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End of the Empire
From the author of The Finer Grain and Blue, comes the story of love in a small town. Dante arrives on her Harley in Cascade, Oregon, and soon sets the town on edge. Jewel, a local stripper, soon falls in love with Dante and the thoughts of forbidden love.
150 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 9, 2017
I got this book in a big lot of lesbian fiction I bought a couple years ago. I needed a book to fill the "E" slot on the Mostly Lesfic group's A-Z Challenge and thought I'd go a little outside my comfort zone with this dreary, wandering, melancholy little story. It couldn't really be described as lesbian fiction, though it does have a lesbian romantic subplot. I'm not really sure what category it would be in besides "fiction novella."
It's generally a story about viewing, about being the passive witness to an active world. It takes place mainly in the grand Empire Movie Theater in the nothing town of Cascade, Oregon, where the ultra-conservative young owner Virgil Penhaligan plays only black and white movies like To Have and Have Not and Gaslight. The Empire is the best character in the book by far, especially when we're taken on a literary tour of the high ceilings, dusty accents, sticky floors, and broken chairs. It'll give you a weird feeling of both familiarity and desolation. It's basically a tomb, but with nothing else to do in town, young people tend to gather there on Friday nights to watch old movies and be miserable together.
The four main characters, all employees of the Empire, are interesting enough, but since the book is only about 150 pages long, we never really sink deep into knowing them or getting a feeling for their interactions. Virgil and tortured artist Donnie both obsess over the unattainable, beautiful Jewel Mraz, the town's prodigal daughter whose past outside Cascade has garnered her quite a reputation. But Jewel is in love with tough, mysterious biker Dante, a woman who never stays in one place for very long, even for a woman as good as Jewel.
Like I said, the book is about viewing, or, more aptly, being a voyeur on things you shouldn't be viewing. Virgil has drilled a hole in the wall of the Empire storage closet so he can innocently watch Jewel brush her long hair in the mirror, but it ends up backfiring when . Donnie and Virgil both also watch Jewel from various vantage points when she's at home in her trailer.
It's an invasion of privacy, but to what degree? Since we get to know Jewel the best as a character through her grief over her recently-dead mother, it feels like a violation no matter what they see her doing. She's a hurting, searching woman, and the fact that these two men only want to look at her from a predatory distance feels like the greatest betrayal. Dante is allowed inside, past the barriers and walls, .
In a great moment at the end, After all, as Mark 9:47 says, "if your eye causes you to fall into sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell." It is only natural that Dante, a character nicknamed after one of Hell's greatest advocates, . Donnie and Virgil, while repulsive, make no excuses for their viewing of private moments, knowing it prevents them from doing even more harm. Who really has hurt Jewel more?
And, of course, the title itself pretty much tells you the ending. Due to years of Virgil letting the place become a nightmare of safety hazards and Dante letting the past become the past, . It's an apt ending--maybe a little too apt, but decent for such a short book. The fate of Jewel and Dante's relationship is left ambiguous, and we get the idea that Donnie and Virgil just sort of fade into the background, as if they can't exist at all as real people without the Empire or Jewel to validate their existences. I'm sure some readers would have more to say about the differences in gender and sexuality in the story--how the men pine for a woman who only wants the love of an unattainable other woman--but I didn't see it as the main theme of the book.
In the end, it's about what consequences you may face when you choose to stare into something that doesn't feel your gaze. Can we be content to just watch, as if the world was a black and white film? And what happens when the subject of our voyeurism turns and looks right back?
This is a hard one to recommend. It feels firmly planted in place and time, but not memorable enough to merit a cult following. It's scattered and introspective but you never really fall into the characters' minds. It was put out by St. Martin's Press' Stonewall Editions, an imprint I'm eager to look more into, which I supposes lands it in a culture of some sort. I also think it is out of print, so if anyone wants to borrow it, let me know.
It's generally a story about viewing, about being the passive witness to an active world. It takes place mainly in the grand Empire Movie Theater in the nothing town of Cascade, Oregon, where the ultra-conservative young owner Virgil Penhaligan plays only black and white movies like To Have and Have Not and Gaslight. The Empire is the best character in the book by far, especially when we're taken on a literary tour of the high ceilings, dusty accents, sticky floors, and broken chairs. It'll give you a weird feeling of both familiarity and desolation. It's basically a tomb, but with nothing else to do in town, young people tend to gather there on Friday nights to watch old movies and be miserable together.
The four main characters, all employees of the Empire, are interesting enough, but since the book is only about 150 pages long, we never really sink deep into knowing them or getting a feeling for their interactions. Virgil and tortured artist Donnie both obsess over the unattainable, beautiful Jewel Mraz, the town's prodigal daughter whose past outside Cascade has garnered her quite a reputation. But Jewel is in love with tough, mysterious biker Dante, a woman who never stays in one place for very long, even for a woman as good as Jewel.
Like I said, the book is about viewing, or, more aptly, being a voyeur on things you shouldn't be viewing. Virgil has drilled a hole in the wall of the Empire storage closet so he can innocently watch Jewel brush her long hair in the mirror, but it ends up backfiring when . Donnie and Virgil both also watch Jewel from various vantage points when she's at home in her trailer.
It's an invasion of privacy, but to what degree? Since we get to know Jewel the best as a character through her grief over her recently-dead mother, it feels like a violation no matter what they see her doing. She's a hurting, searching woman, and the fact that these two men only want to look at her from a predatory distance feels like the greatest betrayal. Dante is allowed inside, past the barriers and walls, .
In a great moment at the end, After all, as Mark 9:47 says, "if your eye causes you to fall into sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell." It is only natural that Dante, a character nicknamed after one of Hell's greatest advocates, . Donnie and Virgil, while repulsive, make no excuses for their viewing of private moments, knowing it prevents them from doing even more harm. Who really has hurt Jewel more?
And, of course, the title itself pretty much tells you the ending. Due to years of Virgil letting the place become a nightmare of safety hazards and Dante letting the past become the past, . It's an apt ending--maybe a little too apt, but decent for such a short book. The fate of Jewel and Dante's relationship is left ambiguous, and we get the idea that Donnie and Virgil just sort of fade into the background, as if they can't exist at all as real people without the Empire or Jewel to validate their existences. I'm sure some readers would have more to say about the differences in gender and sexuality in the story--how the men pine for a woman who only wants the love of an unattainable other woman--but I didn't see it as the main theme of the book.
In the end, it's about what consequences you may face when you choose to stare into something that doesn't feel your gaze. Can we be content to just watch, as if the world was a black and white film? And what happens when the subject of our voyeurism turns and looks right back?
This is a hard one to recommend. It feels firmly planted in place and time, but not memorable enough to merit a cult following. It's scattered and introspective but you never really fall into the characters' minds. It was put out by St. Martin's Press' Stonewall Editions, an imprint I'm eager to look more into, which I supposes lands it in a culture of some sort. I also think it is out of print, so if anyone wants to borrow it, let me know.
March 20, 2013
The book was okay, except for the ending. The ending, quite frankly, sucked and the rest of the book wasn't good enough to overcome the ending.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews