Air the color of khaki, soot on windows prismed with sunlight, neon-skewed dust,
the smell of engine fluid and pralines, steam rising from the hood of a truck, a
cluster of taxis. Throw into this assortment of images an unnamed narrator trying
to prove he isn’t crazy:
“Despite appearances, sir, I am not out of my mind. Quite the reverse, it
is sanity itself which moves me to this exercise. Sanity itself which moves me to
accost you...”
Dostoevsky permeates Goldblatt’s Sloth, especially Notes from
Underground with its duality and layers of unreliable realities. Add a
large lump of adoration for a TV aerobics instructor named Holly Servant worshipped
and wooed from afar by the love-struck diarist of this story and you have what amounts
to a word-rich ride, rollickingly inventive.
Will Holly ever respond to the letters of the man who gives himself the pseudonym
Mark Goldblatt, whose Medieval beliefs rely, in part, on the notion that beauty
of flesh testifies to higher virtues of the soul, the inside reflecting the outside?
Truth is beauty, beauty is truth, that’s all ye know on earth and all ye need to
know. The nameless narrator, a.k.a. Mark Goldblatt, builds his dizzying “metronomic
dance” around Keats’ famous insight into what makes males tick, especially horny
young males transfixed by “areolae shining like tulips through her leotard...pixied
blond hair clinging to her moist back and shoulders.” Goldblatt, the real one, the
author self-reflexively observing the fictional one, could easily (if he wanted
to) write literary pornography that would rival (possibly surpass) anything Robert
Cleland wrote when he was obsessed with Fanny’s fanny. But though Sloth
doesn’t shy away from things sexual, titillating sex is not its primary purpose,
which is rather a somewhat philosophical search for identity.
Who is a.k.a. Goldblatt? And who is Zezel (also known as Mark Goldblatt)
who dips in and out of the narrative, playing the role of “best friend” and
perhaps in the past a.k.a.’s lover, a great perhaps that a.k.a. denies. No:
“He is my dearest friend, yes, but an odd case.”
Who is Mrs. Zezel? Mrs. Zezel is “a Vassar girl...summa cum sassy. She is,
in sum, the very locus of reason, a geometric proof of the soul...” And also trickster
devil-may-care “cross between Lauren Bacall and Leo Gorcey.” Mrs. Zezel gets a.k.a.
a date with Allison Molho, but he stands her up, an insult for which Mrs. Zezel
will never forgive him, even after she finds out her husband Zezel has taken a.k.a.’s
place and is in full-blown adultery mode. Mrs. Zezel’s revenge falls on a.k.a. This
comes later in the book and is aided by a kitchen counter. Let your imagination loose,
Goldblatt certainly does.
Into the author’s cheerful tongue-in-cheek muddle concerning the vicissitudes of
love comes a.k.a.’s desperate need to make enough money to buy a VCR, so that he
can rent Holly Servant’s Sunrise cassettes and watch her aerobic gyrations,
until he is sweat-soaked and satisfied—at least for a few moments.
His main source of income comes from being a waiter. Not a waiter who waits on tables,
but a waiter who waits in line, standing in for those who don’t want to show up
too early and wait for doors to open for shows and/or events to begin. But the meager
income a.k.a. earns from waiting is not enough to afford the coveted VCR. He reads
an advertisement asking for volunteers for a scientific experiment. He signs up
and is given some green pills, which might or might not contain a new psychotropic
drug. His instructions are to take the pills and record his moods or behavior and
return to the office every two weeks to have his finger pricked. Each time he is
pricked he also receives one hundred dollars. What a deal! He’ll have that VCR in
no time and will be able to spend his days and nights wallowing in Holly’s mesmerizing
pulchritude.
The plot thickens when a young gay man is murdered and a.k.a. becomes a person of
interest. At this point Zezel has already fallen for Allison Molho. The woman who
pricks a.k.a.’s finger has also fallen for Allison Molho. Then Mrs. Zezel has that
encounter with a.k.a. on the kitchen counter. But even before such a frightening
event, Holly starts answering a.k.a.’s letters at last. Their correspondence moves
them ever so slowly closer. Maybe he’s her soul-mate. He tells her he is a writer
and sends her some of his stories. Problem is: Zezel wrote the stories. Zezel wrote
them under the pseudonym Mark Goldblatt. So right away a.k.a. is misrepresenting
himself. He’s already lying to the woman he loves more than anyone else in the world.
And then they talk about meeting.
And the detectives keep questioning him.
And a menacing-looking man is spying on a.k.a.
When Zezel breaks into the apartment and reads a.k.a.’s journal, what he finds there
makes him want revenge for the kitchen counter incident with Mrs. Zezel.
Will he do something desperate? Will he hurt a.k.a.? Will the spy kidnap him? Will
Holly really show up for the rendezvous? Will the detectives try to pin the murder
of the gay man on a.k.a.?
Well, it just gets curiouser and curiouser.
Sloth is a work filled with artistic flavor and Rabelaisian slumming. It is
funny, serious, insightful and as unique in style and substance as any seriocomic
novel I’ve read since Steven Gillis penned The Consequence of Skating or
Junot Díaz wrote The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Some novels leave
you with a smile. Some leave you thoroughly satisfied. Sloth does both.
—Previously published in As It Ought To Be
(6 April 2011)
is the author of six novels, and recipient of an AWP Award for Best Novel
(The Book of Mamie), a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Award for Favorite Book of the year
(The Altar of the Body), a Milwaukee Magazine Best Short
Story of the Year Award, and a Pushcart Honorable Mention.
Brenna’s stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Cream City
Review, SQ, Agni, The Nebraska Review, The Literary Review, The Madison Review,
New Letters, and numerous other literary venues. His work has been translated
into six languages.
www.duffbrenna.com