The Portable Veblen (2016)
By Elizabeth McKenzie
Penguin Books, 428 pages.
★★★★
Once in a blue moon
a novel tumbles from my to-be-read pile, leaps into my hands, and can’t be put
down until I finish. Such a book is Elizabeth McKenzie’s utterly charming The
Portable Veblen. It is a romantic comedy, but one with more brains than
Viktor Frankenstein’s lab. Get this: Its characters include squirrels, two sets
of dysfunctional parents, a doctor who wants to be a big-shot player, Big
Pharma, and an eccentric young woman named Veblen. And, yes, she is named for the
economist Thorstein Veblen, whom she idolizes, though she has no idea why her parents
saddled her with such a weird first name. Not that there’s much her mother,
father, or step-father do that makes a whole lot of sense.
This is a hard book
to review, as almost anything I say will sound ludicrous. Go with the strangeness.
Imagine the oddness of A Confederacy of Dunces but with a sweet central
character and a mere soupçon of its misanthropy. Veblen Amundsen-Houda is a
child of nature in her late 20s who really thinks that a squirrel is trying to
communicate with her. She lives in a quirky little cottage in Palo Alto, does
some translation work, and is a “freelance self.” Her boyfriend, 34-year-old
Paul Vreeland, a neurologist, has just proposed to her. But this is not your
standard wedding plan makes people crazy kind of story. There’s more than
enough actual craziness with which to contend.
Both Veblen and
Paul are the offspring of good hippies/bad parents. Veblen’s mother, Melanie,
has an IQ of 185 and the narcissism to go with it. You name the subject and
Melanie has an opinion about it, which she shares without filters whether or
not you want it. Her biological father, Rudgear, is an institutionalized crank,
and her step father, Linus, a calm and well-meaning person who embodies the
term “ineffectual.” Veblen’s relentless optimism drives her mother nuts.
Melanie worries that her daughter might have some of her father’s insanity
genes but then again, Melanie can find fault in everything and everyone, including
herself.
Paul is also the
product of offbeat parents. Bill and Marion Vreeland are former nudists and far
too flaky to settle gently into middle-class life. Paul also has a mentally
challenged younger brother, Justin, who does highly inappropriate things that
Paul thinks are enabled by his lenient parents. Paul is akin to Alex in the
1980s sitcom Family Ties. He is so desperate to escape his past that he
has become serious and strait-laced. He’s quite smart, though, and has invented
the Pneumatic Turbo Skull Punch, a device that can relieve traumatic brain
pressure. Because of its potential for combat triage, Paul has been courted by
the military and Hutmacher, the Big Pharma firm that procures all things medical
for the Department of Defense. Paul senses the opportunity for wealth and
influence, yet he loves Veblen for her innocence and eccentricity.
Some matches are
made in heaven, but that of Veblen and Paul seems more like it was imagined as
a Saturday Night Live sketch. Or maybe not; Elizabeth McKenzie’s writing
is much funnier and incisive that anything on SNL in the past few
decades. So how can a smart, kind-hearted, free spirit like Veblen–who believes
in her namesake’s withering critiques of the leisure class–expect to find
marital bliss with a Type-A go getter who hates squirrels, desires a
conspicuous consumption lifestyle, has an occasional explosive temper, and
seeks to tame her wildness? Yeats once wrote, “the center cannot hold,” and
that’s a pretty good way of expressing the coming crisis.
Remember, though,
that this is a romantic comedy. I cannot do justice to how any of this
plays out without spoiling the fun, so I won’t try. One tantalizing tidbit: key
moment involves butt dialing, a squirrel, and a motel room. The Portable
Veblen is where family dynamics, social science, and absurdism overlap. It
is both poignant and laugh-out-loud hysterical. In a twisted–very
twisted–way it’s also about taking the back roads to moral clarity.
Give this one a
test read. If nothing else, you will conclude that it is so offbeat that it
beggars comparison. My guess is that, like me, you will find it irresistible.
You may also find yourself unexpectedly smiling the next time a squirrel raids
your bird feeder!
Rob Weir
Posts
