Not Enough Abundance

 “Abundance,” by Jakob Guanzon, 2021

This novel takes place in the hinterlands of some city, probably in the central, southerly, ‘flyover’ part of the U.S. like Missouri.  It has no actual location on purpose.  It follows its central working-class character, Henry, in a zig-zag of paternal abuse, drug-use, crime, jobs, anger, a messy relationship, homelessness and fatherhood.  Guanzon got a Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia University in New York.  The invisibility of the working-class is now being changed by some MFA writers, who don’t describe them as buffoons, which was common earlier, but now as fuck-ups.

The story is told in the current aesthetic version of non-linear time, flashbacks and flash-forwards, which actually blocks the story’s impact, creating unnecessary confusion.  This is a an unoriginal technique they teach in MFA classes. 

Henry has a dead mother and an abusive Filipino father who one day turns decent.  As the song goes, when he died, all Pa left was a loan and a large debt.  Henry has a nasty/cute girlfriend, Michelle, who he has a baby with.  He has a lumpen friend, Al, who draws him into a get-rich-quick Fentanyl drug deal.  He spends 5 years in jail.  He violently throws Michelle, who has become a junkie, out and she abandons them.  He has a sad child, Junior, who he kills or almost kills by ignoring his fever.  He lives in his F250 with his son after being evicted from his single-wide trailer.  He kills a meth-head in self-defense.  He travels the sad hellscape of exurbia – Wal-Marts, shopping malls, McDonald’s, cheap motels, trailer parks, strip joints, Quiki-Marts, highways.  He prepares for a job interview for former felons after being laid off from a metal plating plant and working odd lawn and construction jobs.  He has no money most of the time and this is reflected in the title of the chapters, which is the amount in his pocket, from $50,000.00 to $0.00, similar to the on-screen calculator in Maid.

Guanzon writes in an overly-detailed way, on purpose – once describing every product he sees in a Wal-Mart - about this depressing reality, along with Henry’s emotions and thoughts.  This makes the story ‘real’ for present readers but also dates and internalizes it.  The last chapter goes into raptures about how Henry loves his son, even though he’s a lousy, fucked-up father.  It’s not convincing.  

Chronologically, in the real last chapter, Henry is collared by a cop for shoplifting Advil.  The cop tries to revive Henry’s feverish son in the back seat of his truck, who may or may not be alive.  This after the cop found the bloodied iron bar in the pick-up bed that Henry used to kill the meth-head dog-monger - which he never threw away.  Trouble with a capital T.

This is all hyper-real and I’ve met people somewhat like this.  With anger problems, with no clue how to raise children, who celebrate by gobbling or drinking almost any drug or alcohol available, always late, distracted easily, with little understanding of how the real world actually works, with a kind of stupid optimism.  Henry is a person who is at the bottom of the U.S. working class, right next to the criminal lumpen-proletariat.  It’s not pretty.  It is similar to the MFA book “American Rust,” which has some similar characters, but American Rust is more political due to it describing the system the characters are caught in, not an individual who has failed at almost everything. 

If you want to read a somewhat heart-rending, very current and apolitical version of the life of the lowest part of the proletariat, this book is for you.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive using these terms:  “American Rust,” “Maid,” “Hillbilly Elegy,” “White Trash,” “Nomadland,” “Sutree,” “Postcards From the End of America,” “On the Clock.”

And I bought it at May Day’s excellent fiction section!

The Cultural Marxist

November 6, 2021   

Tomorrow celebrate the 104th anniversary of the culmination of the Russian Revolution.

Na zdorovie!