urbanmoon

Stephen Elliott's Happy BabyM is a short novel told in reverse chronological order, deftly chronicling in the first person one man's experiences with rape, drugs, abuse, juvenile detention centers, and the brutal effect all those things have on a person in their adult life. A similar technique was employed in the film Irreversible, which, in recounting a rape and its awful effects, casts an air of doom over the chronologically early pre-rape scenes. There is some of that here, though the real intelligence of the book is in the prose: Elliott doesn't take the cliché path of Bret Easton Ellis nihilism or Chuck Palahniuk one-liners at all. I've never read any Hubert Selby Jr., who also wrote on the subject; perhaps there's a literary antecedent there. Anyway, Elliott instead humanizes Theo the protagonist to a fierce degree, always imbuing his pain and trauma with a warmth missing from other tomes on the subject. Theo's mind is so wrecked from his childhood that the only clarity he achieves is during the brief release of masochistic acts such as self-mutilation, bondage sex, and the various dominatrixes he frequents. The judgment is that without such avenues in his adult life, Theo would never escape the throbbing numbness his life has become. The balance of the prose style is that Theo encounters everything on the same level, from selling bagels to watching extreme sex shows to most interpersonal exchange. This tone would deteriorate into monotony with most writers—Elliott still makes it compelling. I highly recommend Happy Baby.

2022-12-18 03:25