Customer Reviews

We Can Report Them (Brodsky, Michael)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Whenever I read Brodsky, I find myself falling back on the philosophy that the critical criterion for determining the measure of value to be drawn from a particular work of literature has less to do with the meaning intended to be conveyed by the author during the act of creation and than it does with whatever insight any given reader is able to extract from the work during the process of reading it. I prefer to wander through the terrain to which his books transport me, guided by my own lights. A principal focus of his novel, We Can Report Them, is just that dynamic which exists between an artist's vision and the likelihood of an audience's ability to access that vision on the artist's terms. At what point will the erosion of compromise, made in the service of bridging that chasm, undermine and extinguish the creative motivation?

Both critical acclamation and commercial success have eluded Bert, an inveterate perfectionist and eternal journeyman plying his trade as a director in the film industry. His current project, a 30 second television spot aimed at elevating The Serial Killer role to the level of entertainment and cultural icon, may be his last chance to make good before finally accepting the mantle of failure and exiting the business. The sponsors, presumably a group whose money drives the entire entertainment world, are paying for an effective product, while Bert, driven to place his own personal artistic statement before the public, attempts to walk the line between achieving his own ends and providing his employers with the commercial they are paying him to produce. He swings between unbridled, swollen self-confidence and a flood of paralyzing self-doubt, but is always fiercely anchored in his loyalty to "the work." The intensity of interpretative effort and plot manipulation he applies to the project becomes absurd within the context of a 30 second TV commercial. He is plagued by a troupe of actors who are variously inspired in, derisive of, and clearly bored by his direction, a hostile arch-nemesis of a film critic constantly hovering around the shadows of his set, sponsors who become increasingly confused and upset with his handling of the project, and, for good measure, the outside distraction of a mother-in-law, dying of cancer and determined to make his life as miserable as possible on her way out. Still, the project proceeds to completion carried by forces within Bert of which he appears to have little control. This is when we realize that Bert's success or failure in pleasing his sponsors, capturing and touching an audience, or even crafting his film to embody the perfect fruition of his vision becomes irrelevant. The power resides in the process. When all is done, it is the doing that matters.

Evelyn Woods grads can steer clear- Brodsky is not an easy read. He demands a lot of attention and hard work on the part of the reader, but invariably rewards the extra effort. With the exception of the more contemplative Goat Songs, his novels always contain a prose that is relentlessly driven forward, creating a momentum that drags the reader along in its wake. At times, the dialogue/diatribe takes off like a great post-bop sax solo, bobbing and weaving, slowly building in intensity while chasing down a circus of tangents and mounting a full-blown assault that claws at the absolute limits of of a listener's attention span, just before apparently exhausting the fuel it feeds on, setting you gently back down in the familiar and comforting refrain.

Not having been near a university in decades, I have no idea how much purchase Brodsky's body of work has managed to gain with the academics. If the semiotic vivisectionists still hold sway in the Ivory Tower, he may have to wait a while for the recognition he deserves. I suspect that his writing may tend to frustrate and confound both their methodology and their warped take on what literature is all about. But I hope that if he is not receiving it at present, he will, in time, achieve that recognition, because, for my money, Michael Brodsky is the most important man of letters to be published since 1939.