The Emperor of Ocean Park
By Stephen L. Carter
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the New York Law Journal (2002)
Everyone knows that Stephen Carter, Yale law professor and author of such non-fiction as "Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby," has recently witnessed the fulfillment of his childhood dream: the publication of his first novel. Also dream-like is the advance he received: $4.2 million, not to mention a deal for a second book, and a promise from Warner Brothers to make a movie out of the first.
Talcott ("Tal") Garland, tenured professor at a prestigious, unnamed law school, is the unlikely, and unlikeable, hero of this alleged thriller/murder-mystery. (Denzel, think twice about this role). As becomes apparent from the first chapters of this hefty tome, he's a man with animosity to spare towards those to whom he refers as members of the "paler nation." (Tal himself, if you're wondering, is a member of what he refers to as the "darker nation"). You'll hear none of that "one nation, indivisible" nonsense from Tal's lips. In his view, racial discord in the United States is alive and well.
When we meet him, the Professor is mourning the death, which may or may not have been accidental, of his controversial father, the Honorable Oliver Garland. Judge Garland, nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court, was ultimately knocked out of the box due to shady dealings with his old college chum/mafioso/murder-for-hire, Jack Ziegler. Ziegler materializes at Judge Garland's funeral, accosts Tal at graveside and directs him to hand over "The Arrangements" ASAP. Tal has no idea what Jack is talking about, and unfortunately for the rest of us, will shlep through the next 650 or so pages in an attempt to find out.
While Tal's quest for answers consumes him to the point that his career (even tenured professors can lose their jobs, if the Trustees say so), his marriage, and, most of all, our interest in the outcome are seriously jeopardized, it does leave him ample time to ruminate on the evils of the paler nation.
Paler nationals, conservative and liberal alike, are the enemy, saith the Professor. Take, for instance, the teachers at his son Bentley's school: "[H]opelessly well-meaning, in the manner of white liberals of their class, but because they believe that they have transcended racism (which afflicts only conservatives) they remain blissfully unaware of how their disdainful elitism is perceived by the few black parents who can afford the school. Nor is there any point to enlightening them: their desperately sincere apologies would only make matters worse, signaling, as liberal apologies tend to, that the members of the darker nation are so weak of character that there can be no greater sin than insulting one."
And Tal's "liberal" law students? He hates them too. Here's what he has to say about one: "I read in his posture insolence, challenge, perhaps even the unsubtle racism of the supposedly liberal white student who cannot quite bring himself to believe that his black professor could know more than he. About anything."
And these are the good pale folk. What of the shamelessly evil white capitalists, men like Howard Denton, Tal's brother-in-law? According to Tal, men like Howard and their false promises have undermined the very power structure of the darker nation. Watching Howard chat with young Garlands at the post-funeral reception, Tal observes in fury: ". . . my vision is suddenly laid with bright splotches of red, a thing that happens from time to time when my connection to the darker nation and its oppression is most powerfully stimulated. . . Through the red curtain, I still see . . . these ambitious black kids in their ambitious little suits . . . vying for the favor of my brother-in-law because he is a managing director at Goldman Sachs, and I suddenly understand the passion of the black nationalists of the sixties who opposed affirmative action, warning that it would strip the community of the best among its potential leaders, sending them off to the most prestigious colleges, and turning them into . . . well, into young corporate apparatchiks in Brooks Brothers suits, desperate for the favor of white capitalists. Our leaders, they argued, would be tricked into supporting a new goal. Fancy college degrees and fancier money for the few would supplant justice for the many."
You'd think that at least one reviewer of The Emperor of Ocean Park would take umbrage at — or even mention — the "red rage" that permeates the book. To the contrary, reviewers are cowering in the face of it, and falling all over themselves to gush about Carter's bold foray into fiction. Even those who dare utter a negative word take special care to sandwich it safely between layers and layers of compliments. One sycophant went so far as to call Carter the Theodore Dreiser of the black upper class. Another called the novel an "important social document." But what no one has said, and what happens to be the truth, is that this book really isn't very good.
The reviewers, almost in unison, are applauding Carter for giving us a rarely-seen glimpse of what it's like to be black, well-educated, and wealthy in America. Even if that were true (and Carter suggests, in his Author's Note, that it is not: "This is work of fiction . . . It is not a roman à clef on . . . the tribulations of middle class black America . . . "), the fact remains that Carter chose to do so in the context of a murder mystery, and Carter cannot write mystery to save his life.
The laborious process by which Tal goes about amassing facts about his father, in the hopes of unearthing "The Arrangements," is tedious beyond belief. Accounts of his interviews and efforts to piece the clues together are about as exciting as a novel about pre-trial discovery. Worst of all — almost embarrassing, truth be told — are Carter's efforts to manufacture suspense. Those are as subtle as a sledgehammer, and consistently placed at the end of almost every chapter. To give but one example, Chapter 22 ends with this supposed cliffhanger (emphasis in original, believe it or not): "'I saw him in the house, Tal . . . Years ago.' A pause. 'He knew your father.'" With apologies to the creators of "Dallas," it seems to me that these are words more likely to have come from the mouth of J.R. Ewing than the pen of Theodore Dreiser.
Still, the critics rave. Why? Are they imposing the very double standard that, according to Carter's June interview with The New Yorker, has dogged him since youth? David Owen wrote about Carter in that magazine that "at [Carter's] mostly white high school in Ithaca, New York, he was usually the only black student in [his] courses . . . and that fact alone made his teachers and classmates treat him as exceptional: even his ordinary efforts won him a sort of astonished admiration. But Carter yearned to be accepted as something more than the school's 'best black.'" Can't blame the fellow. Let's judge his next novel by the same standards applied to everyone else.
