Lowboy

There's something about the New York subway that's mythical, more idea than perceived reality. Hell, to someone who grew up only learning about the city from books, movies and songs, the whole thing is mythical, but especially the subway. It's what runs underneath, connects without being seen. Its underground. For instance, since I always tend to approach books from music, the Velvet Underground become the Velvet Underground for real in one of the early demos, when John Cale (an immigrant, of course) tears apart a jaunty acoustical take on "Waiting For The Man" by having his viola suddenly imitate a braking subway train. And yet the album that I keep listening to while reading Lowboy is another quintessential New York album, Television's Marquee Moon.

I fell.
DIDJA FEEL LOW?
No, not at all.
HUH???
I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo.

I'm not sure why, and I'd better start explaining myself before this becomes a record review. Because it's a review of John Wray's Lowboy, in which the 16-year-old schizophrenic Will "Lowboy" Heller runs away from the mental hospital and hides out in the New York subway system while his mother and a middle-age cop try to sniff him out. And this is important, because the book doesn't just use the subway as a mere location. The story alternates between crowded trains, full of unknown people, and old abandoned stations and dark tunnels where only the rats and the homeless live. And even when Lowboy is all alone (or thinks he is) Wray never lets us forget that there's 8 million people on top of him. There's no relaxing here; the world is going to end, the planet is heating up, people are chasing him, and to top it all off he's off his meds and horny as hell. And, as previously mentioned, insane.

And perhaps it's there, and obviously this is a completely personal thing, that I stumble upon Television; Tom Verlaine's breathless vocals and almost pathological wordplay about self-deception and -destruction, the way it seems to explore an other New York ("Broadway/Looks so medieval"), the free-jazz-inspired guitar solo on the title track that spends several minutes searching for something and then when it finds it chases it into a corner and beats it to a pulp. And the way it sounds both tough and vulnerable, all nervous skin and bone; as if what's killing it is sustaining it. F-R-I-C-T-I-O-N.

The train fit into the tunnel perfectly. It slipped into the tunnel like a hand into a pocket and closed over Lowboy’s body and held him still. He kept his right cheek pressed against the glass and felt the air and guttered bedrock passing. (...) Lowboy listened to the sound of the wheels, to the squealing of the housings at the railheads and the bends, to the train’s manifold and particulate elements functioning effortlessly in concert. Welcoming, familiar, almost sentimental sounds. His thoughts fell slackly into place. Even his cramped and claustrophobic brain felt a measure of affection for the tunnel. It was his skull that held him captive, after all, not the tunnel or the passengers or the train. I’m a prisoner of my own brainpan, he thought.

By telling half the story from Lowboy's point of view, we're dragged into his world as he explores New York and the people he meets on this, the last day on Earth, trying to unite the ideas in his head with the world. Because he knows the world is ending, and only he can stop it. Intercut with this is the story of the search for Lowboy by an African-American detective and Lowboy's Austria-born mother - two people who both have secret identities of a sort, both strangers here; the detective (born Rufus White, renamed Ali Lateef by his activist father in the 60s) has his issues, the mother (who's raised Lowboy) has hers. So as they travel around NYC looking for clues, they soon start looking for clues about each other as well. Oh, and then there's Lowboy's ex-girlfriend and doctor who get brought into the mess as well.

Prove it!
Just the facts!
The confidential.
This case that I've been working on so long, so long.

Yes, of course this is a detective story, and of course the detective story has been used in this way before - to understand not just how we find criminals and bring them in, but as a picture of how we learn about the world and interpret the clues it hands us to create a picture of ourselves which may or may not be true. By having two separate but connected mysteries, with at least four protagonists - at least one of which has a different view of the world, to say the least - Wray puts a lot of the work at the feet of the reader; who can we trust here, how do we interpret the story? Is the answer the important bit, or the method by which we get there? Yet he never lets that overpower the story; gradually, he cranks up the action until the story barrels through New York, the storylines past and present start aligning until they're all on the same track; just because it's well done doesn't mean it's not a thriller. And unlike, say, Mark Haddon, Wray doesn't use his protagonist's mental problems to make his own job easier; in Lowboy, he creates a believable, intelligent character (villain? hero? victim?) without shying away from a realistic depiction of his illness and how it makes him figure out the world.

Just then the uptown B arrived and saved him. Its ghost blew into the station first, a tunnelshaped clot of air the exact length of the train behind it, hot from its own great compression and speed, whipping the litter up into a cloud. He opened his mouth to taste it on the air. The cigarette wrapper spiraled upward, fluttering like a startled bird, and for the first time he noticed the zebra-striped sign mounted over his bench. He knew what the sign was for and he said its name proudly: the indication board. His voice was clear in his ears now, serene and assured, because he knew what was going to happen next.

It's easy to like Lowboy; what keeps me from loving it unconditionally is a little more difficult to explain. Part of it is the little things; one or two dream scenes too many, one or two situations too many where I felt like Wray was keeping something from the reader just to keep the mystery alive, a resolution that feels like he could have done more with it. Also, and again perfectly personal, I really don't care for Catcher In The Rye and there's a little too much Holden Caulfield in Lowboy. Nevermind; it's still one of those novels that will both hold your interest throughout and stay with you afterwards.

This case is closed.