DREAMER: A NOVEL

Rating:
Summary: cluttered
Review: I truthfully just don't get Charles Johnson. He has the makings of a really first rate novelist, but for whatever reason--vanity about his ability to get away with it?, lack of confidence in the value of his work without it?, skewed perceptions?--he clutters up his work with magic and he strains for a vocabulary and an erudition that sound totally unnatural. His National Book Award winner, Middle Passage (see Orrin's review), could have been a terrific book in the classic American nautical adventure tradition of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (see Orrin's review), Moby Dick, Billy Budd (see Orrin's review), Two Years Before the Mast, The Sea Wolf (see Orrin's review), etc.. But in mid-story he added on a storyline involving a mysterious African God and the whole thing went to heck in a handcart. In Dreamer, he's up to the same tricks and it's a shame.

Johnson apparently wrote the book because he wanted to try to understand Martin Luther King as a man and a moral philosopher, absent all of the mythos that has grown up around his martyred memory as a civil rights leader. He does an admirable job of recounting what writings and which theologians most influenced him and of presenting King, in his own words, giving sermons and speeches that develop his own philosophy. But there is another entirely unnecessary, even destructive, plotline in the novel. King's evil twin, Chaym Smith, appears and offers to act as his body double. Smith is violent, profane and cynical but also widely read and deeply philosophical. Johnson plays him off against King with Chaym taking the role of Cain and King of Abel. this allows Johnson room for extended meditations on the Cain/Abel tale, the duality of good and evil, and so on. Eventually, after coaching from aides, Chaym is able to pass for King at public events and even close associates can not tell the two men apart, so that on that fateful day in Memphis, we are no longer sure which one died.

Now, first of all, I just didn't feel that the Smith character added much to the story, In fact, because he so often takes us away from the true Martin Luther king, he is more of a distraction, often bringing the narrative to a screeching halt. But there's a bigger problem with this device; if you're going to use this kind of allegorical feature, you had better think through what you are saying with it. Johnson does not appear to recognize how the comparison to Abel diminishes King. Abel was after all a figure of virtual slavery. He was the gatherer, living off the fat of the land, who found favor in God's eyes precisely because he lived as God intended Man to live before the Fall. It is Cain who represents freedom and Man after the Fall, struggling to raise his own crops independent of God and being rejected by God for this very reason. To allude to King as an Abel like figure, when he is actually one of the great freedom fighters in Man's history, seems to me to be a nearly unforgivable sin. Moreover, the implication that King was a kind of passive, slave like creature does the man a great disservice.

Ultimately, Johnson has produced two books here--one good and one bad. The sections where King is on stage are vibrant and thrilling. They recapture some of the majesty of the man and the movement. The portions featuring Chaym Smith are flashy, particularly as they allow him to use SAT worthy vocabulary words that trip off the tongue like boulders, but they cheapen the rest of the book. He should have stuck to his knitting, dropped the doppelganger and ditched the dictionary.

GRADE: C

Rating:
Summary: Finally a great read!
Review: This is easily one of the most overlooked books I have ever read. Rich dialogue, interesting characters, poetic moments tie this story into a wonderful tale. The title can be read as MLK himself, as Bishop & his lust for Amy & wish for more self-confidence (i.e.- not so introverted & forgettable in the face, although when the character states this it is not drowned in sentiment) and the decoy Smith with his self-obsession to be like MLK. This is a rather quick read- very tight with little fat. Things happen quickly, and the observations Bishop make are unique, as well as the thoughts filling the mind of MLK. Some complaints about the end, re: "we all killed him"- Johnson isn't at all preachy, and again is only a defacto comment & not drenched in sentiment. There is no "Hurrah!" moment- & this is what makes it realistic & probably why Johnson is such an overlooked writer. Also there are some wonderfully musical lines that would make for good poetry. Highly recommended if you want a deep, reflective story & not a condescending epic.

Rating:
Summary: Literary fiction at a high level
Review: When you approach a new piece of fiction by Charles Johnson, you should be ready with all your gifts of intellect and insight. You can be assured that Mr. Johnson will typically bring those gifts of his to the event. Dreamer is characteristic of much that readers have come to expect of Mr. Johnson. For example, all of the book's major characters are quite well versed both in the eastern and western philosophic and religious traditions. He characteristically manipulates reality that way, much as one might bend light with a prism-and with the same kind of pleasurable, revealing results.

On the other hand, there is much in Dreamer that is new for Charles Johnson, and, thus, for his readers. In Oxherding Tale and Middle Passage, he demonstrated an ability to combine and to jump across genres. It is not surprising, then, that Dreamer tends to defy categorization. Although it is fiction set within a (relatively) recent historical context, and although the figure of Martin Luther King, Jr., is at its thematic center, the book is not merely fictionalized biography. Rather than a book "about" Dr. King, this is a novel suffused by his presence--despite the fact that other characters have more time "on stage." The image of such a well-known figure looming over the story presents both potential opportunities and pitfalls for the author. Johnson's use of interior monologue to take us into the mind of a monumental figure is absolutely deft. Without a living Dr, King to consult, it would seem nearly impossible for anyone else to report what it was like to be the individual at the center of that whirlwind--but Johnson has done just that for us, and done it brilliantly. Historical figures, particularly martyred ones, tend to become, at best, abstractions or, at worst, icons. Johnson rescues King from either of those types of benign neglect and shows him rather as a human whose accomplishments came at the great expense of personal sacrifice. Before his life is lost he has tragically lost almost all time, not only personal time with his family but also time alone to think, to feel, and to continue his own intellectual and spiritual development.

The counterpoint to King is Chaym Smith, a look-alike who resents and admires King, and who trains to become the dreamer's double. As does Lucifer in Paradise Lost, he at times threatens to steal the entire show. Yet Johnson does not take the easy route of making Smith a polar opposite of King. Smith too has gifts, and insights, and aspirations. Instead of being a pole apart, Smith is more like a brother who, by virtue of differing gifts and circumstances, careens along a different path through the universe.

Structurally, neither King nor Smith can be the sustained voice that both frames and caries the novel from beginning to end. That voice belongs to Mathew Bishop, a Nick Caraway style narrator and a worker within the Movement who is all too aware of the margin by which he falls short when he compares himself to Dr. King. Yet Bishop himself has gifts and insights. At the end of the story he is close to the realization that all men and women fall short of an idealized vision of themselves, while at the same time they move inexorably in that direction as long as they keep that selfsame dream alive.

This is not a perfect book, but it is a fine one from a member of that small circle of writers potentially capable of delivering a 10+. At times Johnson uses the device of sections of exposition, set apart in italics, to provide background and to prepare the story for its next move forward. The device works well enough, although occasionally, perhaps because Johnson obviously enjoys research, it risks the peril of stopping too long to tell us too much. But there is such skill in Charles Johnson's craftsmanship, such daring in his willingness each time out to do work that is difficult and important, and such obvious sincerity and empathy in the homage that is Dreamer, it seems almost off-point to notice slight imperfections. Rather, we appreciate the gift we are given here--fiction that achieves the elusive goal of Greek tragedy, showing others to us in a way that enables us to better understand, and to improve, ourselves.