Going to See the Elephant

Going To See the Elephant by Rodes Fishburne

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


A silly, silly waste of time. I was bored enough to consider not finishing it. I don't think it would have made much of a difference if I hadn't.

Slater Brown goes to San Francisco to seek his fortune as a writer; ends up writing for a newspaper; meets a girl; discovers himself along the way. Oh yeah, and there are tornadoes. I discovered that I didn't much care.

A few notable images caught me -- the grime-encrusted Trumpet (the newspaper) building with its clock that stopped in the earthquake of 1906. The network of electric bus wires covering the city like a live net. Two people rowing out to Alcatraz on a date and getting caught in the fog.

But the moments I savored were far outnumbered by those things that made me cringe. Everything in Fishburne's world is superlative. Slater's goal in life is to be the best writer in the entire history of the universe. Callio is on her way toward being chess champion of the world. Milo is the smartest living man on the planet. And so on. Tiring.

This exaggerated swagger doesn't make the story come to life. Quite the opposite. The characters are flat, like paper dolls. Slater's most distinguishing characteristic is that he dresses like a dandy. He's a 'writer' who can't write. Actually, he's an adolescent boy in a young man's body. He's an idiot.

In walks Callio -- the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Wow. Now there's a novel concept.

I kept thinking that perhaps the quaint landlady or the mad scientist were in the story for a reason... that perhaps their connections with Slater, or their presence in the story, would turn out to be important to the plot...

How wrong I was.

No number of tornadoes, alien fireball attacks, ghostly disembodied voices, or evil corpulent mayors (yes, these all make an appearance) can change the fact that this isn't much of a story. It's a list of things that might have happened to some people that we hardly know.

And I don't want to know them. I wouldn't offer Slater Brown my shirtsleeve to wipe his snot on. Callio as a pinnacle of feminine perfection is not real enough to admire. Milo... mad scientist. Stereotypes all.

I don't require a book to have a plot, but I do need it to have something compelling about it, something meaningful or intriguing or mysterious or significant, whether it's the characters, the voice, the writing or the world the author creates. Something that draws me in and makes me FEEL.

Fishburne can string words together but he can't make me feel anything but annoyance that I bought his book.