From there, the book then recounts the literal and figurative fallout of the blast, centering on Lee, an Asian-American mathematics professor who has gotten on in years and is steeped with jealousy, guilt, and resentments which come to the fore in the wake of the attack. It’s a mystery novel, of sorts, with a distinctly psychological bent and a touch of the family chronicle. In tone and structure I’d place it alongside Gone Girl and Michael Haneke’s Caché as filmic analogues.
The broad strokes of the plot are easy to describe, the nuances less so. In the present of the book, Lee’s University is attacked by a mail bomb, injuring the hip cutting edge computing professor. Lee gradually becomes implicated in the case after receiving himself a mysterious letter. As he tries to prove his innocence to the FBI, his guilty conscience makes him look more and more suspicious, more and more a person of interest. But why the guilty conscience? Because decades ago (during his graduate degree), he befriended Gaither, a deeply religious mathematics student, and his atheistic wife Aileen. Shortly thereafter, Lee carries on an affair with Aileen and eventually marries her following the birth of Gaither’s child. Back in the present, the mysterious letter that arrives claims to be out of friendship and concern for Lee after seeing him on the news. The unsigned letter, Lee recognizes, is Gaither—a taunt? A veiled confession?
The novel is shrouded, masterfully, in doubt and suspicion. It is because Susan Choi has such an unparalleled understanding of the nuances of human behaviour and psychology that the characters in the book are so beautifully fleshed out, but also how Choi is able to manipulate her readers into plausible misdirects and profound uncertainties. Perhaps I’m reading Choi’s tricks from Trust Exercise retroactively here, but each of the characters were cast into my paranoid suspicions. Even in the first few chapters of the novel, Choi describes Lee’s routines leading up to the bombing and his experience on the day of. The narrator and Lee are not the same, but Choi blurs the line of their respective knowledge and as a result, there seems to be a suspicious intimacy between Lee and the bomber. Lee knows everything about Hendley’s routines—he would have the knowledge required to commit the perfect crime with the mail bomb. In turn, I felt myself casting aspersions on Lee—as do, too, his colleagues, when Lee skips out on visiting Hendley in the hospital.
Lee really doesn’t do himself any favours. The book is just painful watching him make terrible decisions one after the other; his actions are not those of an innocent man. Choi’s narrator explores the nuances of human psyche, painting Lee with every shade of survivor’s guilt and the guilt of his previous transgressions. Seeing the depths of Lee’s guilty conscience blur the line of his own guilt: could he be the culprit? Partway through the novel. Lee is asked to take a polygraph test and the scene perfectly replicates the feeling of anxiety—which was a great adrenaline rush as a reader. After building up my trust in Lee, it’s called into question yet again as the narrator reveals that Lee needed to rehearse his answers, was practicing his physiological responses, and so on. His anxiety projects his guilt and his small transgressions take on deeper significance. I’d like to cite a particular section, but the entire chapter is perfection. Just wait to get to page 178 or so. Trust me.
Choi really knows how to turn the screw. Following the polygraph test, Lee keeps harping on the fact that he passed; the FBI agent, Jim Morrison (yes, that is his name), has to continually remind Lee that it’s not pass/fail but that there’s no evidence of deception. It’s both relief and not. The tension is fantastic, and I was in the Emergency Room holding in a nervous guffaw of laughter when a short while later Agent Morrison reveals an additional spin on the polygraph test:
“Your polygraph was sent to FBI headquarters, and they’ve reclassified it. They find the results inconclusive.”
“Inconclusive? But I passed. Gerry said so. You said so. I passed!”
“I did not say you passed. I told you what Gerry told me, which is that he saw no evidence of deception. That was Gerry’s conclusion. Headquarters arrived at a different conclusion. Their conclusion is that the test wasn’t conclusive.” (199).
The turn is already fantastic and then the most absurd turn happens. Be warned; there’s a long spoiler-y passage here:
“I’ve been doing what I do a very long time," Morrison recommenced, "and I've always believed, and always had that belief reconfirmed, that you never get if you don't give. And so, with you, I've given. I've given you respect—I think you're an extremely intelligent man. I've given you patience. I've given you the benefit of the doubt, when I could tell you weren't being completely forthcoming. And in return, I have gotten. I got the letter, after you said that you'd thrown it away. But the balance is very unequal. I have not yet gotten, in anything like the proportion in which I have given. You're a mathematician. You grasp what I'm saying. Yet in spite of all that, I'm going to give yet again." Here Morrison paused, as if to underscore his generosity. "I'm going to tell you something that very few people are privileged to know. In my business, which is the business of law enforcement at a federal level, there is a general belief—by this I mean it is generally shared, Lee, and there are very few who strongly disagree—that certain persons, of certain racial and cultural backgrounds, are immune to the polygraph test. The polygraph test is astoundingly accurate otherwise but with these groups it's worse than useless. It produces false negatives, always. It can never detect deception. No one really knows why; maybe these people don't have the base ethical orientation of our mainstream Judeo-Christians. Maybe they have a relative notion of truth, or they're lacking in guilt. Whatever the reason, we can't use the polygraph on them. Who are they? I told you no one outside law enforcement is aware of this problem. That's because it's not something we can walk around talking about. We can't polygraph Asians. The Chinese, Japanese, the Malaysians, the Indonesians. the Taiwanese are a maybe. Can't do Koreans, it doesn't matter which side. Can't do Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, and can't do any of the people of the region some call Western Asia and most people call Middle East. None of the Arabs, which is a very big problem, and for some funny reason Hasidic Jews also don't work, although once again, no one knows why." (199-200).
I love this passage for so many reasons. First, the dynamic between Lee and Morrison is beautiful. There’s a tense and mistrustful alliance. The tough love good cop / bad cop routine Morrison employs adds tension to a scene where Lee has been ex-exonerated retroactively. Then, the revelation of the polygraph notes is a comic and outrageous turn that deflates the scenes before it so dramatically that it’s hard not to laugh. The irony of the dialogue is also great. The fact that Morrison suggests that Lee might be “lacking guilt” is comical, given we’ve seen him lingering in it for two hundred pages. Then, the blazon of races for whom the polygraph doesn’t work essentially rules out everyone except white people, which is funny in the same way Kafka is funny.
But there’s another reason this moment stands out. There aren’t a ton of moments that call attention to Lee’s race, but it is in some ways critical to his experience and development of his character. Choi reveals details of his backstory tactfully without falling into the trap of excess that removes mystery and therefore interest. It’s clear that prior to moving to the United States, Lee had experienced bombings. There aren’t too many other references to his racial experiences, but it’s clear that his status as Asian American informs public perception of him following the bombing.
The other key area where Lee’s race is somewhat important is when Aileen gets pregnant. When Aileen gets pregnant, she is married to Gaither but having an affair with Lee; if the child is Lee’s it would likely be more obvious that he is the product of an affair. To be honest, this part of the story gets quite a bit of attention, which is when the story felt most at a slog. The section was necessary for understanding the conflict between Gaither and Lee, but the other parts of the book were more compelling to me.
The driving questions of the text are: who sent the bomb and why?
There are a number of turns that cast doubt on all kinds of characters:
Is it Lee? He projects the experiences of Hendley to a T and perhaps the narrator will pull a sleight of hand like Trust Exercise.
Is it Gaither? The ominous note is suggestive.
Is it Gaither’s wife, and Lee’s former classmate Ruth? The letter was from a friend but unsigned—could Lee be wrong? Morrison said Lewis Gaither doesn’t exist…
Is it Mark? He goes to a library we know is associated with the bombing.
Is it a Fasano, Lee’s friend with whom he reconnects and bonds with over his own bombing experience?
Is it a more genuinely random attack?
By turns I found myself believing each of these things and Choi’s ability to create these narrative turns is simply excellent.
I have to avoid saying too much more about the plot, but I’d like to highlight some of Choi’s other achievements. Her imagery is beautiful, especially with respect to flowers. I wish I’d taken more notes—apologies to Susan Choi for not citing her more directly here. One of the extended metaphors about flowers revolves around poppies—those that grow tallest get cut down. There’s a poetic sensibility in the writing that emerges in the literal-figurative blur. Lee’s colleague receives a literal bomb in the mail; Lee receives bombs in the mail repeatedly, though they are in the form of letters. Both are destructive.
Both theme and character are rich. Late in the novel, Choi introduces Mark, Gaither’s son. While Choi reveals characters slowly and gracefully most of the time, she occasionally has passages that are illuminating in their directness. While Mark is on a trip, Choi establishes his character alongside philosophical reflection:
“Mark was aware that a crisis of unprecedented type and degree was fomenting in him. His lifelong habits of mere solitude, of having very few friends at any one time and never keeping any for long, speaking little of himself even when he was given the chance, were due only to a distance between him and others, not between him and himself. Hence his distaste for self-centred religion. Such believers, Mark felt sure, did not know themselves; they viewed themselves with a mix of fascination and dread; they made their business their own redemption as a way of avoiding any real confrontation with the stuff of their souls. Mark's father had been one of these: his aloofness from others was a function of his aloofness from self. But Mark felt he was more like his mother: tight-lipped towards others because all too aware of the unruliness of himself. Of course, Mark had never confirmed this with her; the members of the Taciturn Tribe don't jaw on about how they don't talk. But little less he understood Ruth, the one thing he felt sure of was that she understood herself and was just keeping quiet about it the way the that Mark did” (275).
Mark’s private reflection is grouped with a reflection on connection to others, a sense of identity, and the role of religion in peoples’ lives. There’s a similar perceptiveness in each of the characters so that each feels real and all-too-real. It’s almost uncanny how authentically the characters present themselves.
The only exception, perhaps, is towards the end of the book. The story escalates, of course. Lee makes some decisions that are a little inconsistent with his character—as does his daughter. While the ending was still satisfying, it felt satisfying more in a James Bond kind of way than a Michael Haneke kind of way; when the ambiguity fades, it feels like just a mild betrayal to the rest of the narrative.
Much of the novel dwells on the past, which is compelling to me, of course. Lee’s obsession with the past drives the story, both rightly and wrongly, and the shifting and relative significance of the past to people involved in it are fantastic. Our perceptions so oft are misaligned. Towards the end, a minor character offers a counter philosophy that is pretty interesting as a counterpoint to the rest of the text. When he’s asked, “If we don’t know the people we can from [...] how do we know who we are?” (276), he responds, “I can’t agree with you there. You’re not those people. Lighting a cigarette [...] I struck the match, but that flame isn’t part of me. It doesn’t need to ask me, ‘What is fire?’” (276), It’s a surprising philosophy that separates agents from their progeny—or their effects. Essentially, what we create is not a part of us, and what we’ve created is selfsame whether or not it is aware of us. The disconnect between origin and destination, means and ends, is questionable for any number of particular actions throughout the novel. Does Lee’s betrayal of Gaither produce the bomb, for instance? Is Lee the bomber by proxy? These questions are, at least for 90% of the book, open questions.
All things considered, I have not done this book justice. It requires thoughtfulness and care to really do A Person of Interest justice. It’s a wonderfully nuanced and layered text well worthy of your time and attention. Choi has revealed herself once again (or rather, even prior to Trust Exercise) a master of the craft. Especially admirable since her books are so different from one another, Choi is one of the finest writers I’ve read in recent years.
Enjoy the wonderful, visceral, incisive book that is A Person of Interest and I’ll see you on the other side.
Happy reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment