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Fierce People by Dirk
Wittenborn
(Bloomsbury Pbk, 335pp. ISBN 0-7475-5680-6)
by Mark
Mordue
Bret Easton Ellis loves it. So does Jay McInerney and Susan Minot. I
guess that makes me suspicious straight away. I mean, all of them? You just know
they must go to the same cocktail parties and laugh at each other’s literary jokes
like a bunch of goddam phonies.
To be honest the back cover H-Y-P-E comparing it to The Catcher in
the Rye and The Great Gatsby and Less Than Zero isn’t so untrue. If
only someone had mentioned it was going to turn into I Know What You Did Last Summer
about mid-way through, with a murder, a fire, an anal rape, and worse still. But you
don’t wanna hear about that now.
You might think I hate this book, writing it up this way. Being
sarcastic and all. But I don’t. Honest. Truth is till all that junk started
happening, like the guy writing Fierce People was frightened I might get bored of
the real story, I wanted to be Finn Earl, who is the main star of this here book.
Finn’s 15 and he lives in New York, but his mum takes too many
drugs and some shit happens that means they end up living in this ultra-rich community
called Vlyvalle. Once they arrive Finn falls in love with Maya, this heiress babe with a
scar on her face. Then Finn starts nursing all these secrets going on behind the scenes
till he’s just one big knot of lies he can’t get out of.
Maybe that sounds corny, but I couldn’t put it down - and truth
is I was kinda in love with Maya too and felt like I must be 15 again or something dumb,
which is loony but that’s what books do to you sometimes. Then this Wittenborn guy
spoils it. I can see them making a movie of the whole thing now - with Tobey McGuire
starring, or his kid brother since he’s too old and everybody thinks he’s
Spiderman anyway. Just being able to imagine that makes me so mad! Like I am being cheated
of my own fantasies. As if Wittenborn had already sold it off by design, you know what
I’m saying?
Wittenborn wants to be the J.D. Salinger of the class system in
America. He even uses the words ‘phony’ and ‘goddam’, just like J.D.
used to. The French call that a ‘homage’. Wittenborn’s real funny too, and
he says these wiseass, sad things sometimes that hook you right in the heart, like the way
he describes Finn and his mother talking: “It was sweet and spooky how a lie my
mother wanted to hear could light her up inside. Like a candle in a jack-o-lantern, it
made her seem hollow.’
Don’t ask me why but when I type that sentence out I just about
feel like crying now. But I dunno whether I’m just crying for me and Finn - or for
the book this could have been. Goddam.
~~~
Mark Mordue is the author of
‘Dastgah: Diary of a Headtrip’ (Allen & Unwin Book Publishers; Sydney 2001).
He has been published in The Nation, Interview, Salon and Planet.
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