Customer Reviews

Wakefield

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This review is for the Algonquin Books first edition published in 2004, 288 pages. Andrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter; columnist on National Public Radio; and editor of Exquisite Corpse, an on line literary journal. WAKEFIELD is the most recent of his five published novels. As of October 2005, WAKEFIELD had not entered the USA Today top 150-bestseller list.

The protagonist Wakefield is a middle-aged, ex travel writer now a successful lecturer who jaunts around the States giving ad hoc speeches for lucrative fees. He lives in the Old Quarter, which is definitely the New Orleans French Quarter, although the author studiously avoids using real names for places, brands, companies or organizations.

Wakefield has little contact with his ex, Marianna, even less with his daughter Margot, and has only two friends: Ivan Zamyatin, a Russian émigré cab driver and Zelda, his best ex-girlfriend and travel agent. Wakefield is comfortable with his minimal relationships. He is uninvolved. "I have no interest in people....I just want to be left alone," Wakefield says on page one. Indeed, as a youth, he specialized in finding forgotten spaces where he could hide and spy on the world.

The prologue opens the story in the late twentieth century when Satin visits Wakefield's apartment and tells him it's time to go. Wakefield resists. Fortunately, this particular Devil is old, one of the originals, and his lower back hurts. So, Wakefield invites him in and over a couple of drinks, Wakefield cuts a deal. Ole Satinik agrees to give Wakefield one year more to find his true self, but he must travel and bring something that he thinks the Devil would like from each place he visits; he's not interested Wakefield's soul. "Give me a break," the Devil says. "I'm drowning in souls. It's a buyer's market."

Wakefield goes to the city Typical where he speaks on Money and Poetry (with a detour in Art) and makes love, to Wintry City where his lecture to immigrants at war is a long poem, to the West where he wanders the back roads and talks with the grizzled geezer at the Dead Mule roadhouse, amongst others, and makes love to the olive oil lady, and then to the city of rain where he declines Mr. Redbone's quirkiness. And then he goes Home. It seems Wakefield does have an interest in people, but he does want to be left alone, his true self.

As the dustcover attests, WAKEFIELD is hilarious, comic, a journey in laughter, a tour de force comedy, a trip. I snickered, smirked and laughed out loud. But WAKEFIELD is more than a joke. It is a sardonic essay on contemporary America.

Anyone who catches Codrescu's social commentary on NPR, for which he is famously and justifiably known, will recognize the voice and extended social satire in this. Novel? Living in the Kingdom of Mordor in a time of foreign policy black magic and evil sorcery, full of dark suits like capes barely concealing insatiable greed and lust, I found Wakefield a sane and sardonic respite from the bleak and interminable bad news on same public radio station that reminds me of the mad and relentless hammering at the end of Codrescu's. Novel? Wakefield is my anti-hero. He doesn't have to work a nine-to-five job, has no problems attracting libidinous women, and drinks whiskey with a Bolshevik cab driver at his neighborhood bar. What more could one ask for?

The book Wakefield is very hard for me to review. One second I would love one of main characters (Wakefield) many rambles but then the next I would be looking to skim the entire next rambling. The entire book really not having a plot would bug me one second and then make totally sense the next. Overall, the book was entertaining and actually learned a little but just be prepared to get annoyed a couple times with sections going way too long and not making a ton of sense.

I'm fascinated by the process of picking up books, leafing through them, and deciding which ones to take home. The Thurber House had a book sale not long ago. I went, walked through, and found Andrei Codrescu's recent novel, Wakefield. I read the opening lines, flipped through a few pages, smiled, and moved along, still holding the book; this was one to take home.

As I leaved through the first few pages of the book, I found two references to Russian literature that are rather close to me. The first was an overt mention of Bulgakov's Master and Margarita. The second was less direct, a friend of the protagonist, a poet, philosopher, and taxi cab driver called Ivan Zamyatin, who shares a surname with the author of a book banned by the Soviets of the name Мы.

Wakefield is the story of a man who wasn't ready to go when the devil came to take him. Wakefield is the man who wasn't ready; he lost his way, didn't find his real life, and, well, he just wants another chance. So he makes a deal with the devil: he has to get out in the world and find his real life. He has one year to do the deed, and he needs to bring back a gift from each place that he visits, an object that will help to prove that he has found his true life.

Wakefield is an author of travel books; he lectures on travel, art, money, architecture, and pretty much anything that people will pay him to talk about. This gives him plenty of opportunity for travel, plenty of places-typical and not-to visit, and plenty of people to get to know. Not being one to prepare his talks ahead of time, Wakefield also has plenty of opportunity for taking inspiration from his hecklers and being just as surprised by the contents of his talks as his audience.

While most of us have not consciously made a deal with the devil, the fact is that most of us do wander through the events of our days in search of our real lives. Of all of the options we have before us, why do we make the choices that we do? Did we choose well? Have we been giving our attention to the things that will matter most to us when we find that we've reached the end of our days?

By allowing us to watch Wakefield as he deals with these fundamental questions, Codrescu gives us an opportunity to consider them for ourselves, in our own lives. If we're not happy with what we did yesterday, we can behave differently today.

"Get a life!" That's an oft used phrase, and precisely what the Devil orders motivational speaker Wakefield to do. Actually, Wakefield has no choice - this isn't an order, it's an ultimatum.

"Time's up," says Satan, so find yourself a real life or sign off on living.

Little choice here, so Wakefield goes in an often hilarious trek across the country trying to make contact with who he's supposed to be and where he's supposed to be. He has a year in which to accomplish this (remember what happens to those who make bargains with the devil).

Along the way he runs into every kind of outre character, the strangest phenomenons in our contemporary society, and a few women. Of course, Wakefield pontificates along the way.

Thanks to the experienced voice and understanding of Jeff Woodman what could have been a farcical reading is instead 10 hours of pleasure. Satire is sometimes difficult to deliver - Woodman's totally in control.

- Gail Cooke

Maybe Andrei Codrescu is liked by many people, undoubtedly he is because he has a number of books out.

However, I only was able to read about half of this book and put it down. I am a person who hardly ever puts a book down, as I will garind my way through most of them, but this one went down.

Don't know what others see in it, but as for me, forget it.

Sorry about that.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"