When the writing's on the wall
By Kevin Baker |
January 27, 2013, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
WHEN I first came to live in New York, in 1976, I was enthralled by the graffiti in the subways. It seemed a language from some secret world beneath the city, letters that were barely letters, shaped by hands you never saw: a call to resistance, maybe, notes from the underground.
Looking at pictures of it now - particularly the graffiti scrawled inside the cars - I admit it's hard not to see it as many of my fellow New Yorkers did then, as signs of a city out of control, defaced and defeated. But I suspect that's an old man's concession. Real art was written on the subway cars, and it was a sign of defiant life, not decay.
Would that the same could be said for Adam Mansbach's fictional tribute to that vanished world, "Rage Is Back." This is the eighth book written or edited by Mansbach, known mostly for his best-selling kids' book satire, but "Rage Is Back" is uneven, flashing bits of brilliance like a beautifully burned train clacking over a few minutes of elevated rail only to vanish into a labyrinth of digressions and affectations.
The premise is straightforward enough. Mansbach's hero and narrator, Kilroy Dondi Vance - his name a lovely amalgam of graffiti artists and subject - is a contemporary mixed-race Brooklyn teenager who has grown up without a father. To celebrate his birth, Dad, a half-Jewish graffiti star whose tag is Billy Rage, went out with his fabulous multiracial crew, "the Immortal Five," to "bomb" the Coney Island train yard.
There, they ran smack into a brutal, graffiti-hating MTA police captain, a Rudy Giuliani stand-in named Anastacio Bracken. Tragedy ensued, as the Five proved all too mortal. Their most vulnerable member, Amuse, was coldly murdered by Bracken, and others soon fell victim to suicide, prison and inexplicable blindness. Billy Rage, after a desperate two-year campaign to publicize his friend's murder by bombing everything he can think of with the slogan bracken killed amuse - including a Central Park polar bear - fled the city to parts unknown, a likely prison sentence and a US$2 million civil judgment hanging over his head.
Now it's 2005, 18 years after the Coney Island showdown, and Bracken is the head of the MTA and running for mayor. Billy has surfaced, too, raving mad at first, but determined to stop Bracken and avenge his friend. Dondi, his son, isn't sure how he feels about any of this.
Whatever promise this plot may have held is undermined by a sort of literary attention deficit disorder.
Mansbach's characters tend to be as thin as rolling papers, and people and plot points alike are dropped and forgotten for little reason. Even Bracken, the chief villain, barely appears in the book.
Still more annoying is Mansbach's penchant for mysticism. There's an actual "demon" deep in an underground lair that seems to possess Bracken during the night of the shooting, and may be about to take over Gotham - but which is barely mentioned again and never seen.
This is not magical realism but magic, Gabriel Garcia Marquez by way of Hogwarts.
Even as metaphor this all feels terribly tired - mostly because its creator's heart doesn't seem to be in it. What rage is he really talking about here, and to whom is it directed?
Mansbach can write with real talent, maybe crazy talent. He ought to trust himself and put it up there for all of us to see.
Looking at pictures of it now - particularly the graffiti scrawled inside the cars - I admit it's hard not to see it as many of my fellow New Yorkers did then, as signs of a city out of control, defaced and defeated. But I suspect that's an old man's concession. Real art was written on the subway cars, and it was a sign of defiant life, not decay.
Would that the same could be said for Adam Mansbach's fictional tribute to that vanished world, "Rage Is Back." This is the eighth book written or edited by Mansbach, known mostly for his best-selling kids' book satire, but "Rage Is Back" is uneven, flashing bits of brilliance like a beautifully burned train clacking over a few minutes of elevated rail only to vanish into a labyrinth of digressions and affectations.
The premise is straightforward enough. Mansbach's hero and narrator, Kilroy Dondi Vance - his name a lovely amalgam of graffiti artists and subject - is a contemporary mixed-race Brooklyn teenager who has grown up without a father. To celebrate his birth, Dad, a half-Jewish graffiti star whose tag is Billy Rage, went out with his fabulous multiracial crew, "the Immortal Five," to "bomb" the Coney Island train yard.
There, they ran smack into a brutal, graffiti-hating MTA police captain, a Rudy Giuliani stand-in named Anastacio Bracken. Tragedy ensued, as the Five proved all too mortal. Their most vulnerable member, Amuse, was coldly murdered by Bracken, and others soon fell victim to suicide, prison and inexplicable blindness. Billy Rage, after a desperate two-year campaign to publicize his friend's murder by bombing everything he can think of with the slogan bracken killed amuse - including a Central Park polar bear - fled the city to parts unknown, a likely prison sentence and a US$2 million civil judgment hanging over his head.
Now it's 2005, 18 years after the Coney Island showdown, and Bracken is the head of the MTA and running for mayor. Billy has surfaced, too, raving mad at first, but determined to stop Bracken and avenge his friend. Dondi, his son, isn't sure how he feels about any of this.
Whatever promise this plot may have held is undermined by a sort of literary attention deficit disorder.
Mansbach's characters tend to be as thin as rolling papers, and people and plot points alike are dropped and forgotten for little reason. Even Bracken, the chief villain, barely appears in the book.
Still more annoying is Mansbach's penchant for mysticism. There's an actual "demon" deep in an underground lair that seems to possess Bracken during the night of the shooting, and may be about to take over Gotham - but which is barely mentioned again and never seen.
This is not magical realism but magic, Gabriel Garcia Marquez by way of Hogwarts.
Even as metaphor this all feels terribly tired - mostly because its creator's heart doesn't seem to be in it. What rage is he really talking about here, and to whom is it directed?
Mansbach can write with real talent, maybe crazy talent. He ought to trust himself and put it up there for all of us to see.
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