Lady Lazarus
By Andrew Foster Altschul
(Harcourt)
Reviewed by Mike Edison
John Lennon may have called Chuck Berry the first poet of rock’n’roll, and Bob Dylan just got chucked a Pulitzer, but poetry and rock is still a tough pill to swallow. I have always felt that Dylan is as much of a charlatan as he is a genuine mystic, and perennial sacred cow Patti Smith mostly makes me want to stick knitting needles in my ears. Jim Morrison spent most of his time on stage drunk, spewing drivel that would have got him tossed out of any college-level writing program, but what really got everyone’s attention is when he whipped it out in Miami. Perhaps it is no wonder that he insisted on being called “James Douglas Morrison” when he did “serious” poetry. Is it possible that poetry is the last refuge of a rock’n’roll scoundrel?
Andrew Foster Altschul takes a whack at this slippery double-helix in his first novel, Lady Lazarus, and the result is a behemoth of a book that could have easily sprawled out of control in less capable hands.
Here’s the short of it: Brandt Morath, the singer of Terrible Children, an indie rock band of the type endemic to the late 1980s, is an international press darling who tops himself in a spectacular suicide. This of course does nothing to squelch the ardor of the fans and paparazzi, who hound his widow, who, when not busy acting out by throwing druggy star fits on the front lawn, occasionally caterwauls with her own band. (Does any of this sound familiar?) But the star of the show is their little girl, Calliope, so shocked by the events (and no doubt by living with Courtney Love’s doppelganger) that she falls mute for years, until one day she sees a documentary on TV and gets an eyeful of Buddhist Monks self-immolating, protesting the Viet Nam war. The sight of this is enough not only to jar her out of her quasi-autism, but to have flipped the switch so decisively as to turn her into America’s Greatest Poet. So great, in fact, that she is doomed to follow her father’s example, or so it seems, and vanishes in a shroud of mystery. Inspired by this gifted waif (and the conspiracies surrounding her disappearance), our tour-guide for this hyper-intellectual Iliad runs off to get the real story of Terrible Children and Calliope so that everyone can know The Truth, whatever that may mean in a world saturated with shoddy, instantaneous, quick-sell information.
Read the rest of the review after the jump.
Photo Credit: Dave Allocca
Lady Lazarus is not as brazenly riotous as John Kennedy Toole’s out-of-control odyssey A Confederate of Dunces, but Altschul is capable of some equally dazzling language, often changing voices (one of the hallmarks of Confederacy), from overly-earnest, obsessive narrator to the damaged-but-brilliant young poet, as well as countless quotes from media critics, culture vultures, and music journalists displaying varying degrees of bullshit and brains.
Altschul writes giant clouds of beautifully descriptive prose, often infusing poetry in unexpected places and effortlessly tosses off internal rhymes and countless literary jokes, and making it sound easy. To wit, this from the journal of Calliope:
“I am the ghost of a famous suicide. I am the subject who won’t sit still. Yorick’s psycho-sister, a bloodstain at my throat; daughter of Memory, enslaved to a sloppy riddle note. Awoke at seven from Lethe’s nearer side, left home at fourteen, my father sewn into my thigh and waiting to be born anew – O you!, act five, scene two.”
As an observer of our times, Altschul has a good sense for the obvious deficits and un-ironic stupidity of those looking to find meaning in an over-hyped but generally un-evolved medium such as “rock,” and the abject shallowness of both fame and fans. “In Calliope’s case,” the narrator tells us, “there was no posthumous masterpiece to slake the world’s thirst; the culture industry had to look elsewhere for the commercial potential of her death. Two examples should illustrate the scope of their efforts. The first is the “Poet’s Death Mask,” introduced by Inconnue Industries… Thanks to a clever cross-marketing campaign with Urban Decay cosmetics, the mask quickly caught on with American teenagers and was soon all but ubiquitous in high school corridors, shopping malls, and skate parks.” Unfortunately, the mask was also adopted by the “Lady Crips,” who painted the masks blue and used them while robbing convenience stores.
The meta-view from the top of this mountain of a book, however, may be too distant for a normal reader (meaning anyone who isn’t in similar circs: e.g. wackadoodle widows of over-achieving punk rock suicides blessed with preternaturally precocious child poets as their legacy, or obsessed enough with the above to require restraining orders and mental health professionals) to relate to on any personal level. Reading LL you’ll recognize many things, but not yourself. LL is strong on post-modern commentary (or is that commentary on the post-modern?) but lacking in the existentialism that made Candide such a boffo smash.
Voltaire, too, knew well the difference between pardody and satire. One definition of parody is “literary or artistic work that imitates the characteristic style of an author or a work for comic effect or ridicule.” Unfortunately Lady Lazarus is a bit too on-the- nose when it comes to its post-punk-inspired parodies. The Nirvana stand-ins and Altschul’s take-off on their grungy repertoire (hits like “Dirtnap,” and “Acid Rain,” not to mention the bit about Brian Eno replacing Steve Albini as their producer, to get a more “layered” sound) fell flat to my ears. In a book of otherwise palpable literary achievement, it probably would have been best to leave those cliched details to the reader’s imagination rather than to get in the sandbox to play with Cracked-level spoofs.
Satire is a more subtle affair. Weird Al Yankovic is parody. Alice in Wonderland is satire. A Modest Proposal is satire. Saturday Night Live goes both ways. LL soars when he works the satirical side of the street, savagely unspooling the bizarro worlds of poetry and academia: the writer’s mantra is always “write what you know,” and this guy is neck deep in both of these swamps and loving it. Blurring the lines between a full-tilt put-on and a damaged reality, he frequently refers to actual magazines and writers, television stars, and pop-culture footnotes, as well as luminaries and locales from the mainstream and underground worlds of literary and punk rock pretense, mostly with great success – the disastrous Charlie Rose interview with Calliope is hilarious, as are the references to egghead superstar Slavoj Zizek (and who wouldn’t be glad to see that Amy Poehler got thrown into the mix?) – but I really have no idea the value of name-checking David Fricke. In fact, it seems kind of gooey.
Still, the occasional brier of prose and a few anemic gags are hardly enough to monkey-wrench the overall effect. Altschul is one smart cookie and a fabulist of no little talent. Where this book stands tall – its language and scope, its naked intellectualism – it is an intimidating work. LL is ambitious, virtuostic, epic (crossing the finish line at 540 pages), and worthy of the oohs and ahhs of literate rock fans, unfortunately, a rare breed. Maybe tell them it’s the Quadrophenia of books? Yeah, that oughtta do it.
Mike Edison has been the publisher of High Times magazine, the editor-in-chief of Screw, a correspondent for Hustler and Penthouse, and is a professional wrestler of no small repute. He is the author of I Have Fun Everywhere I Go: Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World (FSG/Faber & Faber.) He lives and works in New York City. Visit him online at www.rockettrain.com