Fritinancy: "The Enthusiast"

I wrote briefly last month about The Enthusiast, the debut novel by my old friend and colleague Charlie Haas. Today is the book's official publication date, and if you haven't yet ordered a copy, go forth and do so. And be sure to read it in a place where no one will be disturbed by frequent outbursts of uncontrolled laughter.

The title refers to, yet doesn't quite describe, the first-person narrator, Henry Bay, an editorial nomad who works his away around the country doing stints at "enthusiast" magazines with imaginary (yet totally credible) titles that made me snicker: titles like Spelunk, Monster Truck Tunin', Cozy: A Magazine of Tea, Row! ("The Coxswain That Comes in Your Mailbox"), and Short Sheet (a monthly for shortwave radio enthusiasts). A subplot involves Henry's brother Barney, a laboratory scientist, and Barney's nemesis, a Unabomber-like loony called Freebird. The subplot is a little dark and a little zany; it's a combination Haas handles with cool control, steering the narrative toward an ending that's surprisingly sweet, even redemptive.

Haas has been a magazine writer and a screenwriter; his writing is jazz-inflected and pop-savvy. He can toss off a mock-Chandler simile ("I hadn't eaten breakfast and my stomach made a noise like the word diurnal"); he can mimic motivational speakers, "full of breath and portent"; and he does the best punk-kid-turned-pro-skateboarder riff I've ever read. He can do lyrical con brio, as when he describes young Henry's first brush with the enthusiast life, in a kite buggy:

[F]or a second I thought the wind would pull my arms off before the buggy moved out. The low-centered gravity and tight steering were like a race car's, my outstretched legs were inches off the ground, and the shock of speed was doubled by the quiet, with only a faint hum of wind in the kite lines. I sped wide-eyed past Dad's old office, finally exercising my California birthright to go fast on something crazy.

And he totally gets marketing. In fact, much of The Enthusiast is a sly parody of the enthusiasms that lead us down dangerous ravines: the enthusiasm for gonzo consumerism, the obsession with self-branding.

At one point, Haas reels off a list of (real) car names that includes Protégé, Aspire, and Justy. The list culminates with the almost-plausible "Flurry," which Haas's narrator calls "one of the most entry-level cars ever made by a Big Three manufacturer."

He goes on:

The TV commercials for the Flurry had shown college-age kids, braless and Fugee-haired, silently laughing it up as they drove down a mercury vapor-lit expressway with Scottish techno on the soundtrack. In real life Flurry was a perfect name for the car because it weighed nothing and a gust of wind could move it over a lane and a half. There were two recalls after I bought it, once for its gossamer steering linkage and once for its Molotov gas tank. Mine was stolen twice, but viciously turned up a few blocks away both times. My model was the Hatchback GS, but if they'd called it the Associate Editor I wouldn't have argued.

The Flurry conveys Henry to the Missouri outback, where he's supposed to be engaging in some investigative journalism for Spelunk, the caving magazine. But the cave turns out to be home to a gun-toting semi-maniac (not Freebird), who eventually puts down the gun and reveals why he's a voluntary troglodyte:

"Yeah, well, that's what led me here. Market research. Working at a company in St. Louis. We broke the population into groups and found out everything about them. What they bought, what they wore, what they watched, what they drank, how they talked. We started out with all the old classifications, like Sustainers and Achievers and I Am Me's, and then we broke them way down. We had eighty subgroups. Nobody's Homies. Dior Christians. Home Despots. Shaft in Golf Pants. The energy just to think up the names would power a small city. But the data were beautiful. The ad agencies? Political parties? Wanted to marry us."

Nobody's Homies? Dior Christians? Brilliant.

Be sure to read the end matter, which includes an author interview unlike any other you've read ("Q: Is the Tom Patrick character based on a real person? A: Yes, but the real person based himself on a character in a nineteenth-century novel that's in the public domain now, so I think we're okay"), an essay titled "Does This Novel Make Me Look Fat?", a "musical concordance" to complement each of the book's chapters, and the funniest set of reading-group questions you're likely to encounter. And visit the Charlie Haas page on the Harper Collins website, where you'll learn about the author's favorite books, least favorite foods, and scheduled bookstore readings. I'll be at the June 8 reading at the Barnes & Noble in Jack London Square. Enthusiastically.