“There are no secrets
anymore. Vampires can’t come into your house unless you invite them. Posting
online is like leaving your front door open and telling any creature of the
night it can enter.”
Insanity, madness, and horror have always thrived beneath
the surface of our normalized societies. But it’s the 21st century
life that’s increasingly making us aware of the hallucinatory or
illusory facade concealing the real horror show around us. From childhood,
adulthood, marriage, parenting, and old age, we are achingly acknowledging the
existential pain, which was somehow hidden by our deep self-delusional notions.
While this vividly reveals the entire horrific stuff going inside us and around
us, it also makes life infinitely complex and unbelievably rich. We all might
be living a tedious routine life, just existing on a purely mechanical level,
yet the little revelatory moments gathers around and eventually makes us see
not simply the horrific or repulsive things, but also the sense of wonder that
drives life. There might be horror and darkness all around us, but I think we
must stay optimistic and keep on shining the light of life upon it. Good
literature and cinema can really put us on a fast-track to become aware of how
things truly are: from addressing the madness of the world to its opulent
beauty. But more than ultra-realistic narratives, it is the realm of
speculative genre fiction I feel gets to the bottom of this contemporary
reality. Sometimes myths and supernatural forces can adequately address the
reality of our globalized societies. It’s what Victor Lavalle’s recent novel
The Changeling (published June 2017) best does. It’s a dark fairy tale, rooted in ages-old folklore
and myth, which actually takes a subtly profound look at racism, fatherhood,
paternal anxieties, marriage, and most importantly the dark crevices of
internet universe. The book’s veneer of magic plunges us into chaos as well as the
grace of life.
Apollo Kagwa, the protagonist of The Changeling, would
remind us of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby and Stephen King’s The Shining;
the literary characters whose desperation to be good parent literally set them in a
path towards insanity. The novel starts in 1968 New York (“This fairy tale
begins in 1968 during a garbage strike” – the novel’s opening line), detailing
the courtship between Parole officer Brian West and receptionist Lillian Kagwa,
a Ugandan immigrant. They eventually get married in 1976 and Apollo, named
after the Sun of God, is born in 1977. But when Apollo was 4 years old, the
father West disappears from his life. Apollo suffers from nightmares after his
father’s disappearance. One day, a box adorned with the word ‘Improbabilia’ is
delivered to the boy. Inside the box, Apollo finds mementos of his parents’
time spent together and a single children’s book, Maurice Sendak’s “Outside
Over There”. The box is obviously left by his father. Later the name on the box
becomes the name of Apollo’s used-book business.
In his 30s, Apollo Kagwa falls in love with and marries Emma
Valentine, a librarian from Virginia. He seals his bond with her by cutting a
red string bracelet she wears around her wrist which she hopes will realize her
three wishes. Before cutting the string, Apollo says: “With me, all three of
your wishes will come true.” Their yearning to be a parent comes true with the
birth of baby Brian West. Apollo fancies himself to be the cool ‘new dad’ who
does the dishes, laundry, and takes tons of pictures of his child and posts
online for instant likes. While, Apollo wears fatherhood with enthusiasm, Emma
seems overly tired and they become estranged from each other. She claims to
receive disturbing texts and photos about the boy, but claims it is immediately vanishes
before she shows to any one. However, Emma’s two wishes – having a good husband and
strong child – were realized. Six months after the birth of baby Brian and
before Apollo learns what Emma’s third wish is, the unbelievably horrific thing
happens. Apollo’s life would never be the same. The brutal violent act
takes Apollo on a journey into the undiscovered and magical corners of New York
City.
 |
| Author Victor LaValle |
The Changeling adroitly mixes folklore with the travails of
modern existence. Goblins, Rapunzel, the myth of Askeladden play as much an
important tale as do the Facebook, mobile apps, etc. LaValle depicts both the
mythical monsters as well as the identity-masking trolls inhabiting the realm
of social media (I don’t remember reading a fairy tale where the threat of
police violence looks imminent). The scenarios often literally unfold in
subterranean spaces – subway, basement, caves, tunnels, etc – to constantly
keep us on the edge. At its best, LaValle’s prose is as simple, raw and
powerful as the works of Haruki Murakami and Neil Gaiman. The early portions of
the novel have one of the honest and realistic accounts of the new-age
parenthood. LaValle says in an interview: “The people who raised us are often
just human beings trying their best. That’s not a young person’s understanding,
necessarily. It’s not something I understood when I was young, I was just angry
at my father. It wasn’t until I was in my 40s and really thought things
through, and had a kid by that point, I could see that all these things I
dismissed as complete failures of character, I could see small versions of them
in myself, whether it was impatience or the desire to escape.” There’s due
reference to Atticus Finch of Lee Harper’s To Kill a Mocking Bird to indicate
how boasting the image of benevolent parent is futile and illusory, since
parents too are vulnerable individuals like us; they can try but can’t always
protect their children from cruelty of the world. In fact, Apollo’s magical
journey is about understanding his frailties and culpable behavior as a parent.
“A bad fairy tale has some simple goddamn moral. A good
fairy tale tells the truth”, says a character in the novel. LaValle weaves an
improbable tale to get to the truth about our contemporary society. Without
delving into didactic mode, he likens the social media to the myth of vampires
and witches, and emphatically conveys the ultimate emptiness of these
technologies. Apollo’s baby photo-sharing obsession is duly perceived as a
mixture of selfishness and vanity, not as certified sign of good-parenting. The Changeling ultimately might be a fairy tale that pushes towards ‘happily ever
after’ ending, but these profoundly developed characters provide us immense
space to understand the prejudices and false assumptions that broods over our
society. It asks us to question the old wisdom and conformist standards relentlessly
thrown upon us. Riddled with irony, fury, deep compassion, and psychological
insights, LaValle’s prose breaks the myths about our post-privacy, post-truth
world. Altogether, The Changeling is a poignant novel that flawlessly blends
the gritty reality and magical charms.
No comments:
Post a Comment