Review of HOMELAND ELEGIES
A memoir (not a novel) where the parts are much more than the whole ...
This “novel” was on every list of the top 10 books of 2020. Albeit, most critics considered the year to be a weak one with many good writers postponing publication until a healthier 2021. Regardless, it was my mission to read it despite my lingering Covid generated resistance to contemporary fiction (Hamnet being the great exception). As Los Angeles County continues to be a virus epicenter and sirens are part of most evenings and nights, I figured out that my recent allergy to contemporary fiction has much to do with its too often detectable narcissism and complaint. Such narrative “voices” have their place in time … maybe just not in this one. Too much remains at stake and so much of what we are dealing with comes from a selfish, individualistic preoccupation at both ends of the spectrum that allowed the fragile ties that bind us to unwind in the night. Unfortunately, despite all its ringing prose and sparkling insights, Homeland Elegies smacks more of self-aggrandizement than of genuine communal concern.
Regardless, after THREE false starts and one midsection stall, I finished it. I am glad I did. Akhtar is a great writer. The playwright in him jumps off the page and he sets up one riveting scene after another. Many involve his poignant relationship with his father; too many involve his relations with various women (despite wild sex scenes, the most irrelevant part of the book). The “novel” is clearly his reenactment of the dialogue for a book that has almost nothing in it that is fictitious. I found this “novel’ conceit just that – conceited. The relentless presence of identity politics in our fiction world is unfortunately too much at the heart and center of this book. This over produced theme further weakens this deliberately uncentered MEMOIR no matter how evocative his descriptions of Pakistan as the home country of his parents might be. Which brings me to the great strength of this rambling ode to Ayad Akhtar. His descriptions and commentary on the United States are riveting. His evocation of a mid-century, thriving Scranton and the contrast to the bombed out shell it is today should be read by every liberal in America who wonders why there is so much rage. His rant on the great American sellout and our subsequent Faustian worship of money is pretty close to the best screed I have read on not only the decline of America but what is wrong with this modern world of ours. If Homeland Elegies swirls around any drain, however, it is how we got to four years of Trump. Akhtar gets us there in numerous ways, through Trump’s seduction of his fatally flawed father, through hitching a ride with a billionaire who like so many of the international liberal set sweetens his seven sins with good intentions, through the horrors of small town Wisconsin and the writer’s run in with a prototypical Trump voter. Like his plays, this book is not a polemic on one side of the issue. Rather, it acts like a literary drone flying over the landscape of a country (ours) that may not be all that much better off than the desiccated, chaotic Pakistan that serves as a mirror throughout this thrilling but terribly uneven “novel”.
CODA : one feels uneasiness throughout that he has written such a revealing expose of his life, relatives, friends and lovers. Maybe it involves an artistic license that he embraces with such confidence and such courage that it must be be seen as an admirable and stirring effort at an honest transcription of the life and times of America. It also feels painfully self-centered. I am told Ayad thinks a lot of Philip Roth. That may explain a lot. Roth was almost too talented a writer and too often over wrote his material – particularly after his initial success. He also was obsessed with sex – in his own life and his novels. When reading his sex scenes, one suspects that the latter fed Roth’s creative id and that may be the truth between the lines of this brilliant but deceptively preening “novel”.
Homeland Elegies
By Ayad Akhtar
400 pages