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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
The million-dollar novel just picked by the "Today" show book club melds a fascinating portrait of the black upper class to a less than thrilling thriller plot.
Jun 24, 2002 | It's old news that Knopf paid Stephen L. Carter, Yale law professor and author of seven works of nonfiction, a whopping $4.2 million for his first novel, "The Emperor of Ocean Park," and the promise of a follow-up. The new news is that the novel was just picked as the first selection for the new "Today" show book club, sending the publisher back to press for another 250,000 copies, for a total of 500,000 in print.
Some critics have wondered why. The book is too long, too convoluted, too hokey, they say. And while "The Emperor of Ocean Park," an often confoundingly twisted murder-mystery thriller, has many irritating flaws, in the end, it's not surprising why it's gotten so much hype. It's a Grisham-like legal thriller written by a star academic and public intellectual. Even more appealing, as Carter explains, this legal thriller takes place in a "larger slice of financially comfortable African America than most white Americans probably think exists outside the sports and entertainment world."
He's probably right. Most Americans, unless they've read Lawrence Otis Graham's "Our Kind of People" or have friends who were in Jack and Jill, probably aren't familiar with the "Gold Coast" of Washington, D.C., or the old-money black enclaves on Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
That doesn't necessarily mean that Carter has anything astonishing to say about the black elite. The superficial, glossy ways of Carter's black bourgeoisie -- their upgrading of BMWs, their throwing of strategic dinner parties, their snubbing of everyone else -- isn't anything we don't already know about rich people, whatever their color. But Carter's portrayal of the interior life of black movers and shakers as they navigate between members of the "darker nation" and those of the "paler nation" at cocktail parties, in the halls of academe and on the street, does generate a sense of freshness, of seeing something new. Carter's social novel, the one lurking in the background of "The Emperor of Ocean Park" and popping up between the car chases, is what makes the pages turn.
At the center of this high society is the Garland family, sprawling and accomplished as any other wealthy, Ivy League-educated brood. For years, the Garlands summered on Martha's Vineyard. Oak Bluffs is on the other side of the island from "Kennedy country, the land where rich white vacationers and their bratty children congregate." The Garlands and their equally bratty children -- Addison, now a self-involved, philandering radio personality, Mariah, a former New York Times journalist who married a white investment banker, and Talcott, an Ivy League law professor -- once enjoyed warm memories of Oak Bluffs even though their parents would bemoan the influx of black vacationers noisier and less well-off than themselves. That was before the Garlands lost their fourth child, the rebellious Abby, who, before she was killed in a car accident on Martha's Vineyard, carried around a stuffed panda named after the black militant George Jackson.
When the book begins, the head of the family, Oliver "The Emperor" Garland (the nickname was bestowed upon him by a Time magazine article), has been found dead. Mariah suspects that he's been murdered, as do a gaggle of Internet conspiracy theorists. The Emperor, a notorious conservative federal judge who Reagan nominated for the Supreme Court, suffered a spectacular, well-televised fall from grace, apparently because he cavorted with one Jack Ziegler. (We have the Emperor's friendship with Uncle Jack to thank for the subsequent appointment of Antonin Scalia.) Ziegler, a shadowy underworld figure, is most memorable in "The Emperor of Ocean Park" for his corny, imitation-gangster lines such as: "'I have asked my question. I have delivered my warning. I have done what I came to do.'" (Carter's one-liners and cliffhanger chapter endings are often laughably melodramatic.) When he shows up at Garland's funeral, cryptically demanding Oliver Garland's "arrangements," Carter's thriller starts to unfold.
Meanwhile, Talcott's unfaithful, selfish wife, Kimberly -- Carter calls her by her prep-school nickname "Kimmer" -- is up for a nomination for a federal court of appeals. Her main competition is Mark Hadley, Talcott's colleague at the law school, where petty academic infighting threatens both Talcott's career and that of his wife.
So far, not so complicated, and Carter keeps things moving at a brisk pace. But there's still a good 400 pages of plot twists to go, ones that seem to multiply exponentially every few pages.
Not surprisingly, Ziegler isn't the only one after the "arrangements." FBI agents follow Talcott's every move. A drug-addicted minister is brutally murdered. Chess pieces -- one white, one black -- disappear from the Emperor's study (this subplot and metaphor is pretty cool). Beachfront homes are burglarized. A shakily written note appears mentioning "Angela's boyfriend," a seemingly significant clue, though we've never even heard of Angela before. Bloodied dog tags are thrown in for good measure. Other people start following Talcott. Kimmer keeps cheating on him.
