City on Fire is the début full-length novel of Louisiana-born author Garth Risk Hallberg, which apparently had ten publishers bidding upwards of $1 million for the right to put it out (Knopf won with a sum close to $2 million). Add to that Jonathan Cape’s six-figure deal here in the UK, the film rights sold to Scott Rudin and the book’s formidable, 900-page length, and you will understand why the good old “Great American Novel” tag was taken off the shelf before the book was even released to reviewers.
Whether Garth Risk Hallberg lived up to the hype is up for debate. I’d suggest there is a certain ‘hype threshold’ past which people will ensure you get a fair share of criticism regardless of what’s between the covers. What is not up for discussion is the beauty of the writing on show, nor is the sheer scope of the world it brings to life. Here we find a network of characters linked by blood or love or sheer chance which grows through schizophrenic POV changes and creative interludes. To give you some idea: There’s Mercer, a man struggling with being gay and black in 1970s New York and his relationship with punk musician/artist William, heir to the Hamilton-Sweeney fortune who’s music with the now-defunct Ex Post Facto “seemed to promise complete freedom, on the condition of complete surrender”. Then there’s William’s estranged sister Regan and her troubled relationship with husband Keith, who are themselves caught up in the Hamilton-Sweeney machine, plus loser-loner Charlie and his friendship with punk cool-kid Sam, and their link to the Post-Humanist Phalanx. That’s not to mention the police detective, the art dealer, the shock jock radio presenter. The investigative journalist, the firework-setter, the transvestite keyboard player. The anarchistic, arsonist cult leader.
So… yeah, it’s all too detailed to review properly, though the key plot is strangely simple. Packed with the sort of suspense/drama you might expect from a film or television show, the book is not as challenging (difficult, ‘literary’) as you might expect. What Hallberg does achieve is to conjure New York at a specific time. The web of characters produce a panoramic snapshot of a generation, palpable nostalgia and a good sprinkling of well-used topics (troubled artists, drug addicts, traumatised and/or damaged lovers) creating a view of the seventies perhaps as we’d like to remember them. The spirit of the book is captured nicely near the beginning, when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Day :
“For a second the city seemed to lean forward and make contact with a future self: ruined, de-peopled, and nearly still. In a sealed hanger, forensic economists move around numbered lots with scales and callipers. Believing themselves to have evolved beyond delusion and loneliness, beyond illness and longing and sex, they hum distractedly and wonder what it all meant”
As books go, City on Fire is pretty easy to soundtrack, so this playlist could have been a hundred songs. But anyway, here are twenty songs which go some way to capturing the time/place/mood Hallberg created. I’ve included a mix of classics and newer stuff to keep things interesting, and the order isn’t important.
Tracklisting:
- Blank Generation – Richard Hell and the Voidoids
- Art is Hard – Cursive
- To Hell With Good Intentions – Japandroids
- Kimberly – Patti Smith
- Chinese Rocks – The Heartbreakers
- Roar of Nothingness – Sun Organ
- Docking Guard – Northern Primitive
- Today, More Than Any Other Day – Ought
- Aloha Steve and Danno – Radio Birdman
- The Kids – Lou Reed
- Orphans – Teenage Jesus and the Jerks
- Stevie Nix – The Hold Steady
- Who Do You Belong To? – The Spirit of The Beehive
- You Can’t Hold The Hand of a Rock and Roll Man – Okkervil River
- Our Lives Would Make a Sad, Boring Movie – The Hotel Year
- Using – Sorority Noise
- Fireworks – Radiator Hospital
- Your Own Place To Ruin – Rivulets
- New York Hardcore – Talons’
- This Heart’s on Fire – Wolf Parade
City on Fire is out now via Knopf Doubleday (US) and Jonathan Cape and is available from all good book shops. Quiet, Constant Friends is available digitally and on cassette via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page.