Life > April 17, 2008

By Jacob Bathanti | Staff writer

The Mayor’s Tongue is the debut novel of Nathaniel Rich, the 27-year old prodigy editor at The Paris Review.

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It is palpably a first novel. The sweeping ambition of the story declares this to be so: intertwining a host of allegorical meditations on the creative role of the author with multiple examinations of people communicating with one another in the space of 310 pages is an archetypal example of authorial overreaching. That the novel succeeds at all is a tribute to Rich’s talent.

The novel follows two separate but conjoined stories about New Yorkers. One is that of Eugene Brentani, the son of an emotionally distant Italian widower who takes a job with a moving company. While at work one day, he meets Abe Chisholm, the biographer of his literary idol, the debauched and brilliant Constance Eakins. Eugene takes a new job as Chisholm’s assistant, and promptly falls for his daughter, Sonia. But when Sonia disappears on a trip to Italy, Eugene travels to Trieste to look for her.

At roughly the same time, the aging Mr. Schmitz is confronted with twin crises: his wife is dying, and his best friend Rutherford has also disappeared in Italy. Schmitz gropes his way through this nightmare world, fumbling to construct a coherent narrative from his life. This quest eventually takes him to the mountains near Trieste, where he and Rutherford were stationed during World War II.

This theme of writing as creation is infused through the book, and virtually everybody in it writes, although whether they actually communicate anything in their writing is another matter altogether. Eugene is translating his housemate’s novel from a rare Dominican dialect to English. Abe is writing Eakins’ biography, forming from school report cards a portrait of a man he idolizes. Schmitz is writing his memoirs, starting with just before he was born; his wife expresses herself only when she writes in her journal; and the towering figure of Eakins is, of course, a writer. This tea is a heady brew – Rich is setting up his proto-authors almost as little gods, writing themselves into their own creation stories. The elaboration of this theme leading up to a morally ambiguous ending that gave me chills, but is not clearly necessary to the story. While the book contains sections of incredible beauty – a pair of seahorses waltzing in their tank by night is a new favorite passage of mine – the occasionally choppy writing also declares this novel to be Rich’s first.

His word choice is sometimes inexplicably inappropriate, and some passages feel skewed or could have been excised altogether. And he is prone to tell the readers, rather than show them, the internal states of his characters. Calling the act of biting into a rotting crab apple “a mock heroic gesture” is better than merely using “heroically” to modify the verb, but it would be better still to let the reader infer the facetious gallantry of Eugene’s act, which is intended to impress Sonia.

The last section feels the surest, and assuming that Rich wrote The Mayor’s Tongue more or less chronologically over the five years for which he worked on it, this makes sense — the novel seems to have improved as its author found his feet. Towards the end of the book, such spare sentences as “Night up here in the mountain is long and silent. It’s as if even the sparrows are afraid to fly so high,” take on an almost axiomatic potency, conveying the aridity of loneliness without ever using the word.

None of this should be taken to validate the silly cliché that first novels are by definition doomed to failure; nor should it be misconstrued to imply that Rich is a bad writer.

The Mayor’s Tongue succeeds in spite of certain flaws because of Rich’s tremendous affection and sympathy for his characters and because of his skill in imparting this to his readers.

He creates portraits of impressive acuity and tenderness. The interactions of Schmitz and his wife, dysfunctional as they may be, are also incredibly moving.

Rich’s great strength in this book is that he seems to really care about his characters, and so he makes us care about them too. In a novel with so much of the allegory to it, this is not to be underestimated — such books are never more irritating than when their characters are cookies stamped out to make a point. Reading this, it actually mattered to me that Schmitz would wake up with his dying wife’s hand on his shoulder or that Eugene would yearn to reunite with Sonia. I wanted these characters to end up happy, to thrive.

This is the vein of talent that makes The Mayor’s Tongue a valuable book and portends good things for Rich’s literary future. He seems to want the best for his characters. That he wants this is a tribute to his empathy; that he does not necessarily give this to them is in keeping with his idea of the author as god. What it means that he does not make a clear moral judgment on this thought is entirely up for grabs.

Despite its shortcomings, it’s worth reading The Mayor’s Tongue to delve into this question for oneself.