7/10/02
Clarke’s protagonist comes to grips with his past and future
By Jeff Minick
The Ordinary White Boy by Brock Clarke.
Harcourt Brace, 2001. $16.95 — 272 pp.
Often
the title of a book first seduces us into pulling it from a shelf
and breaking open the pages. Just as a person’s name may interest
us, may cause us to speculate about the bearer’s personality
— Celeste LaCamera DuPlaa surely suggests intrigue and mystery
where Mary Smith does not, though of course Mary Smith in the flesh
may be much more the human conundrum — so too does a book draw
us by its title.A new novel titled The Ordinary White Boy bears just such a title, an appellation that should pique the interest of the most casual passersby in the library. What is an ordinary white boy? What sort of author designates anyone as “white” in this day and time? What does he mean by ordinary?
On opening the book, the reader will soon discover that the ordinary white boy in this case is Lamar Kerry, Jr. Twenty-seven years old, the son of a small-town newspaper editor and of a mother who is suffering from MS, Lamar is:
...an ordinary white boy who wears khaki pants, work boots, and flannel shirts. I dance like Mick Jagger when I dance at all, which is rare, unless I am drunk, which is not so rare. My parents do not understand this dull thing that I am, even though ten years ago I was a seventeen-year-old ordinary white boy who wore khaki pants, work boots, and flannel shirts.
Lamar is a college graduate with a degree in Russian Studies. He
may or may not marry his girlfriend, Glori. He lives in an apartment
one mile from the home in which he grew up in Little Falls, NY.
Lamar’s mood generally matches the mood of this small town
in rural New York — listless, watchful, waiting to see what
will happen yet not too excited about the future.
Lamar’s father calls on him to work as a reporter on his paper,
and it is this task that draws Lamar out into the world and into
contact with other people. The story of the murder of the town’s
only Hispanic forces Lamar into learning more about himself and
engaging in a more mature way with his fellow townspeople. A fishing
trip with his best friend Andrew, who, though married, seems as
lost as Lamar, also forces Lamar to begin to examine his life and
his present condition in a more profound way.
Yet this brief synopsis of The Ordinary White Boy makes the
book sound stilted, ponderous, and dark, when in reality Lamar’s
voice, so warm, so easy to hear, gives a near whimsical lilt to
the story. Brock Clarke, the author, has created in Lamar a character
who is, I suppose, typical of many young males these days, a boy
in his 20s struggling to become a man, unsure of what manhood means
anymore, wrestling with questions of work and marriage while stuck
in some patterns set in high school and college, looking to the
future with a sense of unease and to the past with the knowledge
that it has disappeared forever.
Here is Lamar on his return from his trip with Andrew. Missing a
tooth from a beating he took, Lamar is hoping to win back Glori:
Those of us who do not want to realize the consequences of our
sabbaticals will always choose drama over substance. This is what
I choose. I do not call Glori to tell her I am back in town and
to beg for any real, honest understanding. I do not tell her that
I will wait until kingdom comes for her forgiveness, either...Instead,
I go to work at the Valley News for a couple hours, then wait outside
the Monroe Street Elementary School for Glori to get out of work.
My hope is that the surprise sight of me leaning against my car,
James Dean-style...will jolt her into forgetting all my offenses.
My hope is to surprise her past the long, halting, healing process
straight into reconciliation.
Near the end of this book, Lamar comments that
The House of Ordinary, after all, has many rooms. And since the
House of Ordinary is so spacious, I am fine, also, with the knowledge
that ordinariness can be evil, is often evil, but not always, and
not absolutely. I have reached a détente with ordinariness;
perhaps, when I get back to the office, I will give my father the
proper truce agreement and we will both sign them. It will be an
awkward, vague truce that finally ends our Civil War of ordinary
whiteness. But it will still be a truce, nonetheless.
Although Clarke’s novel has some interesting things to say
about race and about the working class as opposed to the middle
class, the novel belongs to Lamar. Clarke doesn’t engage in
polemics, but instead lets Lamar tell his own story with his own
voice, a voice that would pass in these times, I suppose, as the
voice of an ordinary white boy.
(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville and can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)