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MISSING THE POINT
NICHOLSON BAKER’S LATEST NOVELLA IS GOOD BUT, FRUSTRATINGLY, NOT GREAT
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by
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October 7 - 13, 2004 |
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It’s a tough time to be a leftie in America.
Whether you’re Michael Moore, being ridiculed
everywhere, or Linda Ronstadt, dropped from a cushy
singing gig at the Aladdin casino for daring to praise
Moore during a show, opinions seem to be dangerous
things. For every Bruce Springsteen, who dared to come
out against George W. Bush in an election year and
plans to put on a series of anti–Bush concerts in
October, there’s a Marilyn O’Grady. She’s a conservative
candidate for a U.S. senate seat who launched a
television commercial called “Boycott the Boss,” which
says: “He thinks making millions with a song–and–
dance routine allows him to tell you how to vote… Here’s
my vote: Boycott the Boss. If you don’t buy his politics,
don’t buy his music.”
Punishment and ridicule for espousing beliefs is, of
course, madness, but madness seems to be the latest
fad—think 2004’s version of the fannypack. Case in
point: award–winning author Nicholson Baker’s recently
published novella Checkpoint. Basically, it’s about two
men who get together in a hotel and talk about
assassinating President George W. Bush. Wait a minute,
you may be saying—a book about killing the sitting
president of the United States? Published in an election
year no less? That is madness! Well, yes it is.
And unfortunately no, it is not. The premise itself is
madness: pure, golden madness, that kind of excellent
singularity that, when you first learn of its existence, you
sit and think about dreamily for hours. Unfortunately—
and, as it seems, is so often the case—the premise is
greater than its execution.
Clocking in at 115 pages, Checkpoint is a slender
novella comprised entirely of a dialogue between Jay
(he wants to kill Bush) and Ben (he doesn’t want Jay to
kill Bush). Their conversation is funny at times, and at
other times wistful. It’s even interesting every now and
again. But for a conversation about assassinating a
president, it is strangely devoid of emotion, suspense or
immediacy. And that, pretty much, is where the whole
thing falls apart.
The other big problem is the characters. Jay, the would–
be assassin, is pretty much mentally unbalanced (there’s
that madness thing again) which is really a total cop–out
on Baker’s part. Basically, a character who should be
fearsome, or at least somebody whose twisted opinions
you want to listen to and attempt to understand, is
reduced to little more than a comic fool. And what fun—
or more precisely, of what weight—are the murderous
ponderings of a comic fool? As for Ben, the interlocutor,
well, he’s nothing more than a leftie cypher who cowers
a little, pleads a little, and is basically a black–hole into
which Jay’s ruminations are swallowed, forever hidden
and undigested. For a novel that’s pretty much entirely
structured around the dialogue of two characters, one
would expect characters way more interesting, with way
more depth, than you’ll find here.
Reading Checkpoint reminded me a lot of seeing The
Truman Show: I had high expectations for both, and both
were initially let–downs. Like The Truman Show,
Checkpoint is a great concept being realized for the first
time, and it’s got to be done right, because there will
never be another chance to pull something like this off
and have it be fresh or new. Like that movie, however,
this book fails—not miserably or anything, but it is
disappointingly trite, undercooked and strangely devoid
of the fantastic flights of fury and emotion which would
have elevated it toward greatness.
Recently, however, I saw Truman again and, free
from expectations and immediacy, I enjoyed it much
more though still bothered by its flaws. Hopefully,
somewhere down the road, Checkpoint will also look
different through hindsight.
Still, I’m really glad I read Checkpoint, and glad I read
it now. Like the artists mentioned at the beginning of this
review, Baker took a lot of heat for his book; critics even
went so far as to retroactively disparage his entire
canon, which of course is sheer nonsense. In some
ways, Baker has probably left himself open for easier
attack precisely because of Checkpoint’s bloodlessness;
had it been more direct, with a truer aim that more
effectively dismantled its target, it would be a harder
work to dismiss. But still, don’t let the attacks fool you:
Baker is a great writer (see The Mezzanine and Double
Fold for proof of this). Unfortunately, this is not a great
book. It is a diverting political pamphlet, and may one
day make an intriguing historical document. Like Philip
Roth’s hilarious anti–Nixon satire Our Gang, this is a
book entirely of its time, and perhaps destined to be
nothing more than a literary curio; unlike Roth’s book,
however, the time in which Baker’s is stuck is more
desperate, the problems seeming weightier, more urgent
and threatening.
The world needs books like Checkpoint right now,
however if only to further the cause of the three big Ds:
dialogue, debate and dissent. The problem is, you’ve got
to fight fire with fire sometimes, and mad times like these
call for books with a little more madness of their own. V
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