Early Work by Andrew Martin

Peter, the central character and co-narrator of this smart, well-crafted novel, is a young writer (or would-be writer) who, throughout the course of the book and not unlike most of the other major characters, behaves badly. Involved with themselves and their desire to produce art to validate their existence, the characters engage in witty conversations while drinking to excess, getting high and fornicating. It is a novel about relationships, more than anything else, and the relationships depicted in it do not go well.

Novels about people who are writing their own novels or other literary pieces are far from uncommon and I suppose the dictum to write about what you know induces authors to create a world populated by artists preoccupied with their creative endeavors. But unless the author transcends the artsy community she or he is focused on by successfully making it a metaphor for a larger chunk of humanity, the result is often, as it seems to be here, a sketch of rather shallow, self-indulgent individuals, who would seemingly be less worthy of our attention if they were factory or office workers. Their artistic aspirations (and often ivy-league backgrounds) appear to give them license or excuse to lead very messy lives.

Despite some wonderfully witty dialog and pungent, felicitously phrased insights, I have to admit that I didn’t find the characters very appealing or amusing. There’s a hipness and snobbishness in some of the references to real people, such as offhandedly snide remarks about Philip Roth, Woody Allen and John Prine and gratuitous allusions to more hip personages that I found off-putting, but my main gripe is that the book strives to be clever rather than wise. There doesn’t seem to be much in it beyond the story of the characters it tells about, and those characters are, alas, not that interesting. The author has too much talent to give us swagger instead of substance.