Revenge of the narrators
On Ross Barkan's Glass Century and John Pistelli's Major Arcana
The first sentence of Glass Century by Ross Barkan reads as follows: “Here was Mona Glass.” Succinct, a bit jokey, yet also distant. We do not enter the mind of Mona Glass, either via first-person or closely observed third-person. Instead, she is presented to us like a specimen for examination, as if from some old grade school film strip.
The first sentence of Major Arcana (which opens with a prologue—a sign that durable structural features will prove vital to the book’s construction) by John Pistelli reads: “He pulled the revolver from his army jacket.” Move over, Chekhov! Not even the first act and we’re packing heat! For all its forward momentum, though, a similar sense of distance pertains. We, too, are watching this unspecified “he” perform this dramatic action at a certain remove. A mime on a proscenium stage.
This distance will prove, in both novels, essential, even polemical. For both these books resist the lure of the single perspective, whether first-person or third, in order to flit adulterously from one character to another, one generation to another, one gender, one class, one occupation. (Though in terms of race, both stories remain mostly white, Jewishly so in the case of Glass Century. But perhaps even that is an assertion of authorial, well, authority. No box-ticking here, no token ethnicities for the sake of appealing to certain demographics.)
The narrator is back, Barkan and Pistelli proclaim. And this time, it’s personal.
Glass Century and Major Arcana, while differing in setting and tone, focus on similar structures: the family, nontraditionally cobbled together, and the effect such cobbling has on the next generation.1
The Mona Glass we are shown in the first sentence is a young Jewish woman in New York City in the early 1970s. It is her wedding day—or so her parents, traditional Jews with one foot still still in the shtetl, believe. But her groom, Saul Plotz, is not her betrothed at all. He is, simply and scandalously, her lover. A good decade older than Mona, he met her when she was a student in his government class, at which time a passionate affair began. Ah, midcentury Manhattan. Mona loves Saul, but has no desire to shackle herself to the crumbling institution of marriage. She also doesn’t want to upset her parents, though, and so she contrives this sham wedding to convince that she’s settling down like a good girl.
Saul, it turns out, is performing a duplicity of his own. Saul is married with two children. His wife knows nothing about his affair, or so he believes. Summarized thus, this might suggest that Glass Century is a snapshot of 70s New York, all Cheever and DeLillo. But the story, as the title suggests, spans fifty years, stumbling from the twentieth century into the twenty-first. For while Mona and Saul lie to their families, they remain faithful, and committed, to each other, as if to prove that unconventional living arrangements can yet maintain a sense of bourgeois decorum.
As the story continues, the next generation enters the picture. Mona becomes pregnant, and, surprising both herself and Saul, decides to keep it. His name is Emmanuel, and he will eventually move in spheres of privilege Mona only dreamed of, when he attends a private school. Saul also proves to be a surprisingly doting father to Emmanuel. Surprising because, his first time as father, his record was less than stellar.
Tad, his son from his legally sanctioned marriage, grows up into a wayward, uncommitted young man, wandering the vast America beyond the confines of New York, working in orchards and delivering Chinese food. Much of Glass Century recalls a combo of Don DeLillo and Philip Roth, in terms of the metropolitan sweep and Jewish infidelity. Tad, however, wanders through the story as if he’s a character from a Denis Johnson novel, unmoored from his origins. He’s also my personal favorite character in the book, and I wish there was more of him.
Years pass; Mona plays tennis and works as a photojournalist; Saul makes his way up the ladder of New York City government. A certain sluggishness set in for me. I found myself yearning for some melodrama. Shouldn’t Saul’s wife discover his infidelity, and his son? Shouldn’t she be furious? Shouldn’t Mona’s discover their daughters lie? Shouldn’t they be furious?
That mostly doesn’t happen, though, and when it does, the result is rather muted. Is this how people behave in New York? Perhaps I’m just a simple Midwestern rube, conditioned by sermons and soap operas to expect that infidelity will result in tears shed, garments rents, hearts broken. But everyone here mostly gets away with it.
One thread of the story, though, made me sit up—like, literally, physically sit up—in excitement, and that was because it drew upon genre. Crime, specifically. My beloved genre! Here, in a literary novel!
When Mona is working as a photographer in grimy 70s New York, she captures the only known picture of a masked figure calling himself the Vigilante. The Vigilante vows to clean up the dirty city, exposing malefactors, and even, in one gruesome instance, exacting revenge upon an alleged sex criminal, whose severed head tumbles down the street like a melon. Mona even lands a phone interview with the Vigilante, whose speech recalls Rorschach in Watchmen. Scum in the streets, and only he has the guts to clean it up.
Yet the Vigilante escapes, remaining unidentified. Until, decades later, through a pleasingly implausible series of events, Tad learns the identity of the Vigilante. Learns it, and then assumes, haltingly, the mask for himself.
That moment, the culmination of the crime story thread, is my favorite in the book. That, of course, is the inevitability of a sprawling, multigenerational novel whose narration is always hopping about. The reader will prefer one aspect over the others. Me, I liked the crime part. Others may prefer the tennis games or the privilege one-upmanship. The all-seeing narrator encourages readers to become partisans of the world he’s made.
Glass Century proceeds in stately linear fashion, beginning in the early 70s, onward to a coda set in the pandemic. Major Arcana, however, hops about in time as well as among different characters. It is almost never confusing, though, as the narration is extremely bossy, detailed, and declamatory. Those are compliments, by the way.
The boy with the gun on the first page is named Jacob Morrow, a college student in what the novel calls “Steel City,” and which is clearly Pittsburgh. He raises the gun, and turns it upon himself. Another student films the whole thing. Their, or perhaps her (pronouns are tricky in this novel—it gets cutesy, sometimes, but it is consistent), name is Ash Del Greco. Both are students in a class taught by Simon Magnus, author of some famous graphic novels back in the 90s, stories that reworked the childish superhero figures of old into something more—well, not exactly adult, even though the content gets quite R-rated at points. The sort of thing that appeals to fundamental adolescents, convinced they see through the facade everyone else takes for real.
The story then hops around, telling the story of Jacob and his mother, of Simon Magnus and Simon Magnus’2 friends and colleagues during the creation of Simon Magnus’ revisionist takes on Ratman and Overman. The real-world references are obvious—Batman and Superman, of course—but the analogs for Simon Magnus are trickier. Splintered. Magnus resembles Alan Moore here, with the brutal violence and sexuality of the comics, Grant Morrison there, with the occult leanings and gender fluidity. Certain anime artists, too—the Ratman comic Simon Magnus creates hinges on a shocking rape scene that recalls Berserk, the Conan-meets-Hellraiser manga series created by the late Kentaro Miura.
The Simon Magnus section is a delight—dramatic, bitchy, even tender. I thought of The Future Won’t Be Long, Jarret Kobek’s novel about comic artists in New York in the 80s and 90s, recently and justly praised by Matthew Specktor in The Metropolitan Review. When the story shifts to Ash Del Greco, however, the scope becomes somewhat claustrophobic. Which makes sense, as Ash is a teenager who spends all her time online, exacerbated by the pandemic. She, and eventually they, become disillusioned with gender as well, especially when it comes to the “Rainbow Alliance” of LGBTeens who read nothing but YA novels. They are identitarians, while Ash is a gnostic, convinced that the real world, the enfleshed world, is nothing but a veil before a larger reality.
There is a lot of gender stuff in Major Arcana. (I would love to know what trans readers think of it—leave a comment if you find any!) But even if I found some of the insistent contrariwise aspect annoying, I never found it tiresome. Pistelli, as the narrator of this sprawling novel, possesses a braggy insouciance that combines the insight of a 19th century British novel with the baseless self-assurance of a Tumblr account circa 2014. Pistelli writes voluminously on his own newsletter, Grand Hotel Abyss, and though I read it every week, I can’t help but suspect that he has such a command of rhetoric that he ends up taking bizarre, contrarian positions just for the sake of spinning baroque yards of prose. Yet that serves him well in the writing of a novel, especially this kind of novel, which continuously drops anchor in the depths of different, even opposed, characters.
Ah, let me drop the pretense. I loved Major Arcana, even when I found it annoying. Especially then? For that is what novelistic narration does at its best. Embody strange, offputting ideas in characters one can’t help but love. What’s more human than that?
Full disclosure: I was sent a very handsome copy of Glass Century by Ross Barkan, for perusal by my critical eye. I purchased Major Arcana from the Belt Publishing website with the kindly assistance of a 20% discount code.
Simon Magnus insists that no pronoun can ever prefer to Simon Magnus, and the narration complies, referring to ‘Simon Magnusself’ throughout the whole book. It comes off as strained, at first, as Simon Magnus seems like Simon Magnus wishes only to offend the tenderqueer students. But a certain poignance emerges. Simon Magnus fundamentally feels uncomfortable with the entire concept of gender, and wants nothing to do with it. And it’s kind of convincing. Compelling, certainly.
Ash was a bit much, gender-wise, but found the rest interesting! Esp Simon Magnus, who I read as kinda, you know, authentically nonbinary! Like for whom does the nonbinary identity exist, if not for him?