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Reckless Eyeballing is one of those off-the-wall, satirical books that
makes you catch your breath as it proceeds to deconstruct and reconstruct every
–ism there is. Imagine The Simpsons, but edgier and choppier
(but simultaneously somehow almost coherent), set in the 1980s in the New York
off-Broadway theater scene, with a mystery attached.
Okay, the book’s hard to describe. It’s hard to force in a genre:
edgy humor, mystery, social critique…and some other stuff thrown in. Because
the novel tried to cram in so much, I found it a bit hard to follow and to read
in more than small chunks.
For that same reason, it’s hard to nail down the plot. A black male playwright
is trying to write a play that will get him in good with feminists of all races,
another is writing a perpetually in-process second play about Armenians, and
a Jewish director is trying to dodge anti-Semites of all varieties, as well
as other ideological crossfire. Meanwhile, an unknown man called the “Flower
Phantom” is shaving the heads of feminists and leaving them chrysanthemums
in a bizarre neo-Nazi pro-African-American-male serial crime.
If nothing else, this book, if you dare take it on, will leave you with food
for thought. Don’t read it if you’re easily offended about any of
your –isms or if you’re looking for something super easy reading.
If you choose to read it, you’ll find it short, bizarre, and thought-provoking,
if nothing else. Not the worst thing to read if you’re in the mood for
something mind-bending, I suppose, though of course there are more classic mind-benders you could pick up.
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