| Visit our companion sites The New Canon A guide to outstanding works of fiction published since 1985 Conceptual Fiction Celebrating masterworks of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history and magical realism Great Books Guide A look at contemporary currents in literature |
| Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl |
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
The postmodern novel is a slippery thing. It easily
collapses into self-parody or even an attack on its own
sustaining principles. After all, when everything is
deconstructed, why should the
deconstructor be exempted?
When the pundit insists that
“no standpoint is privileged
and no discourse is objectively
true,” the most appropriate
response is: “Same to you,
buddy.”
As a result, the most ardently
deconstructive novels of recent
memory—such as House of Leaves
or Infinite Jest or Special Topics in Calamity Physics—are
perhaps best read as savage attacks on post-modernism,
even while they imbibe it as their mother’s milk.. These
books are multilayered, but not in the conventional way of
inviting interpretation of their symbolic meanings, rather in
their complex attitude toward meaning in general. They are
the literary equivalents of the snake swallowing its own tail.
Marisha Pessl’s brilliant debut novel, Special Topics in
Calamity Physics, does just this, but with such panache and
plotting and pacing—the three P’s, despised by academics
but beloved by readers—that it would be shame to dwell
too much on the abstract and pedantic aspects of this
novel, and its parodic treatment of postmodern excesses.
Fat chance . . . Pessl herself won't let you miss these
elements. She hits you over the head with the faux
professorial trappings of her book on every page.
The individual chapters are labeled as though they were
required texts on a syllabus. Chapter one, for example, is
called “OTHELLO, William Shakespeare.” Chapter two is
named “THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS YOUNG
MAN, James Joyce,” etc. etc. The concluding section of the
novel is in the form of final exam for a college class in
three sections: true or false questions, multiple choice and
an essay. Along the way, Pessl packs her novel full of
citations of other books—ranging from the plausible to the
frivolous (but don’t waste your time trying to track down
the apocryphal sources)—as well as provides visual aids,
and various highbrow and lowbrow cultural references.
The gamesmanship starts with the very title of Pessl’s book,
with its overtones of a Festschrift and plot-predicting hints of
Academics Gone Wild (which might have been an even more
suitable name for this novel).
Yet these trappings are misleading in the highest degree.
They convey an image of jaunty playfulness and
Nabokovian-Joycean experimentation. Yet Special Topics in
Calamity Physics is one of the most tightly plotted, carefully
constructed narratives that I have read in recent years. The
chapter headings and references may suggest a book that
goes off in various directions, plays with a range of
discourses, and breaks all the rules; but Pessl has actually
constructed an elaborate whodunit, full of hidden clues,
red herrings, misdirection, mistaken motives and various
other old-fashioned tricks of the storyteller’s trade. For
every ounce of Pynchon, there is a pound of Agatha
Christie—but with a self-conscious mastery of current
trends in (no, not calamity physics) narrative structure far
beyond anything the grand dame of mysteries would have
ever have broached.
The end result is a book that is flashy and fun, but also as
well thought out as an elaborate game of chess. The
opening gambit seems straightforward enough. Blue van
Meer is a precocious teenage girl, trying to adapt to cliques
and cattiness in a new school. Her mother was killed in a
car accident when Blue was five, and her father, Gareth
van Meer, is an academic frequently on the move, leading
to an unstable if stimulating life for his daughter. The set-
up is familiar, but where Pessl takes this story will defy any
predictions you make 50 or 100 pages into the book.
For her senior year in high school, Gareth decides that he
will stay in the same town for a whole year—an
unprecedented move for this peripatetic scholar—so Blue
can have a placid interval before heading off to the Ivy
League. Alas, placidity will be the last thing she will find in
her new setting. Here the brainy teen is enlisted into the
most elitist, and most peculiar, clique in the whole school:
the so-called "blue bloods," a cabal of eccentric students
who hang out with their charming and mysterious teacher,
Hannah Schneider.
But if you think this is The Breakfast Club or even The Dead
Poet’s Society, think again. What seems to be a standard
coming-of-age tale morphs into a murder mystery . . . then
into a book of political intrigue, among other things.
Nothing is what is seems in Pessl’s story, and almost every
character—and the characters here sparkle and intrigue by
turns—presents a puzzle, both to Blue and to the reader.
Everything does fit together in the end, and this is one of
those rare novels that really delivers a knock-out punch at
its conclusion. But you would probably need to read the
novel two or three times to comprehend all the moving
parts in Pessl’s construction. Not everyone will be
persuaded, of course, by Pessl’s elaborate Chinese puzzle
box of a narrative, and certainly there are those who will be
hesitant to canonize any first novel so soon after
publication. Above all, a work this flashy inevitably elicits
snide remarks from critics who prefer the small, intimate
narratives that are the stock-in-trade of the publishing
industry (and writing schools) these days.
I can understand all of these reservations. You shouldn’t
try to dazzle, unless you are ready to deliver the goods. But
by my measure, the goods have been delivered and came in
wrapping paper with ribbon and bow. The bottom line: this
is more than just dazzle, and gets into the realm of razzle-
dazzle. (No, Northrop Frye never authorized those
evaluative terms; but I find it so cathartic to toss them out.)
Even so, I’m not sure I would advise other writers to
imitate Special Topics in Calamity Physics—perhaps we need
one of those “don’t’ try this at home” disclaimers on the
cover.
Ted Gioia's latest book is The Birth (and Death) of the
Cool.
The postmodern novel is a slippery thing. It easily
collapses into self-parody or even an attack on its own
sustaining principles. After all, when everything is
deconstructed, why should the
deconstructor be exempted?
When the pundit insists that
“no standpoint is privileged
and no discourse is objectively
true,” the most appropriate
response is: “Same to you,
buddy.”
As a result, the most ardently
deconstructive novels of recent
memory—such as House of Leaves
or Infinite Jest or Special Topics in Calamity Physics—are
perhaps best read as savage attacks on post-modernism,
even while they imbibe it as their mother’s milk.. These
books are multilayered, but not in the conventional way of
inviting interpretation of their symbolic meanings, rather in
their complex attitude toward meaning in general. They are
the literary equivalents of the snake swallowing its own tail.
Marisha Pessl’s brilliant debut novel, Special Topics in
Calamity Physics, does just this, but with such panache and
plotting and pacing—the three P’s, despised by academics
but beloved by readers—that it would be shame to dwell
too much on the abstract and pedantic aspects of this
novel, and its parodic treatment of postmodern excesses.
Fat chance . . . Pessl herself won't let you miss these
elements. She hits you over the head with the faux
professorial trappings of her book on every page.
The individual chapters are labeled as though they were
required texts on a syllabus. Chapter one, for example, is
called “OTHELLO, William Shakespeare.” Chapter two is
named “THE PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS YOUNG
MAN, James Joyce,” etc. etc. The concluding section of the
novel is in the form of final exam for a college class in
three sections: true or false questions, multiple choice and
an essay. Along the way, Pessl packs her novel full of
citations of other books—ranging from the plausible to the
frivolous (but don’t waste your time trying to track down
the apocryphal sources)—as well as provides visual aids,
and various highbrow and lowbrow cultural references.
The gamesmanship starts with the very title of Pessl’s book,
with its overtones of a Festschrift and plot-predicting hints of
Academics Gone Wild (which might have been an even more
suitable name for this novel).
Yet these trappings are misleading in the highest degree.
They convey an image of jaunty playfulness and
Nabokovian-Joycean experimentation. Yet Special Topics in
Calamity Physics is one of the most tightly plotted, carefully
constructed narratives that I have read in recent years. The
chapter headings and references may suggest a book that
goes off in various directions, plays with a range of
discourses, and breaks all the rules; but Pessl has actually
constructed an elaborate whodunit, full of hidden clues,
red herrings, misdirection, mistaken motives and various
other old-fashioned tricks of the storyteller’s trade. For
every ounce of Pynchon, there is a pound of Agatha
Christie—but with a self-conscious mastery of current
trends in (no, not calamity physics) narrative structure far
beyond anything the grand dame of mysteries would have
ever have broached.
The end result is a book that is flashy and fun, but also as
well thought out as an elaborate game of chess. The
opening gambit seems straightforward enough. Blue van
Meer is a precocious teenage girl, trying to adapt to cliques
and cattiness in a new school. Her mother was killed in a
car accident when Blue was five, and her father, Gareth
van Meer, is an academic frequently on the move, leading
to an unstable if stimulating life for his daughter. The set-
up is familiar, but where Pessl takes this story will defy any
predictions you make 50 or 100 pages into the book.
For her senior year in high school, Gareth decides that he
will stay in the same town for a whole year—an
unprecedented move for this peripatetic scholar—so Blue
can have a placid interval before heading off to the Ivy
League. Alas, placidity will be the last thing she will find in
her new setting. Here the brainy teen is enlisted into the
most elitist, and most peculiar, clique in the whole school:
the so-called "blue bloods," a cabal of eccentric students
who hang out with their charming and mysterious teacher,
Hannah Schneider.
But if you think this is The Breakfast Club or even The Dead
Poet’s Society, think again. What seems to be a standard
coming-of-age tale morphs into a murder mystery . . . then
into a book of political intrigue, among other things.
Nothing is what is seems in Pessl’s story, and almost every
character—and the characters here sparkle and intrigue by
turns—presents a puzzle, both to Blue and to the reader.
Everything does fit together in the end, and this is one of
those rare novels that really delivers a knock-out punch at
its conclusion. But you would probably need to read the
novel two or three times to comprehend all the moving
parts in Pessl’s construction. Not everyone will be
persuaded, of course, by Pessl’s elaborate Chinese puzzle
box of a narrative, and certainly there are those who will be
hesitant to canonize any first novel so soon after
publication. Above all, a work this flashy inevitably elicits
snide remarks from critics who prefer the small, intimate
narratives that are the stock-in-trade of the publishing
industry (and writing schools) these days.
I can understand all of these reservations. You shouldn’t
try to dazzle, unless you are ready to deliver the goods. But
by my measure, the goods have been delivered and came in
wrapping paper with ribbon and bow. The bottom line: this
is more than just dazzle, and gets into the realm of razzle-
dazzle. (No, Northrop Frye never authorized those
evaluative terms; but I find it so cathartic to toss them out.)
Even so, I’m not sure I would advise other writers to
imitate Special Topics in Calamity Physics—perhaps we need
one of those “don’t’ try this at home” disclaimers on the
cover.
Ted Gioia's latest book is The Birth (and Death) of the
Cool.
| Click on image to purchase |
| ROGUES GALLERY: MARISHA PESSL |
Depending on whom you consult, this
author is Hitchcockian or Nabokovian or
just Tartt-ish. (Slow down, fellas….that’s
Donna-Tartt-ish, not Mae West tartish.)
After two failed previous attempts to write a
novel, Marisha
Pessl struck the
big time with her
third attempt,
Special Topics in
Calamity Physics.
Along came a six-
figure advance, a
debut on The
New York Times
bestseller list, and
a stack of literary honors and accolades.
The biggest scandal behind the book was the
agonizing decision her editor faced over
whether to include an author’s photo or not.
"It would be so easy to tart up the
marketing," editor Carole DeSanti told the
press. And in that instance, it wasn’t
concerns about coming across as Donna-
Tartt-ish that were being raised. But the
proof here was in the plotting, not to
mention the prose and pluck of the thing.
This postmodern thriller stands out as one
of the most impressive literary debuts of the
day. And, for no extra charge, comes with
footnotes, illustrations and a final exam to
test your reading acumen.
author is Hitchcockian or Nabokovian or
just Tartt-ish. (Slow down, fellas….that’s
Donna-Tartt-ish, not Mae West tartish.)
After two failed previous attempts to write a
novel, Marisha
Pessl struck the
big time with her
third attempt,
Special Topics in
Calamity Physics.
Along came a six-
figure advance, a
debut on The
New York Times
bestseller list, and
a stack of literary honors and accolades.
The biggest scandal behind the book was the
agonizing decision her editor faced over
whether to include an author’s photo or not.
"It would be so easy to tart up the
marketing," editor Carole DeSanti told the
press. And in that instance, it wasn’t
concerns about coming across as Donna-
Tartt-ish that were being raised. But the
proof here was in the plotting, not to
mention the prose and pluck of the thing.
This postmodern thriller stands out as one
of the most impressive literary debuts of the
day. And, for no extra charge, comes with
footnotes, illustrations and a final exam to
test your reading acumen.
| New Angles on an Old Genre |
| Postmodern Mystery |
| Postmodern Mystery is a web site devoted to experimental, unconventional and postmodern approaches to stories of mystery and suspense |
Further Clues:
An Interview with Marisha Pessl
Facebook Page for Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Special Topics in Calamity Physics: What Does it Mean?
(Spoiler Alert)
An Interview with Marisha Pessl
Facebook Page for Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Special Topics in Calamity Physics: What Does it Mean?
(Spoiler Alert)
| Follow Ted Gioia on Twitter at www.twitter.com/tedgioia |