Victor LaValle’s The Ecstatic

This is the first morning I’ve had to myself in over a week. Most of the ice is melted, the King holiday is done. My wife and children are back on schedule and back in school now. She teaches, they study.

So the house is all mine. I sit quietly, listen to the small buzz of the space heater blowing. Wait as my pot of chamomile tea steeps.

I’m shining with a sense of accomplishment, having just now finished reading Victor LaValle’s The Ecstatic. I’ve held this book hostage from the local library, ignoring multiple email notices, for several months now. And by this date, it would have been less expensive for me to buy the hardcover edition outright.

I should have finished it long ago. It was a compelling enough read. But with my almost absolute immersion in the new technology, what with the always on internet, Twitter, Facebook, and their progeny mobile apps and notifications, my ability to be distracted has reached new heights.

I even started reading one of LaValle’s other books, The Big Machine, partly because I got a hold of the eBook and dropped it into my Kindle for Android app.

But after remembering that electronic devices do have an off switch, I found time to read Ecstatic all the way through.

I’m a selective reader, especially of fiction. As a rule, I avoid bad writing like it’s contagious. Instead, I read books that I hope will make me a better writer. And also, being somewhat vain, I read works that will help me appear more erudite. Be on somebody’s best of list, in a generally accepted canon or in the running for some well-known award and I’m all up on you.

Victor LaValle meets the criteria. He is a fine writer. I’ve been a fan of his since Slapboxing With Jesus, his superb collection of short stories. The Ecstatic tells the story of Anthony James, a morbidly obese, mentally unstable college dropout who is pulled back into the center of his dysfunctional family.

The book grabs you with its opening paragraph, always a good sign:

They drove a green rented car into central New York State to find me living wild in my apartment. Wearing shattered glasses and my hair a giant cauliflower-shaped afro on my head. I was three hundred and fifteen pounds. I was a mess, but the house was clean. They knocked and when I opened the front door there were three archangels on my stoop. My sister rubbed my ear when I cried. She whispered, — Why don’t you go put on clothes?

It’s a wacky tale and reminds me much of Ishmael Reed’s wry wit. There is also an economy of words resonant of Hemingway. LaValle doesn’t so much as tell as show. The novel is often riotously funny, then just as quickly sentimental. In a quiet, non-gaudy way. In one of my favorite passages, our hero, Anthony, reveals his feelings about his 13-year-old sister, Nabisase:

Having her around had been like a promotion; from only child, from little boy. I hadn’t been so matured in one decade as that first evening I picked her up. Supporting the back of her head with one hand.

And it’s like that with this book, the author holds us gently and offers a glimpse of something precious, delicate and transforming.

Get this book in your hands and it might just make you feel strong enough to hammer nails.

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