THE NIX (2016)
By Nathan Hill
Knopf, 625 pages.
★★★★
The Nix is an inventive novel, but first a bit of Norwegian
folklore to enhance the background. Christianity supplanted older Norwegian religions
in the 11th century but, as in many parts of Europe, it never
succeeded in destroying them. Nature spirits, elves, imps, and other such
magical beings remained part of the vernacular. How much people believed in
them is a matter of debate akin in modern America to that over the efficacy (or
not) of luck, superstition, intuition, and prayer. Most scholars argue that
common folks throughout history outwardly profess sanctioned religion and
privately practice a belief smorgasbord.
In Nathan Hill's novel, two spirits collide: the nisse and the nix. It's up to you to decide whether these are for-real Old World
spirits, metaphors, or a bit of both. Nisse
are mischievous spirits akin to English brownies–house sprites that reside
in the cellar and raise small havoc like moving things and causing chimney back
drafts. They're usually benign, but they hate to be dissed or get wet, so be
respectful and if you spill water, apologize immediately. The nisse are powerful, short-tempered, hold
grudges, and can place a curse on you. You definitely want to avoid the nix–a Germanized version of the
Norwegian nøkk–which are malevolent.
They appear as beautiful horses, but woe to those who mount one as they rush
headlong into the sea and drown their riders.
The Nix revolves
around mother and son Faye and Samuel Andresen-Anderson: double Norwegian
Americans, if you will, and each other's nix.
The story is non-linear; hence we meet Samuel in 2007, when he's 34, still harboring
a grudge over the fact that his mother disappeared when he was 11. He's also
failing to complete a book, pining over the loss of the love of his life, and
holding a monstrous mortgage on a now-worthless apartment, courtesy of the
housing market collapse. He teaches literature at a third-rate college in
Chicago whose students would rather juggle hamsters than read Hamlet, and a few of them are toxic nasty.
To top off the pain, Samuel's publisher for his non-existent book threatens to
sue for the return of a long-spent advance. Basically, Samuel's a loser whose sole
pleasure has become addiction: he compulsively plays an online fantasy game
called Elfscape. (I gather this is
based partly on Pure Pwnage, a
Canadian mockumentary about an obsessive video gamer. Elfscape's best player calls himself Pwnage.)
We also meet Faye in 2007—aged 61 and the center of a media
frenzy when she hurls a handful of gravel that strikes red meat Republican
Sheldon Packer, a mash between Paul LePage, Scott Walker, and Donald Trump.
Suddenly Faye is the "Packer Attacker" and a manufactured
terrorist–courtesy of a Fox News surrogate that propels Packer to the fore of
the POTUS wannabe pack. No real info on Faye Andresen-Anderson? No problem–find
a few old photos, set loose the shock jocks, and invent a back story. Or better
yet, let Samuel off his debt hook if he agrees to an instant biography exposing
his mother's unfit parenting, her radical past, and her propensity for
violence. Not easy when you've not seen someone since you were 11, but not
necessarily a deal-breaker given that such a book has already been mostly ghost
written and it's his name that's wanted, not his prose!
If you think I'm giving away too much, you're wrong. This is
just the setup to Hill's sprawling novel. The
Nix has spawned comparisons to everyone from Charles Dickens and Thomas
Pynchon to David Foster Wallace. Those seem a stretch, but let's toss in John
Irving for the careful plotting and the shit-just-happens circumstances of the
main characters, and perhaps a dollop of E. L. Doctorow for the deft mix of
fictional and historical characters. Hill moves us back and forth from Samuel's
Iowa boyhood, his intense friendship with rich bad boy Bishop, his obsession
with Bishop's sister, and his mother's mysterious disappearance. Hill takes us
even deeper into Faye's past: the burdens of being female before and during the
'liberated' 1960s, her fixation on Allen Ginsberg, her escape from Iowa, and a
few months of college in Chicago, just in time to be swept up in the drama of
the Yippies and the chaotic 1968 Democratic convention. Real-life figures such
as Hubert Humphrey, Walter Cronkite, and Mayor Daley are woven into the
narrative. So too are sadistic cops, hints of the COINTELPRO program, and many
other late 60s references.
Many readers will enjoy Hill's take-down of contemporary
culture even more than the history lesson. His send-up of the fake news cycle
and the tools of modern fascism are, perhaps, too chillingly real to be as
amusing as he intended, but he's not letting liberals off the hook either. He
has nothing good to say about political correctness, coddling college campus
culture, the cult of money, or the shallowness of the pop industry. Hill serves
us a roll of Sweet Tarts–candy whose sweetness gives way to sourness. He seems
to be saying that if want to know why things are they way they are, it's
because we're too distracted to pay attention. Our distraction might well
be the American nix.
Rob Weir
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