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American Trash is a book/CD set from a husband/wife duo. Dr. Dan,
the husband half, is responsible for the book portion of the set, a 75 page
splintered tale of a disastrous love affair and a man’s attempt to rebuild
his emotional life in the aftermath. Much of the book deals with the highly
dysfunctional relationship between Billy and Rosanna -- a relationship in
which Billy is violent towards Rosanna for unjustified reasons (and I mean
unjustified in that the context of the violence is not adequately developed
within the story), and Rosanna cheats on Billy for similarly mysterious
reasons. Despite moments of genuine, biting literary insight, the book
relies too heavily on non sequitor and stream-of-consciousness
one-off lines like "I sold my car. I was tempted to get sentimental, but
instead I got a garlic bagel."
The accompanying CD is fourteen tracks of funkified country pop, featuring the
vocals of Vickie (the wife part of the complement). On its own, the album
is very solid, upbeat and makes interesting use of piano and
acoustic/electric guitar combinations. Vocal comparisons between Vickie and Linda
Ronstadt are not entirely unjustified, but Ronstadt has far greater power,
range and style.
The book and the CD are intended to travel hand in
hand, the music providing a soundtrack to Billy's confused emotional journey -- and yet they seem to be products of completely different worlds. American Trash the book is frustrating, at times emotionally raw, often tangential in both form and tone. Conversely, American Trash
the CD is coherent and composed; you get the distinct impression that Vickie
is singing with a smile on her face the entire time. It’s as if the book is
a jumble of broken bits of glass, and the CD is an intact window pane. This
would be fine if one element of the set held the key to the story of the
other, but neither seems to.
Writing fiction is a dangerous hobby (or job, if you’re so lucky); the
modernists fractured the plot, the beatniks exploded the linear narrative
and the postmodernists pretty much ruined language entirely. Unless writers work in a cultural void, they are likely to draw from
these schools of thought and play fast and loose with "the story", much to
the story’s detriment. Just as some of us avoid experimental music and
stick to rock and roll, others of us feel an overwhelming compulsion to
avoid fiction and stick to non-fiction. Perhaps my inability to appreciate
the abstractness of American Trash is a result of my impatience with
contemporary fiction as a whole. But I have a feeling I’m not alone: "I
found your novel somewhat fragmentary and inconclusive, though full of good
moments..." That's from a letter from Alison Lurie, Dr. Dan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
writing professor from Cornell University, included in the book as an
"Afterward".
-- Alex Zorn
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