(no subject)

[skygiants]

In further adventures of 'books I simply could not leave on the shelf at the used bookstore,' the cover flap of The Bric-A-Brac Man: An Extravaganza promised me "a look-alike cousin", "a breath-takingly lovely girl and her older sister, a woman whose face is always hidden behind a black veil," "a man who claims to be the Devil, a pair of cunning old ladies, a brawny psychopath who likes heights but hates cats, and various other intriguing individuals," but MOST of all it promised me to be Extremely Set In The Greater Boston Area and oh boy on that front did it deliver!

Here are some representative passages of Local Color from the days in the life of our hero, moderately dishonest antiques dealer Arnold Hopkins:

The life I led was too hectic. I had to cease whirling about like a lunatic performing a fandango. At seven that morning, for example, I was arguing with a lady in Natick over the price of a Kazak rug she'd advertised in the Globe classifieds. From there, I'd sped to Wayland to see Max Guzman, then across to Sudbury, back to Watertown Square, in to Cambridge, over to Allston, out to Brighton, and finally down to Charles Street.

Garbage picking is really an interesting pursuit. It taught me a lot about restoration. Today I can repair almost anything, from armoires to zithers. Of course, some alleys were more rewarding than others. Those that ran behind Commonwealth Avenue, particularly between Exeter and Arlington streets, were the best in the city. Once I found an exquisite gray marble head of Hermes in a hatbox at the rear of the Baptist church. It was in mint condition, and Sidney Peretz paid me seventy dollars for it. Outside that area, though, the scavenging wasn't quite so good. Around Massachusetts Avenue, for example, the people disposed of very inferior garbage.

I regarded him for a moment. His eyes and cheeks were hollow, his complexion lurid. The poor old bastard looked like a cadaver washed ashore two months after a shipwreck. No wonder he dreamed about funerals.
"Did you drive over?" I asked him.
"Nah -- took that lousy MBTA. Twenty minutes I had to wait, and then I couldn't even get a seat."

(Three pages after his bad time on the MBTA this poor man dies in St. Elizabeth's after being chucked out a window on Westland Avenue.)

You may be getting the impression that the book is 90% just Arnold Hopkins schlimazeling his way through various highly specific Boston locations ... and this is pretty accurate; despite the fact that the protagonist starts out the book afflicted with frequent fifteen-minute amnesia attacks, starts committing grand larceny on page 43, and sells his soul on page 74, I spent the first hundred and fifty pages or so complaining that while I was enjoying the Local Color the book wasn't anywhere near as much of an extravaganza as advertised. "Criminal underuse of an identical twin cousin!" is in fact what I said to genarti.

However, in the last fifty pages, things ramp up dramatically and by the end I think it is fair to say that the identical twin cousin situation pays off with a vengeance as it turns out that the identical twin cousin has been partnering with a beautiful femme fatale to setting up an elaborate con to frame Arnold for the murder of the femme fatale's older sisters! one of whom is tragically faceless due to a teenaged boat accident! all of which results in the femme fatale and the identical twin cousin dying in a fire in their beautiful apartment (645 Comm Ave, near Gloucester Street) so that Arnold can slide into taking over his identical twin cousin's identity and thriving antiques business, achieving all his dreams, and yet it tastes only of ashes because of having sold his soul to [possibly] the Devil, with the only hope being the elusive possibility of re-opening negotiations via the discovery of an extremely rare commemorative tea towel!

So I'll allow the extravaganza to stand; Mr. Greenan absolutely pulled it off (although caveat emptor, the book was written in 1976 and is rife with casual townie racism.)

Comments

[adrian_turtle]

I can't name the genre, but I think it's related to whatever Zodiac is. (Batshit, Boston-focused, trash-focused.) Stephenson seems to be writing on the banks of SF, rather than actually in it.

[davidgillon]

That's a pretty fair description of Zodiac (at least for a non-Bostonian). Definitely SF-adjacent.