Tags
chess, Joe Biden, New England, present tense, SCOTUS, Stephen L. Carter, the simpsons, U.S. Supreme Court
I told you the story of how, when I read my first Stephen Carter book, I was almost dissuaded by the publicist’s pitch. In the blurbs, Carter was praised as one of today’s top black writers and a list of his awards from black organizations was provided. What could this mean? Should I be reading between the lines? Is this really a good writer or am I being sold a middling writer who happens to be black? As I said, though, my worries were misplaced. I enjoyed a very well written and engaging novel and then went on to read another, also very well done.
Furthermore, while his characters in both of those books were young, black women in a time of societal prejudice, I did not find the stories to be about the black experience – no more so than the ethnicity of the main character in any novel would be considered critical to the plot. This historical focus of those first two* works made them feel a little more cerebral than much of what I tend to read, so I “took a break” from Carter while reading a bunch of other stuff. I definitely intended to come back and read more from him and, now, I have.
Upon trying to figure out which one to take up next, I realized that his first three books form something of a trilogy. Given that, it seems important that I read them in the order they were written**. Thus I sought out The Emperor of Ocean Park and have, just now, finished it. I now find myself having to revise my opinions of Carter somewhat. No, this isn’t a bad thing.
My first impression was that it is written in present tense. You know I hate that, right? Well I do and I once again thought I’d been sold up the river***. The prologue is written in the reasonably-conventional first-person past and serves as an introduction. Chapter One, however, launches into first-person present. It was a jarring transition and I wondered if I was going to have to abandon the whole exercise. The first-person present tense makes it sound like a set of notes taken or maybe a diary. It was less like reading a story and more like listening to someone’s mutterings as they walk down the street. (“I’m passing the neighbors house now. The dog is barking. I hate that dog.”).
Then I realized that this is the point. It is like a diary (although it isn’t exactly like a diary, in that the novel never refers to itself within the story).
Read this way, the verb tense adds its own layer to the story telling. First, it indicates that the narrator (whom it takes us a few chapters to even learn his name) is not omniscient. He cannot see into the minds of others and, indeed, doesn’t even know what he, himself, will know to be true a week from now. It also puts you, temporally, into the story. You’re not being told a great tale from the past – one in which we all know how it will turn out. You are caught in the here-and-now and, should you continue to follow it, the story could lead you anywhere. Furthermore, Carter can use the switching of tenses to indicate deviations from the current moment. For example, switching to past tense (as he does often) indicates discussion of something that has already happened. It also indicates a different mindset for the main character – he has the benefit of current information that maybe he didn’t have at the time of the events he describes.
I started to think that the first person precludes the kind of foreshadowing that is common in thrillers. “If I only knew what was going to happen to us all, I never would have opened that letter…” Then I realized that the device remains in the novel. The difference, though, is the author can only foreshadow into the immediate future. Maybe to the end of the paragraph, the end of the chapter, or the end of the day. This produces a sense (which I caught on to about half-way through) that the character, despite engaging in a gradual discovery of the novel’s mysteries, could yet be wrong. Just because he says “I know now…” doesn’t mean he is telling us an objective fact. “Now” only exists for that current page… what he “knows” might turn out to be contradicted as we continue reading.
Maybe first person wasn’t such a weird decision after all.
Once I got past the tense, my next shock was when Joe Biden made an appearance. The Emperor of Ocean Park‘s characters are an interweaving of the real and the fictional. So while in Carter’s alternative universe, there are Supreme Court nominees and even appointees whom we’ve never heard of, there are also those we know well. Biden’s brief moment onstage recalls his role in the tradition of “borking” various Republican Party Presidential appointments. Besides Biden, there are any number of real figures that walk on and off the stage of the story. I think the distinguishing mark is that anyone who contributes to the events of the novel or is impacted by them is going to have to be fictional.
But how fictional? Is “the Judge” supposed to be Robert Bork? Is he an alternate-universe version of Clarence Thomas, one whose nomination was defeated? Is there somewhere a real-to-life Uncle Jack, a shadowy figure who can topple nations and have men killed on a whisper? Surely Carter has something to tell us about the nexus of the political and legal world at its most rarefied heights.
Speaking through one character or another, the book contains profound takes on politics, religion, and relationships – just to name a few subjects. It is probably the best-written book I’ve read in a few years (and that includes the two other Carter books that I’ve already finished). I assume that his insights into the families of privilege who also are of African ancestry are accurate, although I can’t speak to that myself. I’m thinking he wouldn’t have earned awards from the NAACP and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association if he’d not done that subject justice.
Funny thing, he denies infusing his work with any such deeper meaning. If you read his postscript (and skip to the last two paragraphs or so now if you’d rather read that postscript where he left it – at the end of his novel), he denies any sort of autobiographical content and declares that the New England college town of Elm Harbor definitely not New Haven and Yale (where Carter, himself, taught). The novel’s family history is in no way a representation of his own family and the students and professors in his story have no counterpart among his own colleagues and students.
He also clarifies that “the Judge” in the story is not to be confused with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, both sharing the same last name. He explains that Merrick Garland came to prominence only after he had developed most of his story and he considered it too late to rewrite everything to refer to a different family. The confusion was of particular concern because in 1995 President Bill Clinton appointed the real Judge Garland to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the very same seat as the fictional Judge Oliver Garland held. Of course, The Emperor of Ocean Park was published in 2001 and Carter didn’t know how much worse it would get, confusion wise.
Like the fictional judge Garland, the real judge Garland was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, albeit by the “other side”. As we know, that nomination failed. Fortunately for Merrick Garland, that failure was not a humiliating confirmation hearing ending in a negative vote from the Senate and beginning a transition into obscurity. Instead the Senate refused to take up the nomination just before an election, preferring to let the incoming president, whoever that might be, nominate his (or her) own pick (a pick that turns out to be one of my personal favorites). In the real life justice Garland’s case he was rather able to bide his time and advance to a slightly different summit once the political tides again turned his way. In a particularly delicious irony, the seat that was denied to the fictional Oliver Garland ultimately went (fictionally) to the real Antonin Scalia. The real Merrick Garland vied for that very seat upon Scalia’s death. Carter may well have changed the name after all, had he known the whole story.
We must all decide for ourselves what to make of Carter’s denials. Recall, particularly, that he had a handful of non-fiction books already under his belt on these very same subjects; Federal appointments, law, religion, public ethics, and loyalty. If he wasn’t trying to recast some of these thoughts through allegory, it’s hard to see what pushed him into writing this novel.
$5.2 million dollars, for starters.
Wikipedia shares some insights (?) into the publishing end of this book’s journey to my bookshelf. This was to be the first work of fiction from a published scholar and it wasn’t clear to the publisher the best way to push the material. Was this yet another work from a prominent legal scholar? Was his ethnicity the key? In the end, the publisher decided to play-up the record-breaking advance fee as evidence that this would be a blockbuster best-seller. Yet despite deliberately de-emphasizing the Black America theme the press and reviewers wound up pushing that angle anyway.
The reviews were mostly positive and it made the New York Times list, which translated into pretty impressive sales. There were some negative reviews, although The Weekly Standard suggested that the heavy criticism was a reaction to the excessive advance payment which set up a certain level of expectations. One of those critiques was the sheer number of plot complications. Indeed it is a bit complicated. There is a chess theme, a political theme, an academia theme, and a “society” theme. All of these weave in and out of the traditional thriller narrative. While I was sometimes surprised at how much was going on in the novel, I never felt bogged down or confused. Rather, for me, the complexity was a virtue.
I’m eager to move along to the next novel in the trilogy, although I think I’ll take another (shorter, this time) break.
*Don’t let me confuse you. When I say “first two,” I mean from my own perspective. I actually read his latest novel first and followed that with his fifth out of seven works of fiction.
**Although, don’t feel compelled because I said so. I’ve only looked at the first of the three but, if I understand it, the three books are a “trilogy” because they take place in the same fictional universe, not because they are meant to make a three-part story.
***It never occurred to me the origins of that phrase until I read it in The Emperor of Ocean Park. I always assumed it had something to do with being betrayed and going to jail. Remind me never to say that phrase again in public.