Depraved Indifference

Rating:
Summary: Do you want to meet these people?
Review: Depraved Indifference by Gary Indiana

Even by his name you know the author will be a clever boy.

Ten pages into Depraved Indifference it is difficult to see why to read a novel about a chaotic, scheming, abusive, rich Elizabeth Taylor lookalike who was found guilty on charges of enslaving her household staff. Plus she is supposedly based on a real life person. Yech. The other main characters, one a drunk, gloating California businessman and the other, a delusions-of-grandeur mama's boy, offered even less enticement.

It is easy to track the main characters that change their names frequently. Tracking secondary characters requires concentration.

Indiana's vocabulary seems like he played a little game of including Dictionary.com's word of the day every day.

Then why read this? For a change of pace. Indiana is a hip NYer so reading his fiction is a vicarious piece of hip. When you live in the desert how else would you have contact with hip? Because the NYers have second homes here? Not the ones I want to read about. Since one only occasionally recognizes karmic returns in real life why not settle for the clarity of fiction? Read it to find out that the lead thief is ashamed of her indifference to humankind? Okay, that's not a reason to read it.

There is incest, child abuse, and infidelity included in a whole range of misbehavior. It doesn't seem funny when some old hag usurps her son's budding sexuality or when the only person she can express love and tenderness to is the most victimized kid on the planet. Some people probably think it's a hoot though.

The reason I checked out Indiana's fiction was a 2004 New York Magazine article about East Village artists. Since Indiana professes to have been in love with Cookie Mueller maybe he will utilize her positive outlook amidst seemingly negative circumstance. I liked his Village Voice Susan Sontag eulogy too. For a hip guy who you would assume would excel at viciousness he is the most charming when he writes about who and what he knows and loves.

By page 200 I am still wondering why I am supposed to want to read about snakepit people. At least he doesn't love them. I double-check money accounts to make sure my puny assets are still intact. Is this some cautionary tale of how and where identity thieves operate? Do those-in-the-know chortle, recognizing the real life people these characters are modeled on? Is it a modern Dickens story, bringing characters from the beginning back into the plot? Where is the sympathetic character navigating the Dickensian twists?

Towards end when you think things should be wrapping up the author is still bringing in new characters.

When the main characters finally try New York (why not New York? They wore out their welcome everywhere else) the locals recognize them as obvious cons. There's an idea: Herd these people to New York where the game is over.

Indiana resists torquing his plot into a potential Hollywood hit with some investigator helping the feisty daughter-from-the-previous-marriage con the cons and walk off with all the loot. It would have been a logical conclusion since the conneds' names and social security numbers are on the documents.

I wouldn't recommend the book to my next door neighbor who has been battling identity theft for a few years. It is too irrelevant to what his experience has been (including his own minor cons) and too indifferent.

The subject matter is timely. Lots of people are willing to maneuver numbers in illegal ways (steal) rather than work for a living.

The thieves are creative and active in their approach to survival. Financially, they thrive. When you are a working stiff theft seems wrong but admirable. Living outside the rules seems disorderly but more alive. Immorality doesn't impair ones ability to sleep at night. Being victimized impairs your ability to sleep. It seems funny when the dog or the magpies steal. Still, it would have been all right to never read about the characters in this book.

You could say it didn't cost anything to read this novel but aside from the cost of the book it cost me one day skiing.


Rating:
Summary: Cynical clowning
Review: Having trounced recklessly over the real lives of protagonists of recent well known trgedies (the murders by the Menendez Brothers of their parents; the murder of Versace by a disturbed hanger-on) and having resorted to the camouflage of "fiction" (or "faction" as it is being called) in order to allow himself the license to be as clowningly cruel as he apparently cherishes being, Indiana trudges on to another tragic real-life case, the case of Sante Kimes and her son. Certainly they were sociopaths, but Indiana is so intent on sketching cartoonish characters and being cloyingly "cute" that he brings no insight to bear on the real-life protgonists or the extremity of their actions, larceny, arson, etc. In the process, and with childish glee, he ridicules everything and everyone, including Mexican maids, skipping past the truly disturbing implications of incest (as he did in his book on the violated Menendez brothers). And his prose! His "sentences" are so tangled in wayward phrases that they wind about themselves and choke any meaning he may have intended. Only a reader who wants to see how bad a "novel" can be, will have the stomach to plow past even the first few pages of this truly obnoxious performance.

Rating:
Summary: The real "Mickey Landry" speaks
Review: I was the model for Mickey Landry in Indiana's latest faction. Having actually been on the Kimes case before Kimes became chic, I must say that the satirical portrayal of this deadly mother son team, does nothing but trivialize their crimes. I would rather see thought provoking exploration into how the mind of a female predator works. What makes Sante Kimes tick? What could have possibly happened to her to create such a monster. She is not a comic character, or some sort of twisted folk hero. She is truly evil. The style of Indiana's writing is not what bothered me, rather it was the flippant treatment of quiet, seething and pathological evil which is glorified and its victims satirized.

Rating:
Summary: Challenging, shocking; not for everyone
Review: Pay no attention to those who gleefuly eviscerated this book - it's a triumph of wit, style and narrative structure. Indiana takes a tabloidy crime story worthy of a Lifetime movie (this one actually was) and gives it layers and layers of style and nuance. It's like R. Crumb re-writing a story from the National Enquirer: darkly comic, elaborately imagined, terrifying. It hardly skims over incest - Indiana brings both mother and son to excruciatingly detailed inner life. The novel is a risk-taker in both prose and ideas, and it's not entirely successful, but its characters, images and whacked-out turns of phrase sting and linger.

Rating:
Summary: The real "Mickey Landry" speaks
Review: the darkest sides of human nature are not always easy to look at - but there is a value in doing so. and there is a value to those storytellers amongst us who can live inside the heads of characters as venal, narcissistic and evil as these.

i loved Indiana's writing. his descriptions of, say, the industrial wastelands of newark, new jersey are downright beautiful, and surprising, drawing parallels between the characters in the novel and the environments they find themselves, and besides I like a good run on sentence since I'm not the sort of person who believes in strict formulas or is immune to the charms of an idiosyncratic intellect suffused with style exercising little restraint in turning a phrase.

not a book for everyone, but I for one will be seeking out and reading other works from Indiana.

Rating:
Summary: deal with it...
Review: the darkest sides of human nature are not always easy to look at - but there is a value in doing so. and there is a value to those storytellers amongst us who can live inside the heads of characters as venal, narcissistic and evil as these.

i loved Indiana's writing. his descriptions of, say, the industrial wastelands of newark, new jersey are downright beautiful, and surprising, drawing parallels between the characters in the novel and the environments they find themselves, and besides I like a good run on sentence since I'm not the sort of person who believes in strict formulas or is immune to the charms of an idiosyncratic intellect suffused with style exercising little restraint in turning a phrase.

not a book for everyone, but I for one will be seeking out and reading other works from Indiana.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, yet Flawed
Review: The idea of writing a fictionalized account of the Santee Kimes case is a good one. As is often mentioned, truth is stranger than fiction and sometimes more interesting too. That's especially true of a case so depraved and evil as this one. In fact, I would worry if someone could make up what happened in this case without knowing the previous facts.

Gary Indiana is a very talented writer and communicator and he proves it through much of this book. The problem is that he isn't always that consistent. There were times when I marvelled at how vividly he described a character or a scene. There were times when I couldn't put the book down because the action of what was being told was so compelling.

Unfortunately there were also a number of times when I had to put the book down and re-read passages to figure out where I was in the story. I know some of the is done for effect and is part of his style, but there are times when I think that he needs to pay a little more attention to the actual craft and discipline of being a writer. While Indiana is describing events that are hard to reconstruct and retell and that he does so in different voice, he could have made it easier to read at times.

With that criticism, I still might seek out the other two books of this trilogy. Depraved Indifference can not be considered as high-minded literature; in fact, it's about as lurid of a book you'll ever find. Still, I'm drawn to it and think Indiana demonstrates unique talent.

In summary, I guess I would recommend the book with my qualifications and look forward to new work in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, yet Flawed
Review: The idea of writing a fictionalized account of the Santee Kimes case is a good one. As is often mentioned, truth is stranger than fiction and sometimes more interesting too. That's especially true of a case so depraved and evil as this one. In fact, I would worry if someone could make up what happened in this case without knowing the previous facts.

Gary Indiana is a very talented writer and communicator and he proves it through much of this book. The problem is that he isn't always that consistent. There were times when I marvelled at how vividly he described a character or a scene. There were times when I couldn't put the book down because the action of what was being told was so compelling.

Unfortunately there were also a number of times when I had to put the book down and re-read passages to figure out where I was in the story. I know some of the is done for effect and is part of his style, but there are times when I think that he needs to pay a little more attention to the actual craft and discipline of being a writer. While Indiana is describing events that are hard to reconstruct and retell and that he does so in different voice, he could have made it easier to read at times.

With that criticism, I still might seek out the other two books of this trilogy. Depraved Indifference can not be considered as high-minded literature; in fact, it's about as lurid of a book you'll ever find. Still, I'm drawn to it and think Indiana demonstrates unique talent.

In summary, I guess I would recommend the book with my qualifications and look forward to new work in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Yet another mess
Review: This is the final volume in what is purported to be a trilogy--Indian's take on three famous crimes. The previous one, about the murder of Versace, is now in abridged form. Now "Depraved Indifference" appears, and it is ready for abridgement, apparently not having been edited. Indian's take on the notorious Sante Kimes case, in which she and her son, duped a pitiful old woman, is as reckless as his previous versions of the Menendez case and the Versace murder. Indian seems to think he can trounce over sensitive matters for the sake of "satire", and everything is there for him to sneer at, including Mexican maids. If the writing were good, one might excuse the skewed view; but Indian writes the kind of prose that leaves you befuddled. The only fascination this "novel" provides is in seeing how far Indian will go in torturing the language and aiming his (little) guns at cases that have troubling implications, implicaions that a truly good writer might explore. That writer, however, is NOT Gary Indian. The only relief all this provides is that this book is supposedly the last of this "trilogy."

Rating:
Summary: Scathing in an Artful Way
Review: With his name literally on the map and deservedly so, the author has written one of the most scathing yet artful commentaries on sociopathology, greed and corruption I've come across. The characters he creates are convincing and deceptively gratutious in a con artist sort of way. Indiana has a talent for describing his characters's inner states unlike any novelist I've come across in recent years. I first started reading Gary's work back in the 80's and have been an admirer ever since. His descriptions of the gutter/penthouse denizens of Los Angeles, Hawaii, Las Vegas Puerto Vallarta and New York are unmatched/outstanding. The metaphor he manages to pull off with this work makes reading this thing all the way through worth the effort.

Jaye Beldo: [e-mail]