in the immediate post-9/11 world. Though, the book is not merely bi-lateral. “Netherland” is a capacious novel, holding everything.
         Like Fitzgerald, the vocabulary often sways toward decadence. The comparison even proves apt in character to space relationships. The way in which Hans’ wife, Rachel, moves about their Hotel Chelsea apartment carries whispered memories of Daisy Buchanan floating through the family mansion. “Her fingers were cool and limp. “Oh, Hans,” Rachel said. Her face wrinkled and she cried briefly. Then she wiped her nose and neatly swung her legs out of bed and went quickly to the bathroom: she is a helplessly brisk woman. I removed my coat and sat down on the floor, my back resting against the wall. I listened intently: she was splashing running water over her face and brushing her teeth. She returned and sat in the corner armchair, clutching her legs to her chest. She had a speech of her own to give.”
         In writing about a character emotionally constrained, O’Neill lets the life of Hans loom large in scope. There is an often discussed scene in this work featuring Hans, his distant son, and Google Earth. Of the moment, Dwight Garner for The New York Times wrote that it is “among the most moving set pieces I’ve read in a recent novel.” The scene captures the quality of tragic limitations within a marriage fractured, split ocean wide by a trial separation. There immediately develops a sympathy with the ache of this removed father in his moment of desperation, a desperation to recognize something familiar about his family across the Atlantic, even if it only be an inflatable pool viewed from many thousand feet above. I feel compelled to share this bit, but I’ll save it for you. The segment is paced perfectly and wouldn’t shine as brightly out of context.
         Despite the combination of passive-aggressive abuse and volcanic diatribes, it never feels as if the marriage is completely lost. These characters are surprisingly mature; surprising because of the swath of eccentricities alive in contemporary literature. The separation oddly feels both uncomfortable and completely appropriate. This works perhaps because of Rachel’s maternal ethics and Hans’ desire to remain a good guy. His is an active desire, one of which all good guys could tell of.
         While visiting his wife and son in England, Hans overhears Rachel discussing their marriage with her father. It is then that he is alerted to the possibility of some clandestine preexistent injuries in Rachel which may also be contributing to their downfall, that maybe it isn’t completely his fault. Here O’Neill displays his mastery of the long sentence and Hans’ lofty realm of thought.“I concluded, feverishly, that here was a development— an unknown hinterland to our marriage which, if jointly and equally explored, might lead to discoveries that would change everything; and the prospect filled me with a theorist’s lunatic excitement and those daydreams of room service and afternoons gobbling blackberries and pineapple slices while we navigated the uncharted reaches of our psyches.”
         As mentioned, the book, though towering over its peers, is of the post-9/11 lot. The restraint I’m certain O’Neill exercised is worth applause. Most statements of a political nature, certainly the leftist sentiments, are reserved for Rachel who uses them to defend her determination to raise Jake outside America. “You want Jake to grow up with an American perspective,” she asks Hans, “...you want him to believe that Saddam Hussein sent those planes into the Towers?” Hans thinks himself to be a political dimwit, made uncomfortable by his inability to join the most common conversation since the attack, so soapbox symposiums are averted.
         The single constant throughout the history of Hans is cricket, a bat and ball sport known to most outside the United States. Some of O’Neill’s most impassioned prose is inspired by the sport. It is over this shared passion which Hans begins his ambivalent friendship with the Gatsbyesque Chuck Ramkissoon. Chuck is a charismatic, charming and shadowy Trinidadian business man who hopes to re-introduce the game of cricket to America. “I say we must claim our rightful place in this wonderful country. Cricket has a long history in the United States, actually. Benjamin Franklin himself was a cricket man,” Chuck explains to those having just finished a game at the second rate Walker Park facilities. The pairing of Chuck Ramkissoon and Hans van den Broek, a self-described “man to whom an apology of almost any kind is acceptable,” allows for a brilliant journey through an “other” New York, a New York of immigrants and dreamers of every nationality. Chuck speaks with a casual passion, indefatigably, virtuosically. “He likes nothing better than to put his bare feet on the dashboard and hit me with an aphorism or a fact,” says Hans of Chuck. Chuck Ramkissoon is an enigma to be met face to page, so here I digress.
         "Netherland" doesn’t turn on plot. Rachel, thinking in terms of the grand narrative, questions “the whole story” of their marriage. The Chuck Ramkissoon saga is a study of character and unprecedented interaction. Although I discussed them almost separately, Rachel and Chuck, Love and Friendship, Fear and Loyalty all exist together throughout this brilliant novel.
         “Netherland” is an absolute example of sweeping talent. O’Neill delivers a virtuoso performance and his voice, like the maimed metropolis he so clearly adores, will not slumber.

When You Are Engulfed In Flames

         There is a fundamental flaw built into the memoirist. For someone to be considered as such, they have probably written multiple books about themselves. On each subsequent release, then, arises the question, why was this left out the first time? A family’s quirks can become far too familiar too quickly for a writer to carry on about them through five collections. Which is why we can be thankful for the legitimately talented. Please, gentlemen, say hello once more to Mr. David Sedaris.
         Mr. Sedaris’ books, starting with “Barrel Fever” (1994), have been translated into 25 languages and he has graced the New York Times best-seller list four times with a probable fifth trip by the end of this month. With his latest, “When You Are Engulfed In Flames” (Little Brown, 2008), Sedaris has savingly stepped outside the time frames he has so successfully worked within for past essays. While David mined the same set of years for the material included in “Naked” (1997), “Me Talk Pretty One Day” (2000), and “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim” (2004), he felt the need to beat a fresh horse this time around the track. In this new collection of first person essays, among other things, David discusses buying pot from a trailer-dwelling couple in North Carolina over the holidays, an ornery pseudo land lady with a crush on his widowed father, how Bob Dylan and Donna Summer can save you from a Hitchcockian chaffinch attack, and the “number one reason not to blow a horse in your bedroom,” most of which takes place after the period spent in Normandy, detailed in Me Talk Pretty.
         Even with a ripe period from which to pull, many familiar characters recur. David’s father appears, as does his mother (briefly), his boyfriend and professional set designer, Hugh Hamrick, and sister Amy, of “Strangers With Candy” fame, who offers the number one reason alluded to above: the inevitable muddy carpet. Also within Flames can be found David’s own devilishly deadpan prose and, yes, the occasional exaggeration. The New York Times, a fine publication, recently brought to my attention an essay published by The New Republic, a once fine publication, entitled “This American Lie.” The author, Alex Heard, questioned the validity of some of David’s essays included in “Naked.” An authors note in Flames describes the events discussed as “realish.” As I see it, a memoir should be allowed some breathing room, otherwise, it would be called an auto-biography. In a new essay, ‘Memento Mori,’ David recalls a conversation of sorts he had with a 300 year old skeleton who continues to remind him of his impending doom. While I was sitting on my front porch, reading this book, I admittedly began to doubt the existence of a character, but just for a moment. The essay which seemed beyond reality is called ‘This Old House.’ In it, David writes of “an arthritic psychic, a ramshackle house, and either two or four crazy people, depending on your tolerance for hats.” Just as I cast a curious eye at the schizophrenic Chaz, I kid you not, a pink golf cart filled with middle-aged women scooted past my house. Quite simply, sometimes the absurd occurs, and David is always there to capture it. I suspect Heard thought up a clever essay title and just ran with it (Sedaris is a somewhat regular contributor to National Public Radio’s “This American Life”).
         What appears to be an initial series of stumbles, the first few essays are actually quite well poised. First time readers are introduced to Mr. Sedaris, a man fascinated by the silly, sincere, and borderline disgusting. Most of all, they’re introduced to a writer’s writer. David’s sentences have grown more slender. Unnecessary words are few and far between. In a similar scope, his comedic timing has become more acute. Unexpected daggers of humor line single sentences. He’s one of the world’s foremost comic writers, yet he still manages to slip a punch-line in under your nose. But that’s not to say his pace is skewed. I’m not sure where the praise should appropriately fall, on the author or his editor, but the collection is well paced. The majority of the book is full of short essays which land like quick jabs. Eventually, tempo slows and the reader comes upon perhaps the longest essay in the Sedaris cannon, ‘The Smoking Section,’ an account of his attempt to quit smoking. On “The Daily Show,” David referred to what is discussed in the book as “the Japanese method,” which is essentially a $23,000 vacation in Tokyo. It’s not that humor fades from this last essay, but, considering the essay is a bit drawn out, the laughs accept a supporting role. Though, in some spots, the comedy reaches that rare summit where the goofy and masterful meet. “I was in El Paso one afternoon, changing out of my swimsuit, and a young man said, “Excuse me, but aren’t you...” When I say I was changing out of my swimsuit, I mean that I had nothing on. No socks, no T-shirt. My underpants were in my hand. I guess the guy recognized me from my jacket photo. The full-length naked one on the back cover of my braille editions.”
         Some (ahem, Times) may suggest that this work lacks the enlightened reflection which appeared in flashes through Dress Your Family. With that I must disagree. Rather than completely cleansing his recent essays of thick sincerity, David covers it delicately with the light-hearted shawl he has spent the last sixteen years weaving. In one essay, David discusses an old man he initially befriended in spite of popular community opinion . The man, who was recently excited by an increase in his train travel discount to seventy-five percent as a result of a hip replacement, was eventually diagnosed with a terminal cancer. David learns of this three years after their last discussion, at which point I share this excerpt: “I saw him on his front stoop a week before he died, and when I waved he beckoned me inside the gate and we shook hands one last time. I found myself wondering if the cancer had upped his train discount, bumped it from seventy-five percent to something even higher, but it’s a hard question to ask when you’re not fluent. And I wouldn’t want him to take it the wrong way.” That last line aches with sagacity! Once you’ve read the essay yourself, learned of the old man and their peculiar relationship, you’ll understand completely.
         This book is a must-read for 2008. Though, once you do, try to avoid comparing it to his other works and enjoy it for what it is: a satisfying step in the right direction. I must borrow from John Stewart, as he said it best, “The book is phenomenal, if you like joy.”