Michael Holmes

This review is one that I think I didn't get right. It appeared in Quill and Quire in 2000. Interestingly, the digital version that I've kept is different from the version on the Q&Q website, which must be the final edited version. I've posted both versions below.

What didn't I get right? As a reader, I wanted a sense of uplift, even something small, something to signify a sense of hope. I didn't find it. I didn't like not finding it. But isn't that a problem in the reader, not the book. The book is of a dark genre, and as a representative of that genre it succeeds.

*

Watermelon Row
by Michael Holmes
Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000

The great novels of the gutter (think Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, and Kerouac’s Subterraneans) share the following characteristic: their narratives move from despair to hope, from fallen state to redemption. If this seems too Christian, then substitute a movement from chaos to meaning. The gutter novel typically takes its readers on a journey through the prisms of hell – emotional, physical, and psychological – to a new understanding.

Toronto writer Michael Holmes’ debut novel, Watermelon Row, fits into the above category on account of its swirling brutality. Like Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, however, its paucity of realization is its ultimate downfall. While Holmes succeeds in creating a tale of sound and fury, he fails to signify a renewed world order that can be pulled from the chaos.

Watermelon Row follows three male protagonists (Peter, early-20s; Scott, late-30s; and Ed, mid-70s) through a 24-hour period during which each of their hellish lives swings from bad to worse, and then toward an almost coincidental resolution. The local strip club, which all three frequent, links the men and their stories. The characters use machine-gun profanity and share a penchant for abusing just about anyone who dares to get close to them.

Emotional reactionaries, Holmes’ protagonists run on automatic pilot, the nerve endings of their damaged personalities exposed for all to see. The story, like the writing, is overly literal and lacking in imaginative power. It was Shelley who said that we need darkness to make the stars shine bright. Readers who persist through the nihilism will find little spark of meaning in this novel’s multiple conclusions.

*

[below, the original, unedited version]

The great novels of the gutter (one thinks of Henry Miller’s TROPIC OF CANCER; Burrough’s NAKED LUNCH; Kerouac’s SUBTERRANEANS) share at least one characteristic. Their narratives move from despair to hope, fallen state to redemption. If these metaphors are too Christian in their connotation, substitute then a movement from chaos to meaning, complete with a journey through the multiple prisms of hell – emotional, physical, psychological.

Toronto writer Michael Holmes’ debut novel, WATERMELON ROW, falls roughly into the above category. Holmes’ gutter novel follows its three protagonists (one low-20s, one late-30s, one mid-70s) through one twenty-four hour period during which each of their hellish lives swing from bad to worse towards a loose fitting, almost coincidental sense of resolution.

The local strip club serves as the narrative device which links the men and their stories. The men are also linked by their machine-gun profanity and their penchant for abusing just about anyone who dares to get close to them. The phrase men behaving badly is too weak to apply here. The souls of these men went down with the Titanic. They are emotional reactionaries, running on automatic pilot, the nerve endings of their damaged personalities exposed for all the world to see.

Just as Jesus, however, refused to give up on the tax collectors and prostitutes, readers who persist through the nihilism will find a spark of meaning in the novel’s triple conclusion. The movement is not towards stability, but to a moderated chaos.

In STORY, his bible for screenwriters, Robert McKee writes: "scripts fail for one of two reasons: either a glut of meaningless and absurdly violent conflict, or a vacancy of meaningful and honestly expressed conflict." Holmes’ novel suffers on both counts. He succeeds in creating a swirling tale of sound and fury. He fails to signify a level of order that can be pulled from the chaos.