The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living
By Martin Clark
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the New York Law Journal
June 30, 2000
This is easily the worst novel of the year 2000. I realize that it is only June. But were it the first of January, the same prediction could as easily be made. It wouldn't be quite so painless to criticize Mr. Clark's efforts at fiction writing if he weren't so darn offensive.
Sure, if you happen to be a beer-guzzling, pot-smoking, womanizing, racist white man, you may be able to identify with at least some of the characters. Otherwise, be prepared to wince repeatedly as you plod your way through this seemingly endless book.
What's particularly frightening about the author's "thinly" veiled perspectives about the rightful place of women, people of color, gays and lesbians in the world is that he is a judge. Specifically, as described in the inside book flap, the young, strapping Martin Clark (photographed with his hands in pockets, leaning against his Chevy pick-up ) is a "circuit court judge who lives in Stuart, Virginia." Remind me not to get arrested there.
If the foregoing hasn't yet dissuaded you from reading this one, let me share with you what purports to be the plot. The protagonist (and alter ego of the author?) is Evers Wheeling, a judge in Norton, N.C. This upstanding member of the judiciary spends much of his free time nursing his hangovers and the remainder of it doing the necessary to acquire them. Cheap beer is his drink of choice, usually straight, except at breakfast, when he mixes it with orange juice.
Evers is separated from his wife, Mary Jo. Their relationship first soured when he accepted, over her protests, a judgeship in Norton shortly after completing law school. Unable to face the prospect of life in the tiny backwater that held out zero opportunity for her, Mary Jo remained in Durham, where she had found herself a job. Evers used to visit her on weekends but he finds less and less reason to make the trip, as relations between them worsen.
Evers's social circle is comprised of luminaries much like himself: his brother, Pascal, who is never not stoned; Rudy, a doctor of sorts; and Henry, occupation unknown, often heard complaining about all the pleasures denied him on account of his married status. The group's primary clubhouse is Pascal's trailer, always well stocked with alcohol and drugs. These are men to whom nothing seems to happen.
That is, until Evers meets Ruth Esther English, a car-dealer in downtown Norton. She approaches Evers to enlist his aid in acquitting her brother Artis, who is about to appear before him for trial on a drug possession charge. If Artis goes to jail, Ruth will never reclaim the treasure that their father left them in a safe deposit box before his death. Their father wrote down three clues that pointed to the location of the money, gave one to Ruth, one to Artis and kept one for himself. When he died, he gave his clue to Ruth. Now she needs Artis's to find the prize.
So begin Evers's adventures with Ruth. After Artis's acquittal, he and Ruth, Evers, Pascal, his trailer buddies and Pauletta Kwai, Ruth's friend and attorney, set out for Salt Lake City to get the loot. The remainder of the story is simply too tiresome to recount here, but suffice to say that, despite Mr. Clark's presumed intentions, it is entirely devoid of intrigue, suspense, humor or wit.
What it lacks in literary merit, however, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living more than makes up for in imprudence. You'll be hard pressed to find in these pages a single joke or offhand comment made in good taste.
Take, for instance, Mr. Clark's women. Few appear in the story, but they are described with love. A college friend of Mary Jo's is a "man-hating, feminoid bitch." Another woman is an "obese woman in a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt." At least Evers has the decency to tell one woman, after a one-night stand, "Thanks for having sex with me."
While Evers is not usually the reflective type, Mr. Clark, for our benefit, permits him one foray into ruminations on the language of love, so as to provide us a glimpse of the very high regard in which he holds the female population:
"Evers despised [the term] 'make love.' The term was silly, banana-daiquiri-cum-umbrella silly; it was slick, cheap and evasive. 'Intercourse' was all right, and 'screw' was acceptable. Perhaps even 'do it' would pass scrutiny. Evers had no use for all of the euphemisms coined in stark moments, all of the nervous glosses designed to add a sheen of intimacy to unions which were, during their brief lifespans, little more than hedonistic and carnal couplings."
Particularly vile is the terminology used to describe Pauletta, who is black, as we are reminded each and every time she appears in the story. Evers refers to her as the "chocolate sage" and "Bess." The first time he meets her, at her law office, he tells her, "I hope you won't take this personally, [but] part of the reason you're sitting in a comfortable office in the top law firm in this state is because you are, number one, black and, number two, a woman." Pauletta proves unable to resist these and all other of Evers's charms, and the book ends happily, with her cooking dinner for him while he lazes on the porch.
Even if one were able to overlook these asides, it is difficult to forgive Clark for including, clearly for comedic value, a thoroughly disturbing scene involving Mary Jo. After Evers learns of her adulterous affair with Hobart Falstaf, a local farmer, he tracks down the hotel room that she and Falstaf are using for that afternoon, taking along for the ride his good friend and sheriff H.T. Moran. Together, Evers and Moran bust in on the couple, and, at gunpoint order Falstaf out of the room. When he has left, Evers turns to Mary Jo, shouting refusals at her requests to collect her clothing. After Evers instructs Moran to handcuff Mary Jo, and after they have dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the open-aired back of Moran's El Camino truck, Evers has Moran stop the car at a sign on the highway marking the exit for a town called Climax, N.C. They handcuff Mary Jo, naked, to the pole, and around her neck place a sign that reads: "I am a Sigma Alpha pledge. I must stay here until sunrise. No matter what I tell you, you must leave me here. If you release me I will not become an Alpha Sigma Sigma sister. Thank you, Mary Jo Miller Wheeling, Class of 2003."
These are the writings of a man who has been elected, or perhaps appointed, to the bench, a man who is vested with the authority to resolve matters of law and policy. Which bench that is, exactly, is unclear, as my attempts to learn on Westlaw over which "circuit court" Mr. Clark presides proved fruitless. Presumably, this is because any judicial opinions that he has written remain unpublished. What is too bad, really, is that the opinions embodied in this novel did not.
