I Look Divine
By Christopher Coe
Ticknor & Fields, 109 pages, $12.95
Imagining Argentina
By Lawrence Thornton
Doubleday, 240 pages, $16.95
In ”I Look Divine,” Christopher Coe writes to the point of obsession about what he knows. In ”Imagining Argentina,” Lawrence Thornton writes to the point of obsession about what he doesn`t know.
Both extremes are common enough in fiction, especially among first novelists such as Thornton and Coe, yet these two authors nevertheless distinguish themselves. They exalt their obsessions. They trumpet these potential faults as if they were virtues, and this conviction is what drives their daring narratives. Whatever the merits of these novels, each is undeniably a tour de force.
In ”Imagining Argentina,” Thornton is doing just that-conjuring a country he has never visited. His Argentina is the one where generals ruled and people disappeared by the thousands. From the distance of a decade and several thousand miles (he lives in California), Thornton has created a mystical tale that is itself a tribute to the powers of the imagination.
”The real war,” says the novel`s hero, a theater director named Carlos, ”is between our imagination and theirs.” Carlos is battling the military regime, and his weapon is his mind. Shortly after the disappearance of his wife, Carlos discovers that he is a visionary. From a chair in the garden behind his house, he describes to visitors the precise circumstances of their loved ones` disappearances-where they`ve been taken, how they`ve been tortured, whether they will survive.
For a while, however, Carlos can`t use this power to ”see” his own loved ones. And then when he can, the horrors he discovers almost silence him. Almost. It`s his courage to continue, as well as the will of the people to outlive the military rule, that most inspire the novel`s narrator. He is a friend of Carlos, and, like the author, he must report the events of the novel without experiencing them. ”Oh, he told me about it, took me through the evening step by step,” the narrator writes of Carlos` climactic reunion with his wife, ”but not even his words were an adequate substitute for the real thing.” Still, despite the disadvantage of distance, the narrator perseveres in telling the story-and, by extension, so does author Thornton. The imagination, this novel argues, might not always be adequate, but sometimes it`s all there is.
And sometimes, unfortunately, it`s not enough. It isn`t that Thornton hasn`t done his homework. His descriptions are full of details of Argentine life-peculiarities of weather, conditions of roads, even the plumage of native birds. But these catalogues of sensory details eventually have the opposite effect that Thornton presumably intended. Settings are best evoked not through accumulation but through selection, and without the telling detail these exhaustive descriptions are merely exhausting. Clearly, Thornton is at a loss. He tries to compensate. For literary legitimacy, he invokes Borges:
”Well, it struck me that Carlos simply leaped beyond anything Borges gave us . . . .” For political legitimacy, he invokes Timerman: ”At the beginning,” Carlos says, ”those people considered most dangerous, like Timerman and my wife, were taken immediately.” And for historical legitimacy, he invokes the Holocaust: A vision of his missing wife ”paralyzed” Carlos, ”like pictures of the Holocaust.”
But finally, ”Imagining Argentina” must stand on its own. Like the hero of his novel, Thornton does have the gift of a born storyteller. The plot has the pacing of a thriller, and the characters are satisfyingly complex.
The risk he took in choosing his subject is also admirable: This novel comes in an era when American fiction is dwelling on the domestic, in both the national and familial senses of the word. Although ”Imagining Argentina”
ultimately serves as a reminder of the limitations of the very thing it supposedly extols-the imagination-it is nevertheless an introduction to a promising novelist. Next time, however, Thornton might benefit by selecting a subject closer to home.
”I Look Divine” on the other hand, couldn`t be any more domestic. It is an extreme example of the quiet family drama played out in tiny gestures and significant silences. It is brief-more of a novella, really-and, in its own way, brilliant. The prose is precise and spare, the tone arch, the effect self-conscious and self-satisfied. ”I Look Divine” is, in short, affected-and proud of it.
The family members involved in this drama are brothers, Nicholas and the narrator. Nicholas has recently been killed in an apparent lovers` quarrel, but, as his brother suggests while sorting through Nicholas` effects, he had died long before.
A lifelong narcissist, Nicholas gloried in his family`s wealth, his own youth and his odd beauty-he was gnomish yet gorgeous, with hair long enough to sit on. Toward the end, as youth and beauty abandoned him, Nicholas was as good as dead.
As inaccessible as this character might sound, the prose style renders him even more so. It is full of simple repetitions and simple declarations.
”This lacquer table was a present from a man,” the narrator writes about the object that carries most of the story`s symbolic weight. ”For a number of years in his life, Nicholas attracted many presents.
”I must make a note to have it appraised.
”I must make a note to inquire what can be done about the water rings.
”There must be a gentle technique.
”I will make my notes in a minute.”
This disingenuous style befits a character who adopts and disposes of favorite words and phrases (panache, merkin, de trop) as if they were pieces of a wardrobe, or who casually tells acquaintances that he was conceived in one of the world`s best hotels-and changes the name of the hotel as he travels from capital to capital.
”I wonder all the time, who are people trying to fool, when they go through all their lives just acting like themselves,” Nicholas says. ”A little affectation now and then is just a little generosity.”
A little affectation now and then is also more than enough, and author Coe doesn`t know when to quit. As a result, this novel flirts with the imitative fallacy. The lifestyles of the rich and vain might be superficial-and so might this novel. More important, although Coe`s control of both language and syntax is impressive, the prose here could have used some of the ironic distance that occasionally overwhelms ”Imagining Argentina.” This book abounds in irony about the world outside its characters` lives, but it shows none toward the brothers themselves-nor toward itself. Too often, ”I Look Divine” seems as narcissistic as Nicoholas.
