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OneMansView
, March 17, 2010
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A journey to nowhere (3.5 *s)
This novel ostensibly combines the “one-day-in-the-life-of” genre with one of “mid-life-crisis.” Kevin Quinn, a fifty-year-old editor of an Asian publication associated with the university in Ann Arbor, is on a rather impulsive job-interview trip to Austin, TX in an attempt to escape an imperious boss, an ever-tightening relationship with a girl who insists on having a child, and more generally a less than fulfilling life. More accurately, the book is practically a sociological and cultural studies tract concerned with comprehending both broad and small changes in urban environments from the 1970s to the present day, as well as changes in mores.
The anxiety and restless mind of Kevin quickly becomes evident as he contemplates the possibility of a missile, named after a drink, that is, the Stinger, fired by a terrorist taking down his plane from Ann Arbor, where the passengers are so many “Pringles in a can of Pringles.” Unsettled by first impressions of the Texas heat and vast landscape, including the huge cranes dotting the Austin skyline, Kevin, with several hours to kill, continues in his same troubled vein by deciding to follow a co-passenger on the plane, an attractive Asian girl he christened Joy Luck, who just happens to walk past the Starbucks in which he is encamped. The journey takes a rather wacky turn when he takes a fall, knocking himself out and sustaining a cut and torn clothes, after getting tangled up with a man and a dog on a leash - all with his interview looming. Fortunately, he is befriended by a Mexican, Amazon-like female doctor who had been jogging in the area, helping him to regroup.
Kevin’s trailing of Kelly, aka Joy Luck, and interacting with Dr. Barrientos are essentially devices for him to reminisce about and observe urban decay and revitalization and the accompanying social developments. At one point, he tracks Kelly to a large, chain organic food store with its aura of snobby exclusiveness, having, no doubt, put out of business any number of local, equally health-oriented smaller operators. Though a keen observer of cultural particulars, Kevin turns his sharpest attention to his past and present relationships with women. Strangely enough, though a rather non-descript guy, he has been somewhat successful in that area, but not without dissatisfactions.
Kevin’s angst, reflections, unsettledness, etc are finally played out when he arrives at his job interview, but in a manner that is fairly bizarre and not necessarily particularly satisfying: the solution to Kevin’s various concerns seems extreme. While Kevin takes center stage throughout the book, he is portrayed at times as both too knowing and too disconnected, not particularly consistent with his basic talents and past . The book is tedious in the nonstop cultural minutia that is constantly injected, yet at the same time is interesting and even amusing, with no absence of sensual descriptions of his various relationships. The author is a bit of a wordsmith: in addition to the quirky phrase, he frequently indulges in the obscure word. Overall, the book is smart and entertaining, but seems more like cultural commentary than any real attempt to see Kevin through his difficulties. The author’s use of terror as a backdrop may come across as a contrivance or a constricted idea of what figures into “Next.”
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