Customer Reviews

Dreamer: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Johnson is a man whose self-doubts have been erased by his Buddhist faith. His books, while erudite, passionate, sincere, thoughtful, and intellectually engaging, seem to engage the struggle for salvation only obliquely, with the head and not the heart. It is only because his themes are so weighty that this obliqueness becomes a flaw. Like most philosophical novels, Dreamer uses some cardboard characters to enact a morality play. The play -- and its characters -- are interesting enough to sustain prolonged contemplation. They do not, however, live on after the book is closed. Dreamer is original, compelling, and almost great. But its confidence makes it proud, and it stumbles over its eagerness for a message that is in the end all too true.

While so many are willing to cast aside the struggles of the civil rights era as yesterdays news, Johnson tackles them head on. At its heart Dreamer is a valid book about M.L.King, whose worth comes from its peeling of King like an onion to expose the many layers and come close to the truth that doesn't appear every Feburary. Smith and Bishop are extremely developed characters who only deepen the books probing of King. A worthy read for a fan of fine lit. or American History.

Dreamer by Charles Johnson gives a unique look at the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. By using a fictitious double, who must examine his own life in light of the civil rights era, Johnson allows the reader to see both King and Chaym Smith, the man who would be his stand-in, struggle with issues of nonviolence and its meaning in a violent world. This well-researched novel presents a fresh look at King's life by allowing artistic license to soar while it never clouds the truth. Although some details are the product of the author's imagination, others are well documented among King scholars. The presentation of fact in the environment of creative detail allows a glimpse of King that I have seen nowhere else. The story moves quickly and never digresses into detail that is irrelevant to the narrative, but gives enough pertinent detail to help those unfamiliar with the setting, while convincing those who know more details concerning King's life that the author is also a brilliant scholar. A GOOD READ.

Dreamer is a fictional account that examines Dr. Martin Luther King's life during the civil rights movement. Johnson employs a King look-a-like character who, although has a strikingly similar physical appearance to King, is his antithesis in every other aspect. This allows Johnson to create a complete King like character that has faults and foibles that place him in the realm of humanness that is often times lost in our tendency to elevate King (deservedly so) to godlike status. This is a solid concept for a fictional piece but Johnson falls short in the most basic way - choice and use of language - to deliver on this concept.

Johnson's choice of words throughout the first half of the novel created more distance than clarity. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for expanding the vocabulary, but in fictional literature the words chosen must create a rhythm, a flow that maintains the reader's interest and does not distract from the meat of the novel. In Dreamer, the author's choice of "big words" seems forced and awkward. "He felt too tired to move, but his mind, from surface to seabed, kept whirring widdershins." This is only one example of Johnson, poor choice of words. There are plenty more in the novel. Enough to cause me to close the book and move on to a little lighter reading, like the Oxford Unabridged dictionary.

Charles Johnson's Dreamer offers a riveting portrayal of thelast stages of Dr. King's career. By alternating descriptions of"the minister's" personal ruminations with the first-person observations and experiences of the narrator (a somewhat Charles Johnson-like Matthew Bishop), Johnson creates the convincing illusion at least of Dr. King as a complete and real being at that particular time in his life.

While the obvious subject matter of his plot is compelling--overwhelming, almost, in its rendition of perhaps the most significant and ramifying social movement in American history--it is worth observing that Johnson continues consciously (and ably) to work in the tradition of "moral fiction" he learned, absorbed, and finally inherited from his own great teacher, John Gardner. That tradition holds as a central tenet Gardner's defintion of a "good book" as "one that, for its time, is wise, sane, and magical, one that clarifies life and tends to improve it." While Dreamer, like Johnson's other fiction, obviously meets that criterion in general terms, Gardner's more concrete influence is subtly apparent throughout. For example, the scene in which Matthew ponders Dr. King's stitching his speeches and sermons together from various sources so skilfully that it is hard to tell where one voice ends and another begins recalls the strikingly similar techniques Gardner used in his fiction. Johnson doesn't make the explicit comparison, but it's obviously in his mind--as is the fact that both Gardner and Dr. King were accused, more or less, of plagiarism by some who did not understand their methods.

Some readers have been puzzled at least by what they have seen as loose ends in Dreamer's conclusion: we never learn what those klutzy FBI men were up to, or what finally "happens" to Chaym. Such complaints, I think, seriously misunderstand what Johnson the novelist is up to at the end of his book. The ending is deliberately and meaningfully ambiguous, intentionally uncertain--although clues enough exist. "What became of Chaym?" is a very important question that Johnson purposefully refuses to answer explicitly, and it is not the only such question.

When you approach a new piece of fiction by Charles Johnson, you should be ready with all your gifts of intellect and insight. You can be assured that Mr. Johnson will typically bring those gifts of his to the event. Dreamer is characteristic of much that readers have come to expect of Mr. Johnson. For example, all of the book's major characters are quite well versed both in the eastern and western philosophic and religious traditions. He characteristically manipulates reality that way, much as one might bend light with a prism-and with the same kind of pleasurable, revealing results.

On the other hand, there is much in Dreamer that is new for Charles Johnson, and, thus, for his readers. In Oxherding Tale and Middle Passage, he demonstrated an ability to combine and to jump across genres. It is not surprising, then, that Dreamer tends to defy categorization. Although it is fiction set within a (relatively) recent historical context, and although the figure of Martin Luther King, Jr., is at its thematic center, the book is not merely fictionalized biography. Rather than a book "about" Dr. King, this is a novel suffused by his presence--despite the fact that other characters have more time "on stage." The image of such a well-known figure looming over the story presents both potential opportunities and pitfalls for the author. Johnson's use of interior monologue to take us into the mind of a monumental figure is absolutely deft. Without a living Dr, King to consult, it would seem nearly impossible for anyone else to report what it was like to be the individual at the center of that whirlwind--but Johnson has done just that for us, and done it brilliantly. Historical figures, particularly martyred ones, tend to become, at best, abstractions or, at worst, icons. Johnson rescues King from either of those types of benign neglect and shows him rather as a human whose accomplishments came at the great expense of personal sacrifice. Before his life is lost he has tragically lost almost all time, not only personal time with his family but also time alone to think, to feel, and to continue his own intellectual and spiritual development.

The counterpoint to King is Chaym Smith, a look-alike who resents and admires King, and who trains to become the dreamer's double. As does Lucifer in Paradise Lost, he at times threatens to steal the entire show. Yet Johnson does not take the easy route of making Smith a polar opposite of King. Smith too has gifts, and insights, and aspirations. Instead of being a pole apart, Smith is more like a brother who, by virtue of differing gifts and circumstances, careens along a different path through the universe.

Structurally, neither King nor Smith can be the sustained voice that both frames and caries the novel from beginning to end. That voice belongs to Mathew Bishop, a Nick Caraway style narrator and a worker within the Movement who is all too aware of the margin by which he falls short when he compares himself to Dr. King. Yet Bishop himself has gifts and insights. At the end of the story he is close to the realization that all men and women fall short of an idealized vision of themselves, while at the same time they move inexorably in that direction as long as they keep that selfsame dream alive.

This is not a perfect book, but it is a fine one from a member of that small circle of writers potentially capable of delivering a 10+. At times Johnson uses the device of sections of exposition, set apart in italics, to provide background and to prepare the story for its next move forward. The device works well enough, although occasionally, perhaps because Johnson obviously enjoys research, it risks the peril of stopping too long to tell us too much. But there is such skill in Charles Johnson's craftsmanship, such daring in his willingness each time out to do work that is difficult and important, and such obvious sincerity and empathy in the homage that is Dreamer, it seems almost off-point to notice slight imperfections. Rather, we appreciate the gift we are given here--fiction that achieves the elusive goal of Greek tragedy, showing others to us in a way that enables us to better understand, and to improve, ourselves.

I truthfully just don't get Charles Johnson. He has the makings of a really first rate novelist, but for whatever reason--vanity about his ability to get away with it?, lack of confidence in the value of his work without it?, skewed perceptions?--he clutters up his work with magic and he strains for a vocabulary and an erudition that sound totally unnatural. His National Book Award winner, Middle Passage (see Orrin's review), could have been a terrific book in the classic American nautical adventure tradition of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (see Orrin's review), Moby Dick, Billy Budd (see Orrin's review), Two Years Before the Mast, The Sea Wolf (see Orrin's review), etc.. But in mid-story he added on a storyline involving a mysterious African God and the whole thing went to heck in a handcart. In Dreamer, he's up to the same tricks and it's a shame.

Johnson apparently wrote the book because he wanted to try to understand Martin Luther King as a man and a moral philosopher, absent all of the mythos that has grown up around his martyred memory as a civil rights leader. He does an admirable job of recounting what writings and which theologians most influenced him and of presenting King, in his own words, giving sermons and speeches that develop his own philosophy. But there is another entirely unnecessary, even destructive, plotline in the novel. King's evil twin, Chaym Smith, appears and offers to act as his body double. Smith is violent, profane and cynical but also widely read and deeply philosophical. Johnson plays him off against King with Chaym taking the role of Cain and King of Abel. this allows Johnson room for extended meditations on the Cain/Abel tale, the duality of good and evil, and so on. Eventually, after coaching from aides, Chaym is able to pass for King at public events and even close associates can not tell the two men apart, so that on that fateful day in Memphis, we are no longer sure which one died.

Now, first of all, I just didn't feel that the Smith character added much to the story, In fact, because he so often takes us away from the true Martin Luther king, he is more of a distraction, often bringing the narrative to a screeching halt. But there's a bigger problem with this device; if you're going to use this kind of allegorical feature, you had better think through what you are saying with it. Johnson does not appear to recognize how the comparison to Abel diminishes King. Abel was after all a figure of virtual slavery. He was the gatherer, living off the fat of the land, who found favor in God's eyes precisely because he lived as God intended Man to live before the Fall. It is Cain who represents freedom and Man after the Fall, struggling to raise his own crops independent of God and being rejected by God for this very reason. To allude to King as an Abel like figure, when he is actually one of the great freedom fighters in Man's history, seems to me to be a nearly unforgivable sin. Moreover, the implication that King was a kind of passive, slave like creature does the man a great disservice.

Ultimately, Johnson has produced two books here--one good and one bad. The sections where King is on stage are vibrant and thrilling. They recapture some of the majesty of the man and the movement. The portions featuring Chaym Smith are flashy, particularly as they allow him to use SAT worthy vocabulary words that trip off the tongue like boulders, but they cheapen the rest of the book. He should have stuck to his knitting, dropped the doppelganger and ditched the dictionary.

GRADE: C

DREAMER held a lot of promise and was a very deep read. The story involves Chaym Smith, who offers himself as a decoy/stand-in to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., because he bears too familiar a resemblence to the good Doctor. Told from the perspectives of Dr. King and one of his aides, Matthew Bishop, the novel took us from marches to meetings involving heads of state to the breakdown of Chaym's personality, which was a complete 360 degrees from that of man he was hired to impersonate. The author was able to structure the personalities of the players involved and made the fictional charaters of Matthew and Chaym convincing and compelling. However, the book was so weighed down with thoughts and agendas that were so complex in context, that it was a little hard to get back on track, especially when you have forgotten where you left off, and you are still reading the book. A good read for those wanting something different and four-dimensional.

You know a movie's a hit when the audience remains sitting while the credits roll. A great novel affects me the same way. I'm silently awed by the gift of a powerful story.

Charles Johnson has written such a strong tale. His "hero," Chaym Smith, is an embittered, tattered, unemployed, former mental patient and drunk. He has one gift and one curse. He's brilliant, with a "photographic memory," and he looks exactly like Martin Luther King. Having thoroughly ruined his own life, he volunteers to serve as a double for King. If he dies substituting for the man he honors, at least his life will have meant something.

King reluctantly agrees, and two young workers take Smith to the country to train him in King's body language and speech patterns. Smith is a quick learner, but a frightening debater. He insists equality is impossible. Even in the beginning, God preferred Abel to Cain (a variation of his first name) for unexplained reasons. Still, he'll risk his life for his Abel.

Quoting extensively from King's speeches and colleagues' remembrances, Johnson shows how King's thought was moving beyond the narrow goal of racial equality to the basic Christian concept of self-sacrificing love for all. King wants to lead his people further than white suburbia, to the real Promised Land. Like Christ and Gandhi, his heroes, his prophetic message will generate violence.

Especially in the passages written from King's point of view, Johnson, a National Book Award winner, shows the incredible pressures on a man whose words can provoke riots but not understanding. No matter how familiar the subject seems before you begin reading, this novel will haunt you.

Kathleen T. Choi, HAWAII CATHOLIC HERALD

A provocative novel from a wonderful writer set around a fascinating character--MLK. Johnson does well both in making Martin seem very real, yet in not "overusing" him--the real protagonists are three "Movement" members who move in his orbit and are themselves complex, interesting characters. Lots of food for thought here, including musings on the (sinful) nature of humanity, repeatedly amplified by the mythic story of Cain and Abel, which Johnson uses on several levels. The best part of this book is Johnson's thoughtful condemnation of extreme (intolerant) ideology, as exhibited by separatists black and white. The one flaw, in my view, was Johnson's failure to follow through on the use of MLK's double, Chaym. As the plot nears its climax Chaym is co-opted by the FBI, which intends to use him to discredit MLK--but then Chaym simply disappears from the story. Still, a very worthwhile book.