Reviews of three new books. Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin by Richard Davenport-Hines (North Point Press, 438 pages, $35) PAINT IT BLACK Now here's a title that going to assuage anti-goth fears in this PC--post-Columbine, that is--world. However, as both contemporary goths (see "A Brighter Shade of Pale," page 46) and this comprehensive historical overview prove, there's really nothing to be afraid of. Davenport-Hines' enthusiastic, rigorously intellectual investigation unwittingly exposes the hubris of the aesthetic's transgressive pretensions, revealing much of the goths' melodramatic Schadenfreude as a simple result of neurotic noblemen's overcompensatory egomania. In other words, the eccentric gentility, terrified by the tenuousness of its own social position, found strength in playing evil. True transgressors like Goya or de Sade may have violently skewered contemporary beliefs, but others just churned out campy trash. Whether or not goths are a society-annihilating threat is irrelevant, though. As Davenport-Hines beautifully details, the gothic cornerstones of sublime horror, idealized decay, perverse eroticism and heretical pessimism provide a necessary counterbalance to religious puritanism and blind optimism. Goths admit life isn't all flowers and halos, and they learn to revel in the squirming baseness of human nature. In doing so, by focusing intensely on the darkest side of the psyche, they ironically shed light on important, and usually ignored, truths. While it's somewhat disappointing that Gothic isn't a catalog of terrifyingly sadistic acts and gleefully evil malfeasance, the book's willingness to explore the depths with an intelligent eye is commendable and, frankly, crucial. John Graham An Equal Music by Vikram Seth (Broadway Books, 336 pages, $25) THE FOOD OF LOVE Readers of Vikram Seth's million-copy international bestseller A Suitable Boy may be disappointed with his follow-up, An Equal Music. Though the novel's backdrop is the world of European classical music, a tableau ripe with possibilities of cross-cultural pollination, its field of vision is much smaller than that of its Dickensian predecessor. Londoner Michael Holme, second violinist of the Maggiore Quartet, is undergoing a midlife crisis. Stuck playing second fiddle (sorry, it's impossible to resist) in a struggling string quartet while frittering away his talent teaching uninterested students (including a witty but aloof French lover named Virginie), Michael sleepwalks through his busy life. He is still obsessed with Julia McNicholl, the lost love and musical kindred spirit whom he mysteriously left in Vienna 10 years ago. Of course, obsessions have a way of catching up with the main characters of novels, and it isn't long before Julia reenters Michael's rote life and adds some spice. But the affair is unconvincing and plays out like, well, like the delusional fantasy of a 40-year-old man having a midlife crisis. We never quite understand what the girl sees in the guy. So when we find out Julia's sad secret (hint: think Beethoven), we're cheated of the stomach drop we should get with good tragedy. Where the novel does succeed, however, is in describing the workings of the musical process. The scenes with the quartet and one wonderful chapter in which Michael scours London record shops for a forgotten Beethoven recording have the joy and lyrical power of great music. Bill Smith Olympia by Dennis Bock (Bloomsbury Publishing, 272 pages, $22.95) SWIMMING WITH GHOSTS With translucent language, Dennis Bock explores the influence of family and cultural history through the story of Peter, whose parents emigrated from Germany to Canada shortly after World War II. The novel begins with Peter's grandparents, both veteran Olympic athletes who saw Jesse Owens snubbed by Hitler at the Berlin Games. Now in their 70s, they wish to renew their wedding vows on a houseboat floating on a lake in Ontario. Peter's father, apprehensive of the event, thinks "a second ceremony would be going backward, like returning to a place you left long ago to find only ghosts, or nothing at all." Here is the underlying movement of the novel--discovering whether Peter's family will produce ghosts or nothing at all. As Peter matures in his understanding of himself, he surveys all that his German background has to offer him: a father who placed fifth in yachting at the Rome Olympics; a sister whose own Olympic dreams were halted by cancer; one eccentric uncle mired in racism; another who daily lives with the past, disabled by the biological warfare of World War I. It is these characters, patiently and precisely drawn, who pull us into Peter's world. We mature with Peter, as we consider how to package our own family histories. In addition to artfully crafted characters, Olympia contains stunning imagery: Peter treads water for 36 hours to raise money for leukemia research, chases tornadoes with his father and dives in a Spanish reservoir to the cities that once covered the valley floor. While the images are beautiful, Bock refuses to let his readers remain in a vivid Spielberg moment. Instead, he zings each scene with the expected: The worst rains and flooding of the century; Peter's father bolting from the car to "shake hands with the tornado"; a dam leaking to reveal the city hidden under the water. Bock fills the novel with surprises, suggesting they are part of any family history. As we dive beneath the surface of these characters, the unexpected becomes the most likely. Christine van Belle - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published June 23, 1999