Trans. Ann Goldstein. Knopf, 2002. 326 pp. $25.00.
City is set in America, but it isn't really about the city and
its characters only sort of resemble Americans. Instead, it imitates the
form of the modern metropolis, with stories that feel like neighborhoods
and characters that pass through them like winding streets, and explores
the wonders and cliches of American culture like a European flaneur lost
in unfamiliar territory. The circuitous plot follows the adventures of
Gould, an adolescent boy genius with a giant and a mute for imaginary
friends, and Shatzy Shell, a thirtysomething woman who becomes his
governess after being fired from her job as a receptionist. Despite
their differences, both are really children at heart, living in the
world of the imagination and reveling in the comic-book conventions of
popular culture. While Gould fantasizes about a heroic boxer fighting
against the odds, Shatzy is swept away by the Wild West, improvising a
crude spaghetti Western into a tape recorder she's had since she
was six. Interspersed throughout their tales are the more mock-serious,
philosophical ones of Gould's professors, such as Mondrian Kilroy,
a specialist in curved shapes and "intellectual honesty" who
tries to prove that Monet painted water lilies in an effort to represent
pure nothingness. Baricco's satirical and distinctly European point
of view would have us take these metaphysical theories and escapist
fantasies with several grains of salt, except that it's hard not to
sympathize with the sincerity behind them: the childish urge to conjure
up new things that all the characters, young and old, seem to share.
Whether they retreat into intellect or imagination, they each find
solace in the human potential to find form and meaning in an otherwise
sprawling and absurd universe. Together, they give us a hilarious
impression of "metropolitan" America: center of precociousness
and immaturity, rich in boredom, desire, and possibility.
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