THE BIG MACHINE
Victor LaValle
Speigel & Grau
Fiction
ISBN: 9780385527989
Reading the disclaimer boilerplate on the copyright page after finishing this novel, one smiles to consider the possibility of “resemblance to actual events.” Certainly the Library of Congress’s catalog entries on the same page --- ex-drug addicts, parapsychologists, belief and doubt, psychological fiction --- give the reader an idea of the scope of THE BIG MACHINE’s 366 pages. A recent interview on NPR was the first I’d heard of Victor LaValle, and it caused me to both seek out the book and expect the unexpected. I’m glad I did.
Ricky Rice is the ex-drug addict and the narrator of this bildungsroman. “Taking heroin is like sinking into a tapioca hammock. If that doesn’t sound good, then congratulations, you will not enjoy heroin. May I suggest cocaine?” While he’s not currently using at the beginning of the book, he’s still holding. Alone, poor, cleaning train stations in New England, he receives a hand-addressed envelope containing a bus ticket and a cryptic message reminding him of a promise he made in Grand Rapids in 2002. We take the bus with him to the mysterious Washburn Library out in the wilds of upstate Vermont, where the Dean inducts him into the Unlikely Scholars along with 11 other “crackheads and criminals,” all black, all equally mystified at finding themselves in comfortable if not luxurious cabins in the snowy woods.
In careful, insightful and evenly paced prose, Ricky begins to play out two yarns: one of his current Unlikely Scholar life and one of his own unusual history as a child of a small Christian cult called the Washerwomen. “Doubt is the big machine,” one of the Washerwomen tells young Ricky. “It grinds up the delusions of women and men.” But there are other big machines that trouble Ricky’s conscience --- mainly the one that aborted his girlfriend’s pregnancy. “The shame I felt wasn’t because of what Gayle did, but why I got her to do it. I was a coward.”
His Unlikely Scholar adventure takes him out to Oakland, California, with the reticent Adele Henry, aka the Gray Lady because of her prematurely white hair. But far from traveling in James Bond style, they go Greyhound. “Seeing America by bus is like touring the Louvre in a Porta Potti. And that’s all that will ever need to be said about that.”
On this California mission, the Dean, Adele and Ricky face terrible hotels, treacherous drivers, dangerous underground trips through sewers, and a former Unlikely Scholar gone AWOL. And through it all, they slowly learn to trust one another enough to share their darkest secrets. They also encounter some of the coolest otherworldly beings ever (are they Devils or Angels?) and another --- even wilder --- proposition that I dare not dream of spoiling.
What was the promise Ricky made in Grand Rapids? Why is Adele’s hair white? How did Ricky come to kill his sister? The genius of this book lies both in the larger-than-life modern tale and in the social commentary tucked alongside. “He was a light-skinned black man. Her friends used to call them yellow-boys. Girls dated them and girls hated them, usually at the same time.” The writing is as sure as the story is weird and flighty. Along the way, we get answers to most of our salient questions, so the novel delivers on its basic story promise. But perhaps the best thing about the book is the questions that linger, questions LaValle inspires us to try and answer for ourselves.
--- Reviewed by Eileen Zimmerman Nicol
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