Par(enthetical)ody

America Par(enthetical)ody John Domini Peter: An (A)Historical Romance Jeffrey DeShell Starcherone Books http://www.starcherone.com 400 pages; paper, $18.00 When working in prose narrative, what does it mean to test the limits ofthe parenthesis? Is it a dicey innovation (therefore thrilling) to slingshot after tangents (and in the process generate fresh tangents [not just puns and aperçus, either, but also physical data {look at these neat brackets-within-brackets}]), digressions that might throw the story off its rails? The question comes up throughout Peter, Jeffery DeShell's third novel. It's a Novel in Full, too, pushing four hundred pages and dealing (as suits its length, perhaps) with broken families and devastated cultures (whereas formal experiment in American fiction has tended to succeed best Lmost memorably] in miniature, without much by way of [character and/or] catharsis [think ofBarthelme, Sorrentino, Cris Mazza {your critic loves a tar-brush}]). I'm joking, to be sure—taking DeShell up on his invitation to parody. And in Peter, the irrelevant often earns its place. His interpolations score as humor, insight, or a fresh medium for information. But the parenthesis has gotten a workout before. You find the trick even in the Rabbit sequence, Updike's foursquare paragon of realism. DeShell's novel certainly startles us, at first, by how freely it indulges the anfractuous; some seven parentheses stray onto the first page, and on the second no fewerthan thirtythree . But Peter pairs its gimmicks of syntax with issues ofsubstance. It reinvigorates a perverse classic of American literature, via the perverse medium of a callow present-day American, a twenty-something who shrugs off any hint of historicity and its pressures : whatever. Then the novel heaps on the further audacity of this slacker's own reinvigoration, via a climax along the gun-spiked border between Israel and Palestine. This Peter borrows his story from another's, namely, Melville's. Pierre (1852), a novel notorious for its flaws, and even worse of a commercial flop than Moby-Dick (1851), presents a young man much like DeShell's, enjoying a life of comfort and obliviousness, marred only by occasional bittersweet reminders that he's an only child and an orphan. But the twenty-first-century Pierre, unlike the 1852 character, lives in L.A. Boy, does he: Peter...did okay, thank you, on income from a trust set up by his grandfather (approximately $50,000 per annum) and gifts (including housing, food, travel, tuition [five years at the University of Southern California, let's say $140,000], and his blackish purple [Royal Aubergine] with dark red [Claret] interior 1996 Saab 9000S turbo convertible coupe [$37,000]) from his aunt. All this was in addition to.... Most of DeShell's parentheses tote up costs and materials in this way. Peter's almost-fiancée, Wanda, proves a wet dream (to choose the pertinent analogy) of conspicuous consumption; the daughter of a VP at Sony, she first appears in a "neon pink Todd Oldham raw silk mini." Still, we mustn't hate these two simply because they're young, rich, and beautiful. Rather, the primary plot-engine for both DeShell and Melville is the discovery of another woman in this tyro's life, a half sister. Neither child knew the father. Neither can resist the familial intimacy, electric with hints of incest. In Pierre, the siblings run off to New York and an unhappy demise. DeShell, on the other hand, is writing a comedy. The offspring ofPeter's father's dalliance is the lovely nic-fiend Reham, more or less a Westernized Palestinian, more or less based in Istanbul, more or less a painter inspired by the Koran. Reham's indeterminate makeup also expresses itself in a spotty recollection ofa harrowing childhood—which yields, not coincidentally, one of the novel's best set-pieces. The sister, indeed, emerges as a traditional fascinating character. And once Reham and Peter set off to discover their shared past, rooting around in Istanbul, Jerusalem, and finally in Gaza, the novel comes (paradoxical Peterl) to its most intense and satisfying accomplishment. The language relaxes its sniggering at the high-maintenance crowd—for isn't satire the point...