Do Everything in the Dark.

Mitzel, John

Do Everything in the Dark

Gary Indiana

St. Martin's Press / Griffin. 256 pages $12.95

Gary Indiana is the critical coroner of America's walking dead, a vast throng. His book on Andrew Cunanan, Three Month Fever, is pure genius. It is my opinion that he wrote one of the best short story collections in my lifetime, Scar Tissue, which includes his mad-brilliant story, "I Am Candy Jones." In his sixth novel, Do Everything in the Dark (just published in paperback), Indiana examines the tragicomic fate of la vie boheme when all the bright butterflies, full of their dreams and delusions in the big city, slam into the aging game. It continues Indiana's exploration of social anomie and disconnection with his famous scabrous wit. But it is also a chilling chronicle of madness and failure, disastrous life choices and the many ways love dies in a world that a lot of people find increasingly impossible to live in. It's the story of several couples and solitary wanderers through the summer of 2001, as their internationally scattered vacations throw their long-festering incompatibilities and resentments into exotic and unbearable relief. Indiana's large and terrifying cast of America's cultural elite exhibit their worst behavior--although the author does show some sympathy for their fears and fragilities and thwarted good intentions. This is a dark, funny, and mature novel from a seasoned witness to Americans' foibles of the past thirty years.