Wolf in White Van

11

I can’t say I’m the world’s biggest Mountain Goats fan. Not that I dislike them or anything — and have engaged with their music on and off over the years — but they’re just not a band that occupies a big space in my rock ‘n’ roll oeuvre. But, Mr. Hipster, you’re supposed to be talking about a book, not one of your stupid albums reviews! Well, this is where the worlds collide. Because this novel was written by the one and only Mountain Goat, John Darnielle. A man who is known as a wonderful writer of lyrics, and apparently a poet on the side, but also a somewhat acclaimed novelist. Not something I knew befofe discovering this novel a few years ago. And am only now getting around to reading. I will say that I unfairly lowered the bar on my expectations because this is a musician writing a novel, but I needn’t have. This is honestly as well written, if not better, than most of the books I’ve read in recent years. Perhaps I should pay more attention to his music. But, let’s be real, I won’t.

I will say that this is a very unique book. Unique in the sense that I’ve never really read anything like it. Something about the tone and meditative nature of it feels uninterested in fitting neatly into a cohesive description. The story itself revolves around our narrator, Sean Phillips. Now in his forties, he’s recounting how he came to this place. A reclusive adult with a ruined face from an “accident” that happened when he was seventeen. Told in reverse chronological order, we learn about his current state and work our way back to this accident that derailed his life. Though it becomes clear pretty quickly that this accident was probably not an accident at all, and that perhaps his life was already trending a certain way before he clearly put a bullet in and through his face all those years ago. So, while a genre novel might set this up as more of a mystery — what happened to his face! — Darnielle doesn’t really seem all that interested in creating that ambiguity for the sake of plotting. Rather, if we kind of assume his face is the way it is because at seventeen he took his father’s hunting rifle and shot himself with it (despite him never coming right out and saying that’s what happened), it backgrounds everything else he’s telling us. We’re more interested in Sean’s behaviors and actions to see if there are hints at why he might have done this. If that is, in fact, what he did.

So, I said that I haven’t read anything quite like this novel. Though, completely coincidently, I have read a couple books very recently that seem to kind of play in the same pool: Home Land and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Tales of outsider young men who are now outsider grown dudes. In the case of the latter, a man who has a debilitating handicap and an imagination for mazes and, subsequently, games where he can be the master of his own domain. Because, yes, Sean has this facial disfigurement (Sam in TaTaT has a disfigured, debilitating leg) that keeps him out of the public eye and living inside his own world, where he creates a maze-like post-apocalyptic, play-by-mail role-playing game that he writes and commands from his bedroom. Their motivations are very different, but the theme of an isolated, lonely guy spinning up an imaginary world is not necessarily new territory. In Sean’s case, there is an obvious bit of Satanic panic involved — the title of the novel, Wolf in White Van, being a reference to a backmasking trick on a Christian song entitled “Six Sixty Six” — or even perhaps something a little more Donnie Darko going on. The fact the story is told backwards an obvious nod to the backmasking in the novel’s title. Though, like the term “wolf in white van” itself, things are left pretty wide open to interpretation on the reader’s part as to what exactly is up with Sean. And why he ultimately makes the choice he does.

And here’s what’s interesting. As the novel draws to a close, and you know the “accident” is coming, you start to doubt yourself. Sean’s life seems to be on the upswing. He’s just had what I believe is his first kiss and has had what amounts to one of the best days in his young life. Anyone who thinks about who might make a suicide attempt thinks of a depressed person whose life has bottomed out. Perhaps there’s a triggering event, or perhaps things have just reached a point that, out of desperation, it seems like the only option. That said, we know that Sean survived the “accident,” and has lived decades with the results of it. And has, to our knowledge, never had another “accident,” despite the fact he is in constant pain and, when we first join him, is actually being sued by the family of one his game players who took his role-playing game to the real world, which ended in tragedy. It’s not to say he’s non-plussed by his situation, but it doesn’t seem to send him to a dark place that he was clearly in as a teen. What subverts our expectations is that when we do work back to the inciting incident, there is no clear indicator that things are at this point. The great day and all. Sure, we always kind of picture school shooters — which, frankly, could have been Sean’s other avenue — as disaffected loners, but despite Sean’s immersion and submersion in comic books, sci-fi and myriad non-real-world worlds, he doesn’t come as a trench coat mafia type. Or even particularly angry at his parents or himself. And Darnielle never really tells us what led him here, because the book ends with the accident. It’s left for us to puzzle out based on Sean’s narration in the aftermath and years on. But, when it comes down to it, we’re left with the feeling that it was just a spontaneous, one-time choice that felt inevitable to young Sean, but nonsensical to his parents and friends and, to a large extent, post-accident Sean himself. It’s almost as if Sean executes a one-person Fight Club, doing something dramatic and violent just to feel something in the real world.

I’m sure Darnielle leaving the psychology of all of this open to interpretation is purposeful. He never directs to the reader to feel one way or the other about Sean’s decisions. Or his lifestyle / interactions with others. The character himself never lies to himself or the reader, which is a pretty standard practice of first-personal novels. He admits his faults and weaknesses, but rarely regrets anything. He’s built his game to essentially be unbeatable, but is fair in its execution. It’s also left pretty ambiguous if Sean does, in fact, manipulate some of his players to choose certain paths or take certain actions. Or, not even so much manipulate, but give tacit approval through passivity. Again, this is unclear if it’s because Sean doesn’t care, or if he treats the real world like a fantasy and therefore has no stake in the real lives of the people he hurts, disappoints or affects. Or that he is maybe mentally ill and sometimes can’t really discern the difference between himself and the Conan character in his favorite comic. Whatever the case, this unusual little novel leaves you with some things to ponder and made a surprising impression — especially for a book written by a musician. Or perhaps he’s a novelist who does music. I guess he’s both.