Book Review #26
Death in Venice, California
by Vinton Rafe McCabe
In all honesty I had intended to reread Mann's novella (the last time was in college) but could not get into it. And so I read McCabe's wry and sardonic take on it instead. It is a well written book with a mix of unlikable characters who encourage Jameson Frame, McCabe's prissy, rigid, semi-celebrity protagonist, to indulge in various forms of SoCal hedonism (drinking, drugs, plastic surgery and porn). Frame falls hard for Chase, his Tadzio, in this version of Mann's tale of obsession with youth and beauty. There are some truly lovely passages and very erotic ones too but also some that were so painful I had to put the book aside. McCabe puts his main character through a crucible of physical and emotional suffering to the point where I was hoping against hope that, despite the title, Jameson Frame would survive the purgatory he goes through throughout the book. But by the end this learned man of letters and poet by profession, who quotes Shakespeare, Coleridge, Eliot and others, falls victim not just to the tempters around him but to his own self-destructive tendencies, leaving his body ravaged and his mind in a state close to madness. As McCabe puts his main character through hell, by extension he does the same to the reader, pulling Jameson Frame and us from one near death experience after another, until his lonely protagonist succumbs to his pitiful, fateful destiny and literally dies of a broken heart.
by Vinton Rafe McCabe
In all honesty I had intended to reread Mann's novella (the last time was in college) but could not get into it. And so I read McCabe's wry and sardonic take on it instead. It is a well written book with a mix of unlikable characters who encourage Jameson Frame, McCabe's prissy, rigid, semi-celebrity protagonist, to indulge in various forms of SoCal hedonism (drinking, drugs, plastic surgery and porn). Frame falls hard for Chase, his Tadzio, in this version of Mann's tale of obsession with youth and beauty. There are some truly lovely passages and very erotic ones too but also some that were so painful I had to put the book aside. McCabe puts his main character through a crucible of physical and emotional suffering to the point where I was hoping against hope that, despite the title, Jameson Frame would survive the purgatory he goes through throughout the book. But by the end this learned man of letters and poet by profession, who quotes Shakespeare, Coleridge, Eliot and others, falls victim not just to the tempters around him but to his own self-destructive tendencies, leaving his body ravaged and his mind in a state close to madness. As McCabe puts his main character through hell, by extension he does the same to the reader, pulling Jameson Frame and us from one near death experience after another, until his lonely protagonist succumbs to his pitiful, fateful destiny and literally dies of a broken heart.
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