Nathaniel Rich took five years to write The Mayor's Tongue, and in that time, the erstwhile editor of The Paris Review spoke not a word about it. Fearful, as he says, that all his "notes and jottings might not add up to a finished novel", there were times when Rich "seriously doubted the sanity, let alone the merits, of what [he] was writing". All of which seems symptomatic of the very problems that plague the central characters of his ultimately assured debut: self-consciousness, nervousness – an inability to communicate in the face of a desperate need to do so. But the author need not have worried. The Mayor's Tongue is a spare masterpiece of postmodernism, an incisive fable whose myriad threads of plot and thought take the inhibitions of our era to task and make Rich's first novel a New York Trilogy for the new millennium.
Two New Yorkers are at the heart of his story; gentle, unsuspecting creatures each of them, drowned out by the hubbub of America's great cultural melting-pot. Eugene Brentani is a moving man at the outset, himself recently moved out of his Italian father's apartment and now flat-sharing with Alvaro, an enigmatic member of his crew who speaks an obscure dialect that Eugene, despite his persistent efforts, does not quite understand. Their dialogues are certainly significant to the larger themes that The Mayor's Tongue addresses, but they also represent the first sparking of the rich humour which illuminates and alleviates the novel’s more academic concerns.
"You like menudo, huh? You'd never guess what's in it."
"Alvaro, I have to tell you about this girl at the new job, Abe's daughter. Grey eyes, long reddish-brown hair, beautiful skin, a wide smile–"
"Intestines. Feet. Gut-juice. Dried pork skin."
"You said it – she's stunning.”
Eugene's narrative begins to bear fruit when he crosses paths with Abe Chisholm, an idiosyncratic old man hell-bent on writing an epic memoir of prolific novelist Constance Easkins. His own obsession with Eakins means that Eugene jumps at the chance of assisting Abe in his research, but their efforts are tested when the writer -- who vanished thirty years ago and has not since been seen -- is officially declared dead. Abe's daughter Alice soon reveals to Eugene that she has been forging the letters her father believes he receives from Eakins, and the two form a powerful bond that sustains Eugene throughout his journey. He ups sticks and travels to Trieste, a distant area of Italy where Alice has gone to settle the Eakins dispute once and for all; and when he arrives, he is drawn to the Carso, a countryside hideaway where Alice appears to have been lured. His trip is fraught with episodic little encounters with locals who share with Eugene a common destination, and on the long hike up hills and through valleys and under caverns, he begins to translate the manuscript Alvaro gave him before his departure.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Boston.com. Nice work!