"Downtown Owl": the Humor of Small-Town Strangeness

I'm back! More or less...

Back at the Boston Book Festival, I picked up one of Chuck Klosterman's books (not the new one... you think I'm made out of money?): his first novel, Downtown Owl. The title and premise were intriguing. I started reading it over Thanksgiving, and went from enjoying it thoroughly to being very annoyed with it--though the annoyance lay with the characters and their disagreeable thoughts and actions. Really, the residents of Owl are quite a pathetic bunch. Not to mention that the typeface got on my nerves--which was the same one as his new book. (the REAL reason I didn't buy it; take note, Simon & Schuster!)

The novel mainly follows three characters in the months leading up to an apocalyptic blizzard in a small town in North Dakota: a high schooler named Mitch, a novice teacher, Julia; and an old man, Horace. The three never cross paths, nor do they all die in the deadly storm (only two of them do). Each has their own foibles--Mitch's is depression, Julia's alcoholism, and Horace, resignation--and through their circles we get a glimpse of the foibles of the other residents of Owl, which seem to be pretty much the same problems. While the story is delicately strung with humor, the overarching tone of the tale is one of hopelessness. Ironically enough, the only one left with any hope at the end is the old man, whose life is filled with real sorrow and regret. Perhaps this is why I liked him the most: even after all he'd been through, he still managed to go about life, and as much as he might like to die, he has the will (and wit) to live. Oh, and it takes place in 1983-84--though I don't think it makes much of a difference.

I didn't find Downtown Owl to be nearly as over-the-top as I expected it to be; for the most part, it was as realistic as you'd expect a small-town novel to be, for someone who has never lived in such an isolated area. The most fantastic thing was the intensity of the storm, and that it seemed to have been summoned by sociopathic high schooler Cubby Candy before a fight that was discussed so much its occurrence became an inevitability. And it had the humor of despair, a dark and desperate humor that rarely prompts one to laugh out loud (I did a few times). I was faintly reminded of David Foster Wallace, only less eloquent. Most of the narration came from the characters' minds, who often projected their ideas onto other people (Mitch being the most prominent example, with his animosity towards the football coach). Of the three, Julia was the most pathetic character, a woman who hadn't bothered trying to direct herself in life, and naturally wound up stuck in the middle of nowhere.

The last 40 pages, beginning with a brief glimpse into Cubby Candy's perspective, are when Klosterman really shines as a storyteller: in short increments, we learn the fates of Mitch, Julia, and Horace the night of the storm. In fact, I would have preferred that the novel's entire time progression crawled along that slowly--aside from football season, there was no reason not to start in the middle of winter. (plus the football could have been flashbacks--which it mostly was anyway). There's not much time for navel-gazing, and the events are jarring and idiosyncratically depicted. The old man is the only one who makes it out alive, in an ironic twist, but predictable. (As in: having the old man die at the end is predictable, as he's old, so to have him not die would not; and considering that most of the other characters are young, it's even ironic; and considering the ironic nature of much of the novel, it is therefore predictable--however, the predictability of plot-advancing events has no bearing on the quality of this novel)

In spite of that, the story ends with what I can only call a punchline--possibly. It ends with a fake news clipping about the death toll of the storm, focusing on the most prominent victim: a football player nicknamed "Grendel," and Cubby Candy's foe in the fight that had been so exhaustingly discussed throughout Mitch's part of the book. While the other victims are not named, so it's possible that Cubby died, too, it's also possible that he lived--and therefore won the hypothetical matchup between him and Grendel. He literally killed him. Needless to say, I cracked a smile upon that realization.

I was also reminded of Annie Proulx, though not so much in the writing than of the setting and that one story about the steer (or was it a deer?). Try as I might, I kept seeing the men in the bars Julia frequented as cowboys, even though they weren't. While Klosterman's prose is not similar to Proulx's, the similar settings makes Downtown Owl somewhat like a townie version of Close Range, focusing on the township part of isolated Midwestern life--and more depressing.  Oddly, though, I wasn't bored, certainly not as much as the other characters were, perhaps because of my spectator role in their suffering. Anyway, I commend Klosterman for presenting the dull and hopeless side of such a life, and injecting humor into it was in fact a necessity, and not a choice. I'd say.... 3 out of 5 stars. I'm pretty neutral on this one.