{"id":14820,"date":"2015-01-13T00:01:27","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T04:01:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=14820"},"modified":"2015-01-12T16:18:10","modified_gmt":"2015-01-12T20:18:10","slug":"j-robert-lennon-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/01\/13\/j-robert-lennon-castle\/","title":{"rendered":"J. Robert Lennon: Castle<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems a quirk of the genre that war novels very often take a long time to surface after the events they depict.\u00a0Of the category\u2019s compulsory reads, Michael\u00a0Shaara’s\u00a0The Killer Angels<\/em> (review here<\/a>) wasn\u2019t written until over a hundred years after the Battle of Gettysburg, sixteen years separated the end of World War\u00a0II from the publication of Joseph Heller’s\u00a0Catch-22<\/em>, which was itself followed seven years later by Kurt Vonnegut’s\u00a0Slaughterhouse-Five<\/em>. More recent releases also support this trend; Matterhorn<\/em>, Karl Marlantes’ much anticipated 2010\u00a0novel, is about events which took place in Vietnam in 1969.\u00a0Perhaps this explains why the war on terror, which has run for thirteen years and looks set for at least thirteen more, has yet to produce a piece of seminal fiction.\u00a0Most of what has been written about the period is memoir or “secret history” of questionable provenance and accuracy, evidenced by the tawdry public dispute over exactly who killed Osama bin Laden.\u00a0Perhaps writers of fiction need important periods of history and those who took part in them to have been unjustly forgotten, or that the collective memories societies hold of them require adjustment or additional contribution.\u00a0That the war on terror obstinately refuses to join history may explain why it is that it has produced little fiction synonymous with it.\u00a0A notable exception is not encouraging; John Updike\u2019s Terrorist<\/em> is regarded by several reviewers as one of the worst novels ever produced by a great author.\u00a0J. Robert Lennon\u2019s Castle<\/em> (2009) is a tentative attempt to reconnoitre the genre, but lack of clarity over its purpose means it fails to quite fulfil its ambition.<\/p>\n

\"Castle\"<\/p>\n

Castle feels like it intends to be an Iraq novel in the same way as many read Taxi Driver<\/em> to be a Vietnam film.\u00a0However, Eric Loesche,\u00a0our Iraq veteran and main character in Castle<\/em>, is no Travis Bickle.\u00a0He arrives to the town of his upbringing in upstate New York having bought a “fixer upper” of a house and some surrounding land.\u00a0During the novel\u2019s early stages, a series of unsubtle clues to his background are provided.\u00a0He dwells on a Support The Troops car sticker, refuses to accompany an electrician into the house\u2019s cellar with its stone walls and single bare light bulb, tosses a book featuring a passage of apparently harmless psychology theory across the room, eschews friendship and sometimes even conviviality.\u00a0Allusions are made to his being removed from the military, and locals — workmen, bar staff — clearly know more about the circumstances than the reader.<\/p>\n

We realize very soon that Loesche is not only renovating his house but also apparently cleansing his soul.\u00a0Of what, however, is only hinted at.\u00a0The resultant realization is that this novel is not only about what will happen but also what has already happened and how the two will clash.\u00a0The challenge facing Lennon, then, is that Loesche\u2019s “back story,” to borrow a modern clich\u00e9, must be sufficiently chartbusting to match the suspense created by the intrigues of the present.\u00a0These include redaction of the house\u2019s deeds to obscure the identity of a former owner, a nagging and vague shrieking sound Loesche begins to hear at night, an apparently portentous white furred deer, and the discovery of a stone structure in the land\u2019s woods which, in gothic horror story style, is full of foreboding and dread.\u00a0Some of this puts us in fairly routine (one in a particularly critical mood may say hackneyed) territory, but even so it works.\u00a0To deviate from this and introduce Iraq relatively late in the novel is an attempt to provide gravitas which is not achieved and not necessary to achieve the sort of novel Castle<\/em> ought to be, the type that GK Chesterton classified as a “good bad book.”<\/p>\n

As may be inferred, Castle has a number of merits.\u00a0Primary amongst them is the portrayal of Loesche and the vibrant rendering of his rather extreme personality.\u00a0This is blended with an economical and impassive prose which Lennon chose, wisely, to deliver in the first person.\u00a0Loesche is a man of few emotions, but of considerable self-awareness.\u00a0Take these:<\/p>\n

I am a highly organized and energetic person and accustomed to getting things accomplished quickly and thoroughly.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And:<\/p>\n

I am not deeply moved by beauty, and in fact may even be incapable of appreciating or even recognizing it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

I make my most important decisions according to the facts on the ground, and do not allow the past or some sentimental interpretation of it, to interfere with my current actions.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Much of what makes Loesche so compelling for the first third or so of this novel is the interaction between the reader\u2019s awareness that he is keeping something from us and his unreliability.\u00a0Indeed, he receives an accidental crack on the head about a third of the way through which raises the possibility of everything hence being an invention.\u00a0An author who uses an unreliable narrator asks for extra trust; the difficulty in Castle<\/em> is that the trust is taken too far.\u00a0Loesche persists in making “discoveries” of things he cannot possibly have forgotten, including a building where he spent two childhood summers.\u00a0And yet the reader is supposed to suspend credulity for long enough to think this passes muster, especially when Loesche\u2019s reminiscences of childhood are provided in considerable detail. Much literature depends on the reader wilfully volunteering to suspend disbelief, but the author has to keep his side of the bargain too.\u00a0Some of the finest literature ever penned makes supreme use of the unreliable narrator — Lolita<\/em>, One Flew Over The Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/em>, The Catcher In The Rye<\/em> — but when it is employed without due care, one rather begins to mistrust J. Robert Lennon instead of Eric Loesche. And as the novel makes its way to a detention facility in Iraq, we seem to lose Loesche and are instead offered Lennon\u2019s view of what he thinks it is that detention facilities say about what the book\u2019s blurb monotonously calls “America\u2019s recent foreign misadventures.” “Oh, just mention Iraq,” one can almost hear the publisher shout across the office. “It\u2019s bound to sell!”<\/p>\n

Our mission was a failure. We had discovered close to nothing about the enemy, except how to hurt him.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Where Lennon has the most to say he is the least impressive. This is exacerbated by clumsy detail; there are no 19-year-old female interrogators, there are no Chief Warrant Officers from the military intelligence branch being sent to help build detention facilities. There are no conceivable circumstances which would allow a war-zone interrogation to take place in someone\u2019s office. And certainly no American serviceman could get a personally owned family heirloom firearm in full working order smuggled into a theatre of war.\u00a0Or if they did, it would require explaining exactly how.<\/p>\n

Overall, this novel is, for most of its relatively short length, an enjoyable journey which, alas, is not matched by its destination.\u00a0It should have moderated the scale of its ambition and need not have headed for Iraq; what transpires to have taken place in Loesche\u2019s childhood would be ample explanation for the state of mind so convincingly portrayed throughout the early chapters.\u00a0It is fine that Lennon wants to talk about Iraq, even if what he does say is fairly insipid for such a grave and important topic, but he chose the wrong novel in which to do it.\u00a0It also detracts from what is for most of the novel a very effective portrait of Loesche, but the shift of focus means that the novel ceases to be about him when he is our company for every word of it.\u00a0This is doubly frustrating when an earlier Lennon novel, the brilliant Mailman<\/em>, profoundly succeeded in creating a truly memorable comic grotesque and misanthrope in Albert Lippincott, who, if one were in a generous spirit, could be said to stand comparison with Ignatius J. Reilly of John Kennedy Toole’s\u00a0A Confederacy Of Dunces<\/em>.\u00a0Mailman<\/em>, though, knows what sort of novel it is and sticks to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We unintentionally keep the focus on J. Robert Lennon this wee as Chris reviews the author’s 2009 novel, Castle<\/em>. Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":14821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Chris reviews J. Robert Lennon's 2009 novel Castle:","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[703],"tags":[],"coauthors":[620],"class_list":["post-14820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-j-robert-lennon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Castle.jpg?fit=317%2C475&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-3R2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14820"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14823,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14820\/revisions\/14823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14820"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=14820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}