CAMPBELL'S NEW BOOK SHOCKS, INSTRUCTS
Managing AFS: Andrew File System
Richard Campbell,
Prentice Hall
Reviewed by: J. Francis McLuggage
Ann Arbor: I come away from "Managing AFS," Richard Campbell's new ... what? Novel? Autobiography? Prose Poem? ... thinking of nothing so much as Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. The work shifts, sometimes gently. sometimes with wrenching suddenness, from narrative to stream of consciousness, much as Dos Passos slipped back and forth between the lives of his fictional characters, biographical sketches of Woodrow Wilson and Samuel Gompers, and the lyrical, autobiographical sections he called "The Camera's Eye." Just so does Campbell weave his tale of "Andrew," the lonely, androgynous nexus of "Managing." And as we slip into and out of the disturbing, disturbed universe of Campbell's manufacture, so we come to feel like Dos Passos' Camera -- an eye, dispassionately observing.
In the beginning, "Andrew," is born of bohemian parents, caught up in the moment of drugs and casual sex on and around the Carnegie-Mellon campus ("... clients could mount practically anything, anywhere they wanted ...") We are gradually led to know that money was tight, mostly by the author's obsessive repetition of the (oddly misspelled) word, "cash." This concern with position is echoed in Andrew's often-expressed desire to be "well-connected" -- or is it another, perhaps darker, kind of connection he wishes for? Although political dogma is not a central feature of the book, there are hints that the young Andrew may have been dabbling. For example, he muses, apparently to himself (or possibly to "Vice," one of his dream- companions), "There is no ultimate limit to the size of a cell..." A cell in cold stone reality? A cell in an underground movement? Or the cell of mind? Is this a political tactic or a despairing comment on the futility of enlightenment? We are left to decide.
By mid-book, as Andrew matures, we find him struggling with the dualities of his responsibility. He tries to justify to himself the compromises he's made with his life, saying to David, another possibly imaginary interlocutor, "The rules are simple and sensible." But he also admits his rationalization of circumstances: "Once you are on a read-write path, it is difficult to get off." And again, "If you've made your cell visible to the outside world, it is difficult to make it invisible." "... the threads continue forever once started ..."
Later on, David reappears in what is probably a fantasy sequence involving folk dancing. Campbell effortlessly, in an almost Joycean voice, encapsulates an entire evening's pastime with the two-word phrase, "klog david." The joyful abandon of the moment soon turns to remorse, though: "... poor decisions will turn into immutable legacies." The sinister Ethan threatens blackmail, and Andrew is driven to contemplate black crimes: "Ethan's personal groups can be deleted outright ..."
Particularly impressive is Campbell's subtle weaving of psychological thematic material with changes in Andrew's mood and mind. From a deep, almost pathological worry about money, his character can go to a childlike, playful fatalism over it, repeating, "dcachehits, dcachemisses...," Andrew-speak for easy come, easy go.
What bothers the thoughtful reader, though, no matter how impressed he is with the structure or craftsmanship of Campbell's work, is the theist implications that -- perhaps -- poke their heads, like unwanted philosophical woodchucks, up from the humanist mainstream of Andrew's life-tale. Is there a God? Is Andrew God? Is the commune of information a kind of God in itself? We wonder, as the book concludes with a suggestion that Andrew's destiny is to become, "... a ubiquitous resource, omnipresent and dependable."
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Richard Campbell is a founding member (some would say the founder) of the Ann Arbor Drinking and Thinking Society and a boating enthusiast. He runs a Manhattan-area Bed and Breakfast. "Managing AFS" is his first novel.
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Ed. note: Shortly before going to press, we received an angry note from Mr. Campbell, claiming that our reviewer had completely misunderstood his book. In Campbell's view, it's a technical volume about some kind of computer thing or other. What the hell does he know? If we allow artists to start determining the meaning of their work, think of the impact on the humanities industry. You want a lot of unemployed Art Historians and English Lit PhDs wandering around downtown Ann Arbor, getting run over by Mini-vans and undertipping the wait staff? Jeez.
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