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Radiant
Days is a brilliant, archly funny, and painfully accurate
book that illustrates the soullessness of the privileged upper-middle-class
educated American in the late twentieth century. Protagonist
Anthony Sinclair is just like everyone we know—a smart,
highly flawed 20-something guy who pontificates about the
immorality of greed and capitalism while collecting a hefty
paycheck from a job he doesn't even know how to do. Anthony
isn't evil; he's just clueless, having spent a life of luck
and luxury, coddled by the monetary comforts of life and work
during dot-com boom of the late '90s in San Francisco.
But Anthony
is dissatisfied—he seeks a more enriching experience.
In order to gain that, he takes off for Hungary at the tail
end of the Yugoslav Wars with a beautiful bartender whom he
barely knows. The characters that inhabit Anthony's life for
the few months he's in Eastern Europe—Gisela, the exotic
and secretive bartender; and Marsh, a harshly flippant BBC
war correspondent—provide a balance to Anthony's naivety.
Gisela's story changes as often as she changes her clothes,
and Marsh is there to constantly remind Anthony of what a
lucky bastard he is.
There's
something about Radiant Days that may remind readers
of Camus's The Stranger—a hero who is anything
but, taking interest only in his own pleasure, leading an
oblivious life of opulence and comfort while everyone else
around him suffers. But unlike The Stranger, where
the reader is supposed to despise the protagonist, Anthony
is essentially a likeable character. He doesn't mean to be
cruel, and he seems to have a sincere desire to be a better
person.
But sometimes,
his narrative can really make the reader cringe. In one particular
episode, Anthony has a ridiculous argument with his girlfriend
Claire, arguing that San Francisco is a "racist city because
it pretends to be so liberal but keeps all its blacks over
in Oakland." The next night, Anthony arrives home early and
finds his girlfriend Claire very drunk and naked, hanging
out with his roommate, notorious player Asher. FitzGerald
describes Asher's used blue condom, still hanging on his flaccid
penis, as looking like Gonzo's nose. Later, Asher puts a paper
grocery bag over Claire's head while she's passed out in the
kitchen, drunk and naked. Asher starts to take pictures. Anthony's
reaction is anything but appropriate:
I
don't know why. I know it wasn't the right reaction. It
didn't seem funny. But we were both laughing pretty hard.
Not really at Claire. If anything, we were laughing at ourselves.
It's not like we felt we were being mean. We had been to
expensive colleges. I had a subscription to Harper's.
We were just cracking up at everything. Him naked, a camera,
our close friend passed out, a woman we had shared; it felt
giggly, like an X-rated Benny Hill…If Claire hadn't been
knocked out, she would be laughing along with us.
Also
like The Stranger, Anthony has a strange ambivalence
to startling events, even more startling than the above. One
exchange with a Croat named Dimir tells a story about two
Serbian brothers who were friends of Dimir at the age of 10.
They were the only Serbs of the group, and the younger brother
decided that he had to show how brave Serbs were by telling
his brother to shoot him. Dimir says, "It occurred to me to
say 'Stop.' They would have listened to me…But I didn't. In
fact, when I first tried to help the little brother into the
[bulletproof] vest, I let him put on the jacket backwards."
Dimir and Anthony are laughing throughout this story, but
it is up to the reader to decide whether they are laughing
out of horror or callousness.
Gisela
flits around like a gypsy moth through much of the book, appearing
and disappearing at inconvenient times. Despite the fact that
Anthony would like her to be his raison d'etre, she
refuses to play any stereotypical role. She is both savior
and whore, and remains an enigma to both Anthony and the reader
throughout the book. Marsh, the snarky war correspondent,
is much more similar to Anthony, and thus is eager to point
out Anthony's faults. Eastern Europe of the late 1990s is
shown in all its glory and horror—sunsets, beaches, beautiful
people, and decay, devastation, soldiers and the specter of
death menacing people at every turn.
Ultimately,
there is no enlightenment for Anthony—at least not during
his time in Eastern Europe. But maybe the point of Radiant
Days is to show Anthony at his worst, and to encourage
the reader examine his own life.
(August,
2007)
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