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The Originals
by L.E. Vollick
Livres DC Books, 2002
Reviewed by Aidan Baker
"What the fuck is your problem?" is something of a catch phrase in L.E.
Vollick’s debut novel, The Originals, about 17-year-old Mary Margaret
"Magpie" Smith’s urban adventures and her attempts to deal with the (to
quote the press release) "street-level zeitgeist of fatalism in the early
1990s." Magpie’s problems? Poverty, absentee father, dysfunctional family,
no future, existential malaise…Magpie’s solution? Live life to the fullest,
seizing the day (or night, at least) with parties and binges of various
alcoholic and narcotic cocktails at the local nightclub, The Underground,
with a select group of street punks and equally disenfranchised youth, all
looking to fill that ever-present void inherent to late 20th century
existence.
This is setting of the primary narrative. The secondary narrative deals with
Magpie’s Reagan-era childhood and her fears of nuclear apocalypse. This
narrative is intertwined with the Samantha Smith story, the young girl who
wrote letters to various world letters pleading with them not to destroy the
world. Samantha temporarily provides Magpie with some sense of
security…although since most readers know that Samantha met an unpleasant
end, the dramatic tension of this secondary narrative -- and its seepage
into and disturbance of the primary narrative -- is perhaps not as taut as
Vollick may have wanted it to be.
This was one of my problems with The Originals. I had a few problems with
The Originals, and they hindered my enjoyment of what would otherwise have
been a decently written, entertaining novel. For one, the underground
club-life novel is almost as problematic a genre as the rock ‘n’ roll novel,
if only in terms of characterization. Largely because it’s hard to shake the
idea that what one is reading is not an extended fantasy of someone’s
unrealized dreams. Of course, one shouldn’t conflate character (a 17 year
old street punk) with author (a PhD student in Literature) but there are
times when Magpie’s persona, or at least level of education, seems
inconsistent. For example: Magpie’s best friend Peek starts in on his
continual rant re the modern malaise; "I’m talking about the existential
dilemma…We’re alone, we’re going to die alone and miserable…There’s nothing
left but to smoke the crackpipe at this point. Our culture is at the point
of extinction" (p.151). To which Magpie responds, "For Christ’s sake, Peek,
speak English." Yet on the very next page Magpie starts talking about the
collective unconsciousness. She doesn’t understand phrases like ‘existential
dilemma’ but she can grasp concepts like the collective unconsciousness?
My other main problem had to do with inconsistencies with the time-frame.
The Originals is supposed to be set in the early 90s but throughout the
course of the novel there are various references that suggest otherwise. For
one, some of the slang the kids use seems more late 90s than early 90s. The
Underground plays music by The Smiths. Magpie listens to Michael Jackson and
Cyndi Lauper as a child. At one point Magpie calls a headshop ‘old school’
for carrying SNFU and Skinny Puppy t-shirts (and both of these bands were
still actively touring in the early 90s). Sometimes Magpie seemed older than
17; other times younger; regardless, the discrepancies bothered me.
Eventually, using Samantha Smith’s history, I was able to pin-point the time
frame of the principal narrative as 1987. And 1987 is not (culturally
speaking, never mind temporally) the early ‘90s. This may seem superficial,
but if one is specifically trying to capture the "zeitgeist of fatalism in
the early 1990s", perhaps one should be more chronologically consistent.
Perhaps my problems with The Originals are trivial. But nagging problems,
none-the-less. And nagging problems get in the way of enjoyable reading.
Aidan
Baker is a Toronto-based writer and musician
who has published internationally in such magazines as Intangible,
Stanzas and The Columbia Review. His poetry was earlier featured in The
Danforth Review.
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