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It's
been a few years since some declared that the American Dream
is going down in flames, with the country gradually becoming
the haven of the super-rich. Still, recent memories remain
of individuals who, in a single generation, went from having
nothing to having a life which consists of material ease without
hard labor. What is the fate, however, of the children of
those people, who have not worked hard and known only relative
comfort? Noah Cicero's novel Treatise deals with such
a character, in terms that are starkly sociological and in
prose that is unpretentious. The novel contains moments of
incredible insight, as well as moments of mind-blowing cynicism.
It is an extremely honest novel that is not afraid to make
judgments and does not apologize for offending people.
The structure
of this story is clear and simple enough: a young man whose
parents are well-off decides that he has had enough of working
in an air-conditioned office and decides to "drop down a class."
This means first getting a job in a factory, and then becoming
manager of a pizza company which attempts to treat workers
better by paying them percentages of the profits rather than
a flat hourly wage.
Cicero
based the story arc of his novel on that of My Life,
a short work by Anton Chekhov. This was a wise choice; the
events in the story move swiftly, never getting lost in the
ideas they attempt to explore. One of the most amusing touches
of this novel is its use of Chekhov's original names; the
main character, Misail, lives with his sister Kleopatra and
their father. Other characters named Anyuta, Nikolai, and
Grigori take their place in a world which contains otherwise
familiar things such as Bill Gates and Radiohead.
There
is no doubt that Cicero knows his subject and characters well.
He describes Youngstown, Ohio (where the author and characters
both live) in all its bleakness:
I
could not figure out what they lived by or for. Forty
years ago there were steel mills. A lot of them abandoned
still stand like mountains, ugly and wretched…We had one
river, and it was brown, full of toxins from the steel
mills. You couldn't even eat the fish out of it. We had
Mosquito Lake, which was a brown man-made lake full of
geese shit that gives small children spinal meningitis.
It's
easy to see how the people in this novel could create such
a place. They are selfish, lazy, fucked-up people, who sometimes
test the limits of credibility. Misail's descriptions of his
father are completely bereft of any love or filialness; in
fact, readers would be hard-pressed to find any examples of
genuine feeling for people of Misail's own class anywhere
in this book. The narrator is so cynical toward other people
like him that he would put Holden Caulfield to shame.
There
is nothing wrong with having a main character like this, except
that sometimes the other characters tend to talk as though
they are simply stating who they are supposed to be, affirming
the aim of the author. Take the example of Misail's grandfather,
responding to Misail's protest that he likes working in a
factory:
'Like'!
There is no 'liking' in life, there is money. You work,
you get money, you spend money. You think anyone likes
their job, you think I liked my job, you think your father
likes architecture. Nobody alive likes their job; nobody
likes doing anything but what they want. Everybody alive
wants the same things, a big nice house, fancy new cars,
to take big vacations, and lots of sex; nowhere in the
things of what people want, is there a job.
Usually,
upper-middle-class people are at least steeped in the delusion
that they are happy; these people seem to grasp the emptiness
of their lives and almost take it up as a cause.
Then
there are Misail's screeds, which go on for pages, in which
he tries to figure out what the hell is going on in the world,
touching on everything from DNA to rap to World War II. It's
clear from these speeches that he is deeply concerned about
the state of the world, and yet it's hard to understand why;
there is no redeeming goodness to be found anywhere in the
world of this story.
Nevertheless,
there are many moments of insight and honest outrage at the
state of society. The best parts of the book occur when Cicero
is describing the poor, messed-up people who work at the pizza
place; they are truly helpless, and come off as very human.
Misail's girlfriend tries to convert them to the appeal of
the American Dream, encouraging them to go to college and
work toward a better job; but the ludicrousness and condescension
of her attempts is obvious, and when they don't oblige her
she decides they are "savages." This brings out an appealing
characteristic in Misail: impassioned defense of the downtrodden.
He asks the reader, "When people like her treat [poor people]
like children for their entire lives, when the school systems,
governments, and the liberal intellectuals who are supposed
to represent them treat them like children, how are they supposed
to act?"
There
may be certain points in reading this book that the reader
may feel attacked, but as Misail concludes in the end, the
issue isn't who to blame for this huge discrepancy between
rich and poor. After finishing it, the ideas in this novel
linger. It would be disingenuous to say that this book will
make readers reject their social and economic status, but
it did offer an interesting, albeit one-sided, perspective
on the nature of class in our society.
(June,
2008)
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