Resentment. - book reviews

Whenever I see Gary

Indiana's byline in

Artforum, The Village

Voice, or Bomb magazine,

I read the article

immediately. Whether the

subject is painting, literature,

social criticism, pop

culture, or history, Indiana can

brilliantly process diversified

knowledge without leaving the

reader behind. Now, after publishing novels,

stories, and essay collections with small

presses, he's written his commercial

breakout novel, Resentment. It's succulent

trash for people in the know.

Indiana loosely structures his book

around the 1995 Menendez brothers

murder case. The novel's hero, Seth, an

alcoholic journalist, is staying at the

Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood,

Calif., covering the trial and trying to get

an assignment, an expense account, and a

boyfriend. The plot proliferates from

there.

Knowing, behind-the-scenes gossip

helps the reader follow the stories of the

many protagonists rotting together in

Indiana's Los Angeles, where people

"cross vast dead space to get from one

dead thing to another." Whenever I

recognized the thinly veiled art icons

Indiana loves to skewer, I was totally

absorbed in the mean, funny, bitter

takeoffs. When I didn't know whom

Indiana was talking about, the novel faded

for me. But I thought I saw novelist

Jamaica Kincaid, literary icon Joan

Didion, power broker Ingrid Sischy, and

artists Ross Bleckner and Ron Athey,

among many others, all appearing

pseudonymously. (Can you identify the

feuding literary brothers who both

resemble "a third rate middle-brow

Depends ad"? The dyke magazine editor

who came out just in time to save her

reputation? The painter who "was

miserable until he became famous and

now that he's famous he's insufferable"?)

Most hysterical and true is Indiana's

take on the calculated timing of some

celebrities' coming-out moments. He

describes himself as a "marginal eccentric"

who "squandered the cash value of

being a fag by being a public fag before it

could do his career any good." Then he

bemoans the absurdity of our times,

when "someone can push their career

further by posing as a homosexual than

they can being queer."

Indiana tries to parody the kind of

racial stereotyping usually associated

with upscale exposes about Los Angeles,

but it falls flat. I did skim over a few of

the many subplots, but there were still

enough left to keep the novel

action-packed.

Sometimes Indiana hides behind the

voice of the bitter old queen until his

natural fury cracks the veneer and he is

revealed as someone who really cares. As

a participant commentator on the scene

he decries, Indiana is disgusted by the

artifice surrounding him and equally

resentful of his own investment in it.

He's fighting with himself and takes no

prisoners.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Liberation Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group