© William Ahearn 2007
Jason Starr just ruined another fine day. A day of hope and promise that stretched to the horizon with possibilities. For me, the day ended when the New York Public Library notified me by email that Cold Caller, Jason Starr’s first book, was waiting for pickup at my local branch. When I got back to my apartment after picking up the book, I turned off the ringer on the phone so I could monitor calls, made sure I had food in the ‘fridge and sat down and read it.
It was the fifth Starr novel I had read in almost two weeks and while I wish Starr all the best, maybe he should get writer’s block or develop some weird addiction or take a damn vacation so I can get something done.
Far be it from me to argue with Bret Easton Ellis – who wrote a classic in the serial killer satire American Psycho – or the critics at Entertainment Weekly but I’m sick to death of lazy blurbers who keep yanking James M. Cain and Jim Thompson out of their graves hoping that the bones of the old will support the stories of the new.
Some of the new writers don’t need being referenced to death by previous writers of the form and Jason Starr is one of them. For one thing, James M. Cain isn’t funny unless you’re in a place where they make you use a crayon to sign your name and Jim Thompson – who wrote at the speed of light – sometimes relied on caricatures instead of real characters.
Starr has cut out a different chunk to work within and while he can be disturbingly funny, he takes his time to work the poor souls who populate his books into recognizable people. Let me tell you, I grew up in New York City a generation before Starr and I knew people like Mickey Prada and his sorry-ass friends and watched as they went – one by one – to prison or early graves. One of my friends was a bank robber with a wanted poster by the NYPD plastered in subway stations who got caught when he wrote a stick-up note on the back of his Con Ed bill. Starr’s Tough Luck had me laughing my ass off because he nailed the stupidity of petty criminals so well. Of the five novels I’ve read so far – Cold Caller, Hard Feelings, Touch Luck, Lights Out and The Follower – Tough Luck is my favorite and that’s for the personal response it elicited from someone who came from there.
(Although I do have to point out that the “kitchen sink” was available at the legendary ice cream parlor Jahn’s and not Jan’s. Oh, and there is a bar called Live Bait on Twenty-Third Street and I pass it all the time and have only rarely been tempted to go in.)
What makes Starr such a smart writer is that besides being really good at his craft, his characters work on a psychological as well as visual level. They do things you don’t expect. While we anticipate that in plot, it’s the rare writer that is in the heads of the losers and victims and that’s what sucks you straight into his text. This isn’t groundbreaking style. It’s just flat out good writing and I’m getting so sick of writers who have to write and apparently never read much of anything interesting. While I don’t know Jason Starr – we did go to the same university years apart – my guess is that this guy loves to read and it shows in his work.
Maybe as a New Yorker I feel closer to some of the characters in Starr’s novels yet I think anyone would respond to how well they’re drawn. In The Follower, a story of a stalker murderer, I can’t say that I had a lot of sympathy for the air-headed, insensitive, self-centered and annoying people who were the victims. And that’s something that I really like in his work. Some of his characters aren’t people that you want to spend time with – and I’m not talking about the killers, thieves, wife beaters or crackheads – I mean characters who are essential for the reader to become involved in what is happening in the story. While the influence of Bret Easton Ellis is apparent in The Follower – and it may be parody – this is a very funny and unsettling novel.
Actually, they all are.
In Hard Feelings, we want to empathize with the protagonist if, in fact, what he believes happened actually happened (and Starr never makes that clear), and as we follow him down the primrose path to hell it all makes sense in a twisted and insane way. Never have the words, “Hey, guy, you’re going to make it” (or words to that effect) been so damning. It’s a sick and disturbing ending to a sick and disturbing story and Starr never shoots breezes to the cheap seats by giving the reader any leeway.
Lights Out is a more ambitious novel in scope and major characters and the dynamics that spark among them. And again, Starr’s attention to detail in creating characters is appreciated. What some writers would dash off in a couple of sentences is worked by Starr into a recognizable person and while that character is fulfilling a step toward the ineluctable doom of the ending it never seems to be part of a manipulation or a contrivance. They’re off to a no good end and we’re following close behind surprised by the subtleties they trip over as they fall headlong down the staircase. And once again, you want to like these people, you hope for them in the beginning and then you feel you know them and then you wished you didn’t.
There are two more Jason Starr novels on my reserve list at the New York Public Library. Damn, it’s playing havoc with my writing schedule.