Ross
Barkan's recent novel, Colossus,
returns to a theme he explored in Glass
Century: concealed
family relationships and the reinvention of self in an unmoored America.
The
subject is clearly a personal one for Barkan, but unlike Glass Century, which often felt driven by emotion, Colossus initially seems
more intellectual than heartfelt. Only about halfway through does the novel
reveal the emotional core that has been hidden beneath its portrait of a
declining Americana. I found myself wondering whether Barkan might have
developed the story more chronologically rather than withholding so much of
Teddy Starr's back story until Part Two. Yet there is method in the structure.
By delaying the revelation of Starr's origins, Barkan creates a mystery that
sustains the reader through the novel's opening movement.
Teddy
Starr is the pastor of Trinity Church in Pine Haven, a fictional Michigan town.
At first he resembles a fox among the hens of his congregation, pursuing
unhappy parishioners' wives with a confidence that John Updike's Rabbit
Angstrom might have admired while simultaneously cashing in on local real
estate opportunities in a manner reminiscent of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe.
The Richard Ford influence is impossible to miss. Barkan
even opens with an epigram from The
Sportswriter: "All we really want is to get to the point where the
past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life." Indeed, Teddy Starr has shut the door on his
past and like Bascombe, Starr also becomes a real estate agent, giving him a
unique vantage point on his community (and ability to profit on it): “A realtor
is a showman, a handmaiden, and advertiser for your arriving life, the one you
want to live.”
And
it is in his depiction of Pine Haven that Barkan’s writing truly excels. The
town becomes a miniature America, where affluent retirees and struggling
laborers live only blocks apart, and where chain restaurants, economic
anxieties, and cultural fragmentation define the landscape. The novel's
greatest strength may be its portrait of contemporary middle-America, observed
with both affection and skepticism. The
area’s annual Flapjack Festival is its entertainment pinnacle.
Starr
himself is not particularly admirable. He is married to Daniella and the father
of three children, yet he moves through life in the community assuming
privileges he has never earned. He cheats almost casually, regarding temptation
as one of the benefits of being Teddy Starr. His rationalizations are often
revealing, particularly when he reflects on the limitations facing women in
Pine Haven and quietly congratulates himself for having "sought my
advantages."
Yet
Starr does not entirely escape consequences. His relationship with his
pubescent son Theodore is strained, and the estrangement between fathers and
sons becomes one of the novel's recurring concerns. Here again one hears echoes
of Richard Ford.
There
are comparisons to Sinclair Lewis as well. Although Starr is no Elmer Gantry, Lewis's
skeptical eye toward Main Street America hovers over much of the first half of
the novel. Then comes the event that changes everything: a mysterious man
begins following Starr and claims to be his brother.
From
that moment the novel pivots.
Barkan
signals the turn with one of the book's most powerful passages, a meditation on
secrets, reinvention, and the curtains we draw between ourselves and the past:
“Imagine
Daniella now what she would say, another man calling the only child, Theodore Starr a brother. Imagine, really, what
Daniella would say if she knew it all, even this afternoon with Guinevere, if
whatever she suspects matches up against vertiginous reality, if she can even
produce a notion. But few can. Few can fathom what waits behind the curtain.
Curtains are thick, after all, and it’s a greater feat than it looks to pull
one back, to force one back. And what if only disease and rot are behind
them? What if, by closing the curtain, you escaped it all, as any individual
with a modicum of intellect and ambition would? This is the pioneer spirit, the
American Mundus, reinvention to starve or perdition, to work your way closer to God, the true God. And my
brother, and his people, knew nothing of that.“
Suddenly
the reader is thrust backward into another life entirely.
Without
venturing too far into spoiler territory, Part Two reveals that Teddy Starr (né
Reuvain Gantz) was raised in Brooklyn and that his origins are far removed from
the evangelical Protestant identity he has constructed. The details emerge
gradually, but the central conflict is familiar: family expectations versus
personal freedom.
His
father, an overbearing, workaholic collector of apartment buildings and
something of a slumlord, expects his son to inherit the business (one of course
can draw parallels to a certain contemporary figure). The prospect repels him.
Ironically, it is his brother who is being groomed for scholarship and
religious life. The burden of expectation hangs heavily over the household.
How
Reuvain becomes Teddy Starr is the heart of the novel. Two figures shape that
transformation: Talia, his first youthful love, and Teddy, an extraordinary Asian
handball player whose influence proves even more significant.
The
handball sequences are among the finest passages in the book. Much as tennis
functioned as a metaphor in Glass Century,
handball becomes a metaphor for life itself—competition, discipline, courage,
and self-definition. On the handball court even the Mexicans and Puerto Ricans
defer to Teddy. “It was fury, and it was
a dance. With balletic rage, he
rearranged the geometry of the courts, his ball cracking low against the wall,
unreachable every time.”
Eventually
Reuvain must confront his father: “I anticipated, always, my father‘s rage. I
was like a mariner reading the clouds for a rainstorm. I had chosen the
handball courts over him, and I would pay.“ He accuses his father of running “a
gutter empire” and soon the confrontation becomes deadly.
He
flees Brooklyn. He borrows his new first
name from his handball court mentor and as he boards a random bus to Detroit,
he sees a neon sign “Starr and Co., Deli” and so life changes for the reborn
“Teddy Starr” and he ultimately begins the life we have already seen unfolding
in Pine Haven.
Part
Three examines the consequences of that reinvention. The truths Starr has
concealed are exposed to his wife, his congregation, and his community.
Daniella's furious assessment of him as a fraudulent outsider cuts directly to
the novel's central concern: how much of a life can be built upon invention
before the structure collapses?
Forced
to confront his congregation, Starr prepares to deliver his sermon and
confession: “they shimmer, my flock, even as they begin to bend my way, their
wet lips crinkling, curiosity, commingling with fury… I feel oxidized and
ancient like the same statue was striding the Rhodesian Harbor, my brassy
flesh, collapsing into the brine. They gape at my crumbling.”
Yet
this is also a novel about America, and America has always had a remarkable
capacity for reinvention. Time passes. Wounds heal. The disgraced pastor
discovers that public life remains open to him. Indeed, he is even offered an
even greater opportunity: a run for Congress.
The
irony is unmistakable. The man who built his life on concealment and reinvention
is rewarded rather than punished. One might even view his ascent as a
metaphorical ride UP the escalator to seize the golden ring of success. Yet
Barkan's point is not simply political. Teddy Starr embodies a distinctly
American belief that identity is endlessly renewable, that the past can be
escaped, rewritten, or transformed into advantage, no matter how corrupt that
past might have been. Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby
similarly tried to hide a past in his delusional pursuit of the American Dream.
In Colossus, Ross Barkan has produced a
worthy successor to Glass Century and
an impressive second installment in what appears to be an emerging trilogy
examining authenticity, family, ambition, and American political life.
One
final note. I found the hardcover's overall low-contrast typographical design
and leading to be tiring on older eyes during extended reading. A minor complaint,
but one worth mentioning.
And a
coda, totally unrelated, sunrise this morning during my daily early walk…
