I started having these dreams. I don't know what else to call them. Visions maybe. Nightmares. This thin black man in a floppy straw hat, dressed right out of the seventies, looking for all the world like a TV pimp. Like Huggy Bear from Starsky & Hutch. I never watched that show, it was before my time, but I remembered the character and now he was haunting my dreams. And this man, sometimes, later, would ride in on a white horse, a gigantic white horse with a mane that looked combed and neat and clean. A good-smelling horse. Bathed. It smelled supernaturally clean. And the Man had a smile you couldn't outrun. It was the size of the world. I fell into it.Joe Fields is a 35-year-old copywriter for a NYC ad agency, making good money, living alone in a slowly gentrifying neighbourhood, and despite having an outward appearance of success, likely suffering what his father diagnoses as a mid-life crisis. When the Man steps from Joe's dreams and begins to appear and talk to him in real life, telling him simply "to wait", Joe interprets that as a command to sit on his front steps and await further instructions. As days and nights pass, the curiosity of neighbours leads to increasing media interest until Joe is the center of a maelstrom of attention, complete with websites, blogs, groupies, TV satellite trucks, sponsors, and pilgrims. Eventually, the Man tells Joe to head west, and with a donated Honda (wait for it…) Odyssey, he begins to drive, media entourage in tow. We know that Joe eventually does make it out west because the chapters detailing his waiting and travelling alternate with chapters wherein Joe is a fruit and vegetable peeler in the kitchen of a luxury ranch and spa in Montana. So basically, due to the intervention of a Magical Negro trope, it's like Bagger Vance has told Forrest Gump to start that jogging trip he goes on, but instead of other regular folks joining in his quest, because it's 2014, Joe Fields is trailed by a live satellite feed; regular folk can stay home on their fat butts and watch from their TVs, monitors, and smartphone screens.
Author Arjun Basu has a twitter following where he is known for award winning short stories that he calls Twisters. He must think in short bursts because even long paragraphs in Waiting for the Man are made up of short and punchy sentences. At times, this is interesting and propulsive, but often, it comes off as self-conscious and aphoristic. Basu obviously has done a lot of thinking about our modern media-driven celebrity culture, but I felt assaulted by page after page of moralistic conclusions:
• People become famous for wanting to become famous. Wanting to become famous used to be an aspiration and now it's a career.I also didn't understand why Basu -- so far as I can tell, born in and living in Montreal -- felt the need to set his story in NYC. There must be ad executives having mid-life crises in Montreal or even Toronto -- and this wouldn't necessarily have bothered me if Joe didn't repeatedly talk about being a New Yorker and how only other New Yorkers would understand. Was that the only way to make the book a commentary on American media/celebrity culture? It felt inauthentic and off-putting to me. And, here's my biggest complaint: *spoiler* Why did Joe need to go on his big quest just to end up doing the same job in Montana? If his character grew from beginning to end, I couldn't see it, and if there's no point to the quest, there's no point to the book.
• The web tells everyone that everything you say, every opinion you have, every action you take, has value. It's the logical conclusion to the entitlement that everyone feels. It's brought fifteen minutes down to one.
• Too many of us are so removed from the natural world that it has lost its reality. Its meaning. The natural world risks becoming a figment of the imagination, a good idea, maybe, but scary, too, a repository of old stories. Nightmares.
I wanted to love Waiting for the Man, and while it wasn't terrible, I'm left wanting.
The longlist for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize (with my personal ranking):
The 2014 Giller Prize winner is Us Conductors
