Oplontis: A Visit to Smith Your Only Chance to See It

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Leisure and Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA

Through August 13, 2017

Love it! Buses of New York City art lovers have disembarked in the hinterlands of Northampton, Massachusetts, because that's the only way they'll see the treasures of Oplontis. The Smith College Museum of Art is its only East Coast venue.

If Oplontis doesn't ring any bells, I'm sure that Pompeii will. Who doesn't know something of those fateful days in 79 A.D. in which Mount Vesuvius blew its cone-shaped stack and showed the Roman Empire that Mother Nature was stronger than its legions? Archaeology has been underway in Pompeii since 1599, which gave it a head start in the fame game, but it was not the only Bay of Naples locale to suffer destruction. As anyone who has been to Herculaneum–rediscovered in 1738–can attest, it's not even the most impressive of the region's ruins. The exhibit at Smith has a short computer-animation video that demonstrates the underground vents, lava flows, and ash fallout that affected settlements on both sides of the bay.

Among them was Oplontis, which is unique in that it was less of a town than a resort for the Roman well-sandaled. It would be the equivalent of unearthing Mar-al-Lago under twenty-four-feet of lava–but enough with fantasizing! The exhibit at Smith is a veritable portrait of the Roman 1%, hence the "leisure and luxury" handle of the exhibit's title is accurate. It is a sampling of objects, fragments, and products from what have been dubbed Villa A and Villa B, the parts of Oplontis that have been best excavated and studied thus far. (On-site archaeology continues and only half of Villa A has yet been uncovered.) When I say that it was a place for the wealthy, consider just this fact: 1200 amphorae (large storage jars) have been found–enough for over 40,000 bottles of wine. All of this for villas that were merely occasional seaside resorts. Remarkably, some gold, wood, and silver objects survived the heat and give us other glimpses of the sumptuous lifestyle enjoyed by the Roman patricians.

The greatest value of a smaller exhibit like that of Smith lies less in gawking over glittery baubles than in being able to get close to things you can only view from afar in Pompeii and Herculaneum: polychrome wall paintings, clay oil lamps, marble statuary, a storage chest for valuables, embossed copper, mosaic floors, etc. We also see hints of the plebeian lives that sustained the luxury: fish sauce and olive oil production, plaster production, haymaking, and other such tasks.  Mainly, though, we get a small sense of what it would be like to live in the villas with their brightly painted stucco walls, the reflecting pools, and the physical designs that sought to bring nature into the home centuries before Frank Lloyd Wright began to imagine such things. And, of course, one cannot escape the social class implications–shown nicely is models–between the sprawling patrician spaces versus the small box-like quarters of servants and workmen. The primary emphasis, though, is on the wealthy. If ostentation bothers you, take some solace in the fact that Vesuvius did not discriminate. In one chamber (not on display) the remains of some fifty-four bodies were discovered huddled together, probably awaiting a sea rescue that never came. Insofar as can be determined, this collection of doom was of mixed social classes.

Another video shows us how the eruption killed. Many of us are familiar with photos of bodies encased in ash that captured individuals in the moment of their demise. Remember, though, that the lava is merely what preserved these horrible moments; it was not what killed them. Nearly all who died in 79 AD succumbed to the poisonous fumes, stone, and ash that rained down days before the first lava flows appeared in the streets. Many roofs collapsed from the weight of the ash, possibly trapping victims. Only in bad movies did death come from a rolling lava tidal wave!

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This exhibit is superbly curated and it's relatively small. It's not a substitute for actually walking the streets of Pompeii or Herculaneum, but it allows you to take in a lot of information without becoming overwhelmed by scale. And, as noted above, you'll get a much closer look. Check it out. But you'll have to come to Northampton; it won't be showing in Boston, Chicago, New York, Philly, or any other city near you.  Visit aut ignorantia

Rob Weir   

March 2017 Music

Your March musical marching orders contain some things new and some things old.

The New:

Keith Johns gave up a job in a physics lab for the lucrative world of folk music! But that's the point of his album Grateful Fool, which is themed on the idea that oblivion is the ultimate fate of all things, so one should embrace life while you have it. The title track imagines a proud, well-to-do man when he falls from his lofty perch and faces his reckoning. Johns admonishes: Just take enough, more is a crime/Help me give it all up, nothing is mine/I'm a wayward grateful fool, and that's alright. Johns has a high tenor voice with a hint of a draw–he's from Florida. Though he's a folkie at heart, he flirts with an indie rock vibe on "Silver Strings," which is about the nature of things from the perspective of physics and astronomy, but isn't the least bit obtuse. "TheFall" opens with a bluegrass instrumental groove and evolves into a folk rock arrangement suited to a song about how autumn is both a season of endings and one that drops seeds of renewal. Johns is also unusual in that his lyrics are either quite extensive, or very short. Among the latter is "Drops of Water" with its onomatopoetic guitar and sentiments such as these: Ahead, a million threads/And yet a single braid behind/A million distant memories/With no way to rewind. You have to admire a man who can contemplate his own death in one song ("Aubade") and then repeat his grandmother's advice to never spoil a story by peeking at the ending in another ("Isn't It Grand?"). Smart stuff. ★★★★

Hayley Reardon is a name to watch, though I doubt her latest album, Good, will push her over the hump to stardom. She hails from Marblehead, is just 20-years-old, and has been hanging around with Boston music vets like Kevin Barry, Duke Levine, and Loren Entress. So much promise—but not there yet. She has a gorgeous voice that climbs the scales, plumbs a few depths, and has an attractive catch to it. In a nutshell, though, Good is an eleven-track release in which sameness dominates musically and thematically. Entress produced the record and he seems to be aiming at creating Daniel Lanois-like atmosphere. The tracks are drenched in sonics, but not all of them flatter Reardon. Hers are lovely tones, but as yet Reardon's voice lacks clarity and accentuation. This means that whatever poetry is embedded in her lyrics gets washed out in the rinse cycle. You should definitely check her out–she's simply too talented to ignore–but this might be a buy-a-few-tracks kind of release. For my taste, the best songs are those that chuck the formula a bit. "Paper Mache" has a tinge of Motown soul lurking at the edges; the guitar in "When I Get to Tennessee" bites with a bit of swampiness; and "The High Road" is a Western/pop blend with solid hooks throughout.★★

I'm not sure if Tara MacLean belongs in the "new" or the "old" category. Her new Noisetrade sampler is titled Evidence, which is also the name of a hit song she recorded in 1996, and has stuck on other LPs and EPs. Another song for which she is known, "Silence," was also first done in 1996, and a review of her backlist reveals she often records the same songs. Lots of performers do this, and I only mention it because sameness is also my biggest critique of her 8-song Noisetrade project. Like Reardon, MacLean has a lovely voice. I especially like the small husk she adds to her soprano to give it more grit. She also knows that a song should build rather than come at you Celine Dion-full bore style. I wish MacLean would express this with more variety than a straightforward soft-to-loud formula and pop diva-wannabe arrangements. "Evidence" is indeed a good song. A snappy rhythm emerges from a cacophonous opening and then MacLean settles into a moody wrapper. My favorite tracks, though, were the more controlled ones, especially "Scars" and "White Noise." On these we hear a uniqueness for which the flavor-of-the-moment pop world is seldom known. ★★ ½

The Old:

Does it count as old if someone writes songs that sound like they came from an archive? Let's say it does! Dana and Susan Robinson draw just two songs on The Angel's Share from the traditional well ("Five Miles from Town," "Man of Constant Sorrow"), but each track has an old songs groove. Old songs generally references rural songs that have a timeless quality, often those from Appalachia. They differ from bluegrass in that the song gets priority over the instrumentation and the production is less showy. That's the Robinsons to a tee. This is unpretentious music that makes you long to sit by a fire and hum the choruses. Dana Robinson's voice is invitingly warm and both know their way around stringed instruments (acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin, fiddle). You'll hear waltzes, some country blues, and songs about places and people. You'll even get contemporary ideas that sound ageless, as in Robinson's "RiverFlows On," which muses upon solar energy and living within limits, and "John Muir's Walking Blues," which expands upon environmental themes. New Englanders will enjoy "Loose the Ties," originally written in the Pioneer Valley, but apt for Vermont, where the Robinsons now reside. The title track, by the way, references a term used in distilling in which the vapors are declared "the angel's [sic] share." The Robinsons' version is also a lovely tune for dancing. ★★★★

Vic Chesnutt (1964-2009) made seventeen albums in his brief life–partly because he had prodigious flourishes of insight, and partly because he wasn't entirely discerning about what he recorded. Whatever you think of his music, he was an original. Raised in Zebulon, Georgia, the craggy-voiced Chesnutt was left a semi-paraplegic in a 1983 car crash when he was just 18. He slowly discovered a limited range of motion, could make basic chords, and could pick with two fingers. Chesnutt was mostly a local legend until Michael Stipe encountered his in 1996. The last thirteen years of Chesnutt's life involved NPR and PBS exposure, a documentary film, some movie work, and friendships with folks such as Stipe, Patti Smith, Lucinda Williams, Bill Frisell, and Jonathan Richman. Chesnutt often gets dumped into the folk rock category, but his music is closer to the acoustic outlaw country of Townes van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore–though he wasn't in their league. A new collection titled New West Hotel spotlights a dozen tracks culled from four albums he made on the Texas Hotel Label from 1990 to 1995, and two from the New West label in 2003 and 2005. At his best, Chesnutt sang with the pained honesty of Neil Young. Check out 1990's "Aunt Avis:" Help me mama, for I have grinned. Yet the same debut album, Little, has "Soft Picasso" and it's pretty awful. New West Hotel is that kind of uneven record. "Soggy Tongues" is simple and gorgeous, as is "In My Way, Yes." But some cuts are as rough as sandpaper soaked in coal grit, a category into which "Stupid Preoccupations" and "Sleeping Man" fall. What do you want to do with lyrics such as these from the latter: You are a freak of nature/You are a Siamese/You are in a pickle jar/For all the world to see. Or this from "What Do You Mean?"– Like a puppy on a trampoline (4x—followed by an angel/chipmunk mash of backup singers chirping the song title). Toward the end, Chesnutt had lots of help on the stage, which produced the intriguing "Virginia," a lush arrangement with Frisell on guitar, and Van Dyke Parks washing the song with organ wipes. It sounds like a Gothic surf song being played at a dangerous strip club. If you're unfamiliar with him, Vic Chesnutt is worth discovering–but be selective. I don't wish to be uncharitable, but without the tragic back story, his musical legend probably would have remained local. ★★

Genius an Overlooked Study of the Creative Mind: Video Review

GENIUS (2016)

Directed by Michael Grandage

Summit Entertainment, 104 minutes, PG-13

★★★★

Genius is a very good film almost nobody has seen. It explores the relationship between Thomas Wolfe (1900-38) and Scribner's editor Max Perkins (1884-1947), with an eye toward making us consider which of the two is the titular character

The Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law) of this film is not the contemporary writer of the same name, rather the novelist of Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River. Scribner's published both. (Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again appeared three years after his death and was published by Harper & Row.) The phrase "burst onto the scene" is usually a metaphor, but it comes close to being literal in the case of the mercurial Wolfe. At heart Wolfe was a poet from whom stunning imagery poured forth in torrents. We see Wolfe scribbling lines at pencil-snapping speed and in quantities that filled wooden crates. And what beautiful lines they were–golden words flaring like a Rimbaud illumined by booze, jazz, and adrenaline. Wolfe's problem, though, was that he sought to be a novelist, not a poet. Every publisher in New York declared his first novel unreadable and unpublishable—except Scribner's.

Max Perkins (Colin Frith) saw uniqueness and an authentic voice in the manuscript that became Look Homeward, Angel. He admired every word, but knew it was like a painting of a sumptuous banquet none could consume. He worked with Wolfe to trim 66,000 words from a manuscript that ran 544 pages when it was finished. (What is 60,000 words? Over 260 pages!) If you think that's long, Of Time and the River is nearly 900 pages, and Perkins cut that one even more. The collaboration scenes between the pacific Perkins and the volcanic Wolfe are one of the stronger filmed versions of the clash between pragmatism and inspiration since the Salieri/Mozart showdowns in Amadeus. The film also does a wonderful job of showing how their working relationship evolved into a father/son substitute and the toll it took on their other relationships: Wolfe's with live-in mistress/costume designer Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman), and Perkins' with his wife, Louise (Laura Linney) and their five daughters. 

Genius also displays how the tortured side of that status plays out. Max is so buttoned down that he wears his hat even when working or eating dinner with his family; Tom is driven to write–and to self-absorption, egotism, boorishness, and self-destruction. Law plays him as the sort of person you both love to see arrive–and leave. Of the two performances, Frith's is by far the superior. Did you ever want to be someone you know you can't be? Every now and then? Imagine if you felt that all the time. Frith is a man of discipline and control, but we also see him crawling inside his own skin. Law's performance is manic—a bit like Wolfe was reputed to be–but it also lapses into histrionics. Although they are not central characters, Kidman is icy and tart–she's wounded, but refuses to be a victim. Linney walks the fine line between devotion, frustrated ambition, and quietly exercised power. Guy Pearce and Dominic West appear in strong cameos as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway respectively.

Mainline critics savaged this film, but they fixated on the film's muted tones and the stage-like nature of the scrip, and ignored the subtle probing of the creative process and the myriad folds within the genius mind. Sometimes it amazes me how intellectuals fail to recognize the intellect of others. Thomas Edison once quipped, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." This film shows that and suggests that the entire formula need not reside within one soul.

Of course, critics are also renowned for hating editors, whom they view as bureaucratic ciphers whose job it is to strip all the color and magic from prose. Numerous literary scholars have hurled that charge at Perkins. What arrogance! Did Wolfe make Max Perkins? Hardly. Here's a shortlist of award-winning writers he also edited:  Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Marjorie Rawlings, Alan Paton, Erskine Caldwell, James Jones…. Is it telling that Wolfe didn't have another best-selling novel in his lifetime? That very few have read his original manuscript of Look Homeward, Angel? That he mostly wrote novellas and short stories after breaking with Perkins? Probably.

Give this one a try. It's not a perfect film and perhaps it would work better as a play. But, as readers of Wolfe always said of his work: it is unique.

Rob Weir

Mairead Nesbitt and April Verch: Two for St. Patrick's Day

Celtic Commotion for St. Patrick's Day

Well we must have some Celtic music for St. Paddy's Day, to be sure, to be sure. Here are two new releases.

"Hallowed Fire" unfolds to woodwinds, pulsing strings, harp notes, swooping instrumentation, and the polished conducting of a symphony orchestra. Then come the lead strings of Máiréad Nesbitt—mournful, precise, and controlled, as she makes her way through a slow Irish-themed tune. This is the flavor of Hibernia (Cosmic Trigger). If Nesbitt's name doesn't immediately resonate, think of Michael Flatley's "Lord of the Dance" or "Feet of Flames" dance extravaganzas, or of Celtic Woman, whose videotaped performances are a staple of PBS fundraisers. Nesbitt is the slit-gowned blonde who likes to kick off her high-heels and flash a lot of leg in ways simultaneously suggestive and innocent.

            I generally hate the kind of stuff Scotland's Dick Gaughan calls "tarted up tourist kitsch," but I really liked this album—probably because the act of listening transported me beyond the faux glamour. At least Ms. Nesbitt's light classical approach is honest; she studied under none less than the late Emanuel Hurwitz (1919-2006), so call this album Celtic music in its formal clothes. As befits her training, Nesbitt immerses herself within circumscribed compositions and eschews instant variations and spur-of-the-moment grace notes. Fast-paced numbers such as "Becoming" are fiery, yet disciplined; "TheButterfly" flits, but as in a netted conservatory. "The First Sheaf" is pastoral—in both rural and idealized form, just as the well-known "Merrily Kiss the Quaker," a West Kerry slide, is lively, but decorous. The latter suggests why Nesbitt's formalism works. The notion of kissing an 18^th century Quaker was, depending on the context, either a rebellious act, a violation, or an insider's joke–the Quaker being a symbol of reserve and outward piety. Ms Nesbitt's arrangement captures these contradictions. Okay, so tunes such as "The Dusk" or "Captain H" sound more like something one would hear at a formal ball than on the village green, but there's no quarreling with Ms. Nesbitt's talent. I still prefer the spontaneity and wildness of unconstrained Celtic, but it's fun to dress up now and then.

★★★★

It seems like just yesterday when April Verch was a 14-year-old fiddle prodigy who ventured out of her native Ottawa Valley and showed up at a few folk festivals. She's 38 now and has ten CDs under her step dance shoes. Her eleventh is titled The April Verch Anthology (Slab Town Records), an eighteen-track culling of releases from 1998 to 2015. Although it excludes material from her two earliest recordings, Anthology does kick off with "Trip to Windsor," when Verch was still a fresh-faced country girl sawing away at a tune with precocious skill, youthful energy, and rough-around-the-edges tones. It's also a textbook case of how Celtic music in Canada is different—simultaneously more rustic in feel, but also played in ways that predate Victorian era embellishment.           

            As a Canadian dancer and fiddler, Verch immediately drew comparisons to Natalie MacMaster, but when she started singing in sweet, high tones, those comparisons shifted to Alison Krauss. Neither is apt. If you must make an analogy, a lot of her repertoire and approach is that of barn dance albums in country music's pre-slick days. Some of it feels as if it were a 1930s anticipation of A Prairie Home Companion—wholesome, spare, and rootsy. Verch's are, however, deep and long roots that stretch from Celtic lands to the Ottawa Valley and into the Southern U.S. Appalachians. "He's Holding On To Me" is bluegrass gospel, while "Jump Cricket Jump" sounds like one of those old John Hartford raw fiddle tune/songs that evoke the subject without being onomatopoetic. There are tear-jerker country songs such as "It Makes No Difference to Me," old-timey selections such as "That's How We Run," and vulnerable folk offerings the likes of "Long Way Home." We also hear Verch's growth as a performer. Contrast the opening track with "The Newpart" (2015). In the latter, Verch heads her own band, with flat-picked guitar laying down a framework for fiddle that swells to a repeated and memorable theme worthy of Jay Ungar. When she sings, it's with the slightly nasal and true-to-her-wellspring country tones that deliberately avoid the smooth polish of Alison Krauss. About that wellspring—its waters are the coming together of French-Canadian, Métis, and Celtic. Call Ms. Verch the real/reel deal.

★★★★

In a Dark, Dark Wood a Page-Turning Thriller

IN A DARK, DARK WOOD (2015/16)

Ruth Ware

Simon & Schuster, 310 pp.

★★★★

English writer Ruth Ware's debut novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, draws comparisons to Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl) and Paula Hawkins (The Girl of the Train). Both are apt, if by those analogies, we mean the creepy undertones of Flynn and the inner psychological torment of Hawkins. Ware's novel is a thrilling and skin-crawling read–one I tore through in just two nights.

This surprised me, as the book's set-up is one that would have normally sent me running the other way. Its central character is twenty-six-year-old Leonora Shaw ("Nora"), a London writer with few friends and a loner lifestyle that suits her just fine. Out of the blue she gets an email inviting her to take part in a "hen" party–the British term for a bachelorette gathering–for Clare Cavendish. Clare had been a close friend from childhood, but Nora's literally not had contact with her for ten years. Her first impulse is to delete the email, but her only really close friend Nina, a lanky Brazilian doctor, got a similar email. Neither wishes to go, but the email's sender and event organizer, Flo, insists that Clare would be devastated if they didn't accept. So Nora and Nina decide to give it a shot.

What ensues is like something out of Agatha Christie, except the creepy house in this case is a sterile glass-sided modernist mistake plopped down in a rural section of Northumberland at the end of a rutted lane and so hemmed in by trees that's there's no Internet or cell phone coverage. Nora and Nina are among a select few guests, the others being Tom, a gay actor/director; Melanie, a neurotic new mother; and Flo, the hen party organizer equivalent of a Bridezilla. Flo declares herself Clare's best friend, but she's also obviously a few bubbles off plumb and so fragile that each aspect of the party must go off exactly as she envisions it, lest sturm und drang wash away the house and all in it. For her part, Clare seems as haughty and privileged as Nora and Nina remembered.

So what do you do? Nora and Nina are freaked out–the house has no curtains, for heaven's sake–but is this just the paranoia that city slickers often feel when they go into the country? No one else is very comfortable either, but wouldn't you just tell yourself, "Hey, it's just 48 hours," and suck it up? Bad idea!

Ware serves up a taut mystery that involves many twists, including a deft use of a dramatic trope known as Chekhov's gun. There's also suspicion run wild, old wounds reopened, obsession, accidents, amnesia, and maybe some pigeons (clay and human) set up for a fall. Much like the character Rachel in The Girl in the Train, poor Nora is pushed into such a state that she can't access or trust her own memories. And she's not the only one. In a Dark, Dark Wood is a clichéd title, but it's also a satisfying page-turner. I'll say no more, except to offer this advice: If you find yourself in a creepy setting, it's a terrible idea to mess with a Ouija board.

Rob Weir

Gunmetal Gray Too Much of a Stretch Even for a Spy Novel

GUNMETAL GRAY (GRAY MAN # 6) (2016)

By Mark Greaney

Berkley/Penguin, 505 pages

★★

Freelance assassin Court Gentry is up to his old tricks, this time in Asia. Whether or not that's a good thing is up to the public to decide, but this reviewer is ready to have Gentry retire to a sunny island.

If author Mark Greaney's name doesn't ring immediate bells, think of Tom Clancy, who died in 2013. Greaney co-authored seven of Clancy's novels, two of which when Clancy was mortally ill and five that appeared (or will) posthumously. Greaney also worked on his own Gray Man series, the first installment of which was published in 2009. Gentry is the Gray Man, so known for his ability to do his deadly work in the shadows and, usually, off shore and off anyone's official books. He is such an efficient killer and spy that he's a legend that few can place by face. For those who've not read Greaney, his work is firmly in the spy/thriller category and Court Gentry is Jack Ryan on steroids. Several familiar characters appear for series fans—including Matt Hanley and Donald Fitzroy–but the novel is a stand-alone, not a sequel.

Gunmetal gray is fast-paced action. The basic set up is that twenty-six-year-old computer whiz Fan Jiang has defected from China and everyone wants him. The Chinese simply want him dead, as his codes could reveal plenty of Chinese intelligence, including all those China has hacked and how to return the favor. The British, Vietnamese, Thais, Russians, and Americans would like him alive so he can help them crack Chinese spy networks. This is a novel that validates Josef Stalin's remark, "I trust no one, not even myself." To that end, the CIA dispatches Court Gentry to Shenzhen, China in search of Fan Jiang–even though Gentry doesn't work for the CIA and the agency once tried to kill him. To what degree can the CIA trust a contracted lone wolf with a penchant for making his own rules? How much can the CIA not tell him before he figures things out and goes rogue? How can it trust that the groups he's playing aren't his real employers?

If you like action that makes James Bond seem like an old fart feeding pigeons in the park, this novel is for you–but enjoying it requires that you turn off anything resembling logic faculties. Before this one is done, you will land in China, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh City, Bangkok, and Singapore. There will be explosions, shootouts, arson, paratrooper clashes, rice paddy wading, jungle treks, perilous cliff climbs, high-tech spy gadgetry, and clandestine ship boarding. There will be more double crosses than you'd see at an Eastern Orthodox keychain shop and more hair's breath escapes than a Harry Houdini highlight reel. Along the way, Gentry will best or confound the Chinese military, sections of MI6, a Russian elite unit, the CIA, Vietnamese and Thai organized crime syndicates, and the Italian Mafia! The bad guys in this novel are essentially humanized orcs in that it only takes one Gentry to wipe out scores of them. There is even a scene in Hong Kong in which a cornered Gentry manages to best around fifty people trying to kill him. He also manages to find some time to do a single noble deed and a bit of romancing. I mean, c'mon! Nobody's that good. And if he is, the book's ending makes no sense.

No matter—not much of this book does. It's Rambo-like in its absurdities and its flowing testosterone, and an answered prayer for those who think all we need to do is look out for #1–trust, morality, help, and conscience be damned. I won't deny that this is a thriller in the truest sense, but it's kitchen sink slop as literature. First I was intrigued. Then my heart raced. But the moment my brain engaged, "Ooo. Ahh." gave way to "You've got to be kidding!"

Rob Weir

The Underworld Explores Working-ClassLife and Death

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THE UNDERWORLD (2017)

By Kevin Canty

W. W. Norton, 256 pages

★★★★

One of the autopsy findings from the election of 2016 is that Democrats largely ignored the white working class. That's rather amazing when we have so many fine novelists in America who write of that life. Even a cursory reading of Richard Russo might have reminded party leaders there was a part of America they needed to investigate more thoroughly. So too would readings of recent titles such as Mark Slouka's Brewster or Phillip Meyer's American Rust. So now that your attention has been refocused, check out Kevin Canty's The Underworld, a novel whose tone is reminiscent of Slouka and Meyer.

The title, in my view, isn't wisely chosen. First, Don DeLillo used the same title—sans the article—in his sprawling 2003 novel. Second, most people associate the term with organized crime. Canty, however, means it literally: the underworld as the realm of miners working more than a half-mile beneath the surface. His is a fictional reimaging of Idaho's 1972 Sunshine Mine fire in which 91 miners lost their lives. His setting of Silverton is a thinly veiled pastiche of Kellogg and Wallace, located in the heart of the silver mining Coeur d'Alene region. Ninety-one people also perish in Canty's novel. So why write a novel at all? Wouldn't a collection of news clippings accomplish the same task?

Nope! That's because, in many ways, the major character of the book is Silverton, located in the thin thumb of Idaho that pokes up between Montana and Washington. It's a hard place to love, yet locals talk more about getting out of town than actually doing so. And when they do leave, they seldom venture much further than Missoula to the east or Spokane to the west. I instantly related to Canty's book, though I'm an Easterner—my own postindustrial Pennsylvania hometown has the same ensnaring qualities. I did not fall prey to them and left in the 1970s, the same period under Canty's microscope. To leave or to stay is the dilemma facing David, the book's central character.

Canty also uses Underworld metaphorically–those mental, often non-verbalized, excavations of people trapped by circumstance, depression, and indecision. David's one of the latter. He's a student at the University of Montana Missoula, which is just 120 miles from Silverton as the crow flies—though its network of culture, restaurants, upscale bars, intellectual life, and veneer of bourgeois respectability are light years away. He also knows–and his landlord reminds him–that Silverton can't objectively compare. It's a town of dangers: toxic air, seedy bars where a misinterpreted glance can mean being smashed with a cue stick, rampant alcoholism, and unhealthy diets. Silverton is where weathered whores have no trouble staying busy; it has dozens of bars, but just two TV channels that most view in glorious black and white. Above all it's a place where death in the mines can come without warning and the work wears a man down fast even if he isn't killed outright. David knows of mining: his father and his beloved brother Ray are miners.

Why on earth wouldn't David flee and not look back? If you have to ask that question, you need to learn more about blue-collar life. David goes to Missoula, but he is not of that world. His is the classic college first generation dilemma: David feels like an outsider—a poseur, not a scholar. He's right; the university crowd doesn't have a clue about what he thinks, what his life has been like, or how he feels. As bad as it is, Silverton is where people understand him–though they don't exactly. Man! I know that feeling! You become the walking definition of liminality—trapped between the working and middle classes and uncertain whether to step backward or move forward. So when someone tells you there's a job opening up that pays over $10 an hour (about $57 in today's coin), do you pursue a life of materialism and danger, or stay on the middle class track? Ray has stayed in Silverton. Maybe David should too: get a new truck; keep up with a longtime affair with his former piano teacher he thinks is a big secret, but isn't; and eventually get married a have a few kids like Ray and his wife Jordan.

Then the mine blows up while David is at school. Ray was in there. Did he make it out? What about Malloy, another guy from town? He and Ray are a lot alike–tough, funny, hard drinking, bombastic, and easier to love in the abstract than in person. What about Terry and Lyle and all the others David has known since childhood? What about the women who will be widowed if their husbands come out under a sheet? Jordan? Ann Malloy? Let's just say that, in 1972, feminism hadn't yet had a big impact in this part of the world.

The sections of Canty's book chronicling the fate of two men trapped in an air seam 3,500 feet underground are gripping and harrowing. It would behoove all middle class readers to contemplate what manual labor means. Do not dismiss this event as a museum piece. Think upon West Virginia's Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 miners in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 that same year, or the 14 who died at a Waco, Texas fertilizer plant in 2013.

Yeah—maybe it's time to think about this kind of stuff. Canty–the author of five previous novels and an English professor at the University of Montana–has written a novel filled with action, pathos, despair, and glimmers of hope. His writing is direct, vivid, and so crisply paced that The Underworld feels like a short book. Is it ultimately a work of literature, or sociological commentary? Yes.

Rob Weir