The Exquisite [Paperback]

This is one of those books I want to quote a passage from. But, then, I realise to quote only one passage is a great disservice, and that I must, in fact, quote the entire book. I will ask you to sit down, now, and even force you--knock you out if necessary--and we will start at the beginning, (or so it seems...)

In a post-9/11 NYC, this novel surfs the shattered psyche of one Henry and his loosening grasp on reality. Henry's self fractures into separate narratives, parallel and interweaving. As narrator and protagonist, Henry is unreliable and without a stable identity. Culture defines Henry; the unmentionable destruction of 911 creates multiple and disparate identities for him as a sort-of afterquake of the terror. It seems that the "self" has also been attacked. In fact, it seems, that there is a demand for a certain destruction of the "self" in NYC, and Aris Kindt fills this desire for fracture by attacking others with pseudo-murder. This is not unlike the dismemberment of the "self" depicted in Rembrandt's painting. Dr. Tulp facilitates this work, it seems, just as in the parallel narrative Tulip also--though more elusively--enables the undoing of lives. The self--and its fragmentation/destruction--is founded from cultural conditioning (such as 9/11). Aris Kindt speaks of this phenomena early in the text: "Are you sure I did? Are you sure it was me? This is, after all, in at least one of its guises, a city of subtle simulacra, of deceptive surfaces, of glib and phantom shimmerings" (2). This passage alludes to Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality and a self-identity and culture that is based upon another representation, rather than grounded in any substantial signified "X". Often, in fact, the simulacra is marketed to the public in order to propel the American capitalist machine. On 9/11, terror took down two magnanimous symbols of this corporate brainwashing industry, and it seems that the aftermath--as depicted by Hunt--consists of the fracturing of the hyperreal identities based upon the creative corporate marketing that stemmed from those corporations.

Job appears in multiple places throughout the book, and one wonders, is Job actually a person, or is the identity "Job" merely a label applied by Henry? The narrator comments concerning the displaced identities running rampant in the text: "Unchecked, he said, our belief systems eventually overrun everything, blot out the world, at the very least rewrite the map" (23). Henry's belief system, as a matter of fact, obfuscates reality in favour of a certain and twisted mental projection.

As a literary thriller and ghost noir, this text absconds from tradition and skirts the marvellous on one side and the uncanny on the other. In the end, the events are never explained as fitting in with the rules of reality as already existent (the uncanny), nor are the seemingly supernatural happenings meant to be accepted as part of a new suspension-of-disbelief world (the marvellous). The entire text, then, falls into the realm of the fantastic. The space of questioning, of being unsure and living in an unknown border-space, this mode of uncertainty pervades the pages right up until the end, which is an admirable accomplishment. Hunt has been careful to avoid a simple metaphorical or allegorical analysis, and bringing the text into the ambiguous and hesitant reality, though grounded in a realist and matter-of-fact tone, allows the reader to actively participate in the puzzle. A truly engaging read.

The Exquisite has pleasured me more than any other novel this year.

More, in fact, than any novel since either B.S. Johnson's or Hunt's last. That The Exquisite (and, indeed, Hunt's work in general) is regularly compared to Paul Auster's novels is certainly good copy: but it fails to take into account the fact that the wan light which emanates from the pages of all his works is his and his alone. One is reminded of Kafka, Wodehouse, Creeley; and yet when one puts down the latest Hunt novel there is a sadness to the knowledge that nothing will come along that is quite as satisfying (and that is certainly the right word) until his next.

What goes on in The Exquisite is best left untold, for, although what goes on in the novel is the reason most first-time readers will initially go to it, it is the how of the telling that is most compelling. Hunt's prose: at times surreal, at times delicate, at times as robust as Hemingway, never fails to engage, amaze and amuse.

There are very few authors today who are moving the novel on from its moribund and money-bound pastures. It is both a surprise and relief that The Exquisite (Hunt's finest work since The Paris Stories) is in the world doing just that.

If David Lynch impregnated Paul Auster, or vise versa, and the no-doubt prodigiously coifed offspring, inspired by W.G. Sebald's THE RINGS OF SATURN, were to write a novel set in New York's East Village, this would be it. Funny, atmospheric and just plain cool.