posted 15 October 1997
Ellsbeth Blackthorne
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
email: [email protected]
web site: The Wicked Tea Party
(Reviewed & posted by AoF, aided by Ellsbeth & anon.)
The Decandent ©1997 Ellsbeth Blackthorne
Dedicated to Green, Ellsbeth's first novel is a riot for anyone who has read Green's interviews. A pleasant and light read on the surface with food for thought, it's hilariously littered with details culled from interviews and articles Ellsbeth owns. Even the leather-trouser clad dentist from 1988's The Face interview made it in. I nearly fell out of my chair several times.
Although not yet published--Ellsbeth is currently looking for an agent--the book already calls for an annotated edition! What a fan's ultimate revenge it is in return for Green's reluctance to extend himself to fans. It must have been fun to write and it's fun to read.
However, before you prejudge Ellsbeth as yet another one of Green's starry-eyed female fans, be advised that you should not to take the Scritti references utterly in earnest. One should remember her wicked sense of humor. Furthermore, her randomly taking sentences out of his interviews, and basing the plot on them, was probably/partially/merely (you decide -ed.) a writer's device for developing a narrative structure--a starting point for creative and philosophical explorations.
A darkly romantic mystery novel with an element of the irrational and the 'supernatural', it started out from Green's reply to an interviewer's question on whether or not he sings 'music from the heart'. "Well, I think that's nonsense, metaphysics, ghost stories" said Green, and on that cue, Ellsbeth spun out an intriguing web of a ghost story.
The leading male character bears a striking resemblance to Green. Like Green, Noel Brimson is a tall, dashing Brit. By profession he is a barrister (lawyer)--a career Green at one point mentioned he was interested in pursuing--and also a mystery novelist, which is probably more a reflection of Ellsbeth than of Green. He sets out to solve the mystery surrounding the death of Virago, a supposedly mad American painter who had killed her husband before committing suicide.
This being Ellsbeth's chance to rewrite history, she of course had to turn the tables. In the novel it is Noel, Green's alter ego, who falls in love with the dead and unreachable Virago. And it is Virago who goes by an alias and doesn't like to reveal her given name.
The fine arts, which was Green's subject of study at university, figures in the background, but the taste is Ellsbeth's own. Even more interesting is Noel's struggle to rationally confront the irrational but irresistible situation he finds himself in, much like Green and his "semiotically empty" pop music. "Why am I doing this to myself?" asks Noel. It might as well have been said by Green.
Of course, the irrationality Noel confronts is different from that which preoccupies Green. After all, this is Ellsbeth's book and if it's influenced by Green, it's nonetheless at most her interpretation of what he said. Any reader with an open mind has got to wonder what would happen if Green's academically-informed notion of the irrational collided with the irrationality of the 'supernatural' kind. Would he then discover that he's in fact uncertain and faithless no more? Ahy, a mystery of its own, the Green sort...