Fun tale has a serious point
By Daniel Asa Rose |
March 23, 2012, Friday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
THE humor in this first novel is nothing to laugh at. Though you're not really supposed to get that until you're nearly done.
That's because you'll be too busy snickering. "From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant," by Alex Gilvarry, tells the story of Boyet Hernandez, a Filipino-born fashion designer wending his way through the flamboyantly fatuous world of Brooklyn couture. The narrative crackles with satire, even before Boyet innocently lands himself at Guantanamo as the first detainee captured on United States soil and decides to bring the place a little flair by removing the sleeves from his orange jumpsuit. The disjunction between Gitmo and Prada is too delicious not to put a smile on your face.
You'll also be twisting a lip upward at the Bellowesque brio of Gilvarry's language. Consider the colloquial oomph of these opening lines: "I would not, could not, nor did I ever raise a hand in anger against America. I love America, the golden bastard. It's where I was born again: propelled through the duct of JFK International, out the rotating doors, push, push, dripping a post-US Customs sweat down my back, and slithering out on my feet to a curb in Queens, breathe."
And yes, you'll snort at the novel's footnotes, many of which exist as supposed correctives to the text of this diminutive inmate's "confession" (in which he mis-attributes quotations to Coco Chanel that properly belong to Nietzsche, for example). Truly, you'll think, if the proverbial knock in the night can happen to this sweet Dummkopf, it can happen to anyone.
Which is precisely the point. For the real purpose of the comedic bravura is not to amuse you. It's to soften you up for the horror that comes raining down in the final 50 pages, when Boyet, so lately the toast of the runway, is interrogated, humiliated and given a close-up view of state-sponsored brutality.
The mirth is gone. Terror takes over. In one of our final glimpses of the narrator, "his hair is matted down, he has been sweating, his face is gaunt and his eyes are concave from lack of sleep. His white shirt collar is stained yellow, either by sweat or puke."
In many ways, this novel is a left-handed love letter to America. Gilvarry shows he cherishes a country he clearly feels is at risk.
Even at the end, deported far from America, Boyet pines for New York. It is a measure of the book's sense of hope that for all the injustice meted out, America still looks good from a distance.
Comedy, we're reminded, often has an ulterior motive. Here the intention could hardly be more serious - to scare the smirk off our mugs as we enter Year 10 of Guantanamo's use as a prison, with no end to the suffering in sight.
That's because you'll be too busy snickering. "From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant," by Alex Gilvarry, tells the story of Boyet Hernandez, a Filipino-born fashion designer wending his way through the flamboyantly fatuous world of Brooklyn couture. The narrative crackles with satire, even before Boyet innocently lands himself at Guantanamo as the first detainee captured on United States soil and decides to bring the place a little flair by removing the sleeves from his orange jumpsuit. The disjunction between Gitmo and Prada is too delicious not to put a smile on your face.
You'll also be twisting a lip upward at the Bellowesque brio of Gilvarry's language. Consider the colloquial oomph of these opening lines: "I would not, could not, nor did I ever raise a hand in anger against America. I love America, the golden bastard. It's where I was born again: propelled through the duct of JFK International, out the rotating doors, push, push, dripping a post-US Customs sweat down my back, and slithering out on my feet to a curb in Queens, breathe."
And yes, you'll snort at the novel's footnotes, many of which exist as supposed correctives to the text of this diminutive inmate's "confession" (in which he mis-attributes quotations to Coco Chanel that properly belong to Nietzsche, for example). Truly, you'll think, if the proverbial knock in the night can happen to this sweet Dummkopf, it can happen to anyone.
Which is precisely the point. For the real purpose of the comedic bravura is not to amuse you. It's to soften you up for the horror that comes raining down in the final 50 pages, when Boyet, so lately the toast of the runway, is interrogated, humiliated and given a close-up view of state-sponsored brutality.
The mirth is gone. Terror takes over. In one of our final glimpses of the narrator, "his hair is matted down, he has been sweating, his face is gaunt and his eyes are concave from lack of sleep. His white shirt collar is stained yellow, either by sweat or puke."
In many ways, this novel is a left-handed love letter to America. Gilvarry shows he cherishes a country he clearly feels is at risk.
Even at the end, deported far from America, Boyet pines for New York. It is a measure of the book's sense of hope that for all the injustice meted out, America still looks good from a distance.
Comedy, we're reminded, often has an ulterior motive. Here the intention could hardly be more serious - to scare the smirk off our mugs as we enter Year 10 of Guantanamo's use as a prison, with no end to the suffering in sight.
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