Two Parallel Lives Lost
RODMAN, SELDEN
Two Parallel Lives Lost Continental Drift By Russell Banks Harper & Row. 366 pp. $17.95. Reviewed by Selden Rodman Author, "Haiti: The Black Republic," "Artists in Tune with Their...
...Vanise and her family are part of the group, and on the run westward Bob gets to appreciate the potential of young Claude...
...He will stop at the Haitian shanty-town and give the roll of soggy bills still burning in his pocket to Vanise or her people...
...It opens on the poverty-stricken north peninsula of Haiti...
...She is deeply committed to the Afro-Haitian cult of vaudou, trusting her future to its ministrations whether in Haiti, Grand Cayman, the Bahamas, or Miami...
...Weacceptthat...
...I have already quoted the plea for such recognition in his final sentence...
...Bob freaks out for the third and last time...
...Then Bob's best friend, Ave, owner of two fishing cruisers involved in the hard drug traffic, gladly turns over one of the boats to his old buddy for innocent fishing excursions...
...He remembers him nostalgically from the long-gone days when the two of them were locally famous as "the Granite Skates'' on the state championship high school hockey team, but Eddie has since become foul-mouthed, cynical and unscrupulous...
...Bob has two options in his struggle to avoid bankruptcy: He can throw his (still unpaid for) boat into the drug traffic, or he can let it be used to ferry Haitians onto the Florida beaches at night...
...The American Dream of freedom, of seeking a better way of life, of moving a little bit upward in that search, is defeated for both of them before they ever get started...
...Wearereadyfor Banks' hero, and heroism...
...Are they really...
...Stay in New Hampshire or Haiti content with the same miserable and goal-less grind...
...Before heading north again with his wife and their three children, he yields to his one decent impulse...
...Or Vanise...
...In spite of his philosophic asides, it seems to be...
...Only at the start and on the final page ("Go my book, and help destroy the world as it is") do cosmic pretensions interfere with the reader's pleasure...
...Vanise, whose goals are vague, has no idea ho w to protect herself other than through prostitution and superstition...
...The first time had been in New Hampshire, when the frustration of going nowhere impelled him to smash all the windows of his car with his fists...
...They never tell or want to hear the truth, until it's too late...
...Before Bob can give her the blood money, though, hoodlums grab it from him and cut him to pieces outside the shack...
...Is self-interest the only motor in life...
...More specifically, it explores what happens to his honorable intentions when he is suddenly and dramatically exposed to all the temptations of making a quick buck at the rotten core of a materialistic, racist, drug-addicted Southern society...
...Vanise and Dubois are never activated by dreams of the leisure to pursue nonmaterialistic dreams...
...I can testify to Banks' expertise in describing ceremonies and handling the Creole dialect in which the peasants conduct them...
...Marguerite leaves him in disgust and he pursues a variety of white floozies, including Ave's provocative girl friend...
...This time, thwarting a holdup of Eddie's liquor store by two black hoodlums, he kills one of them and subsequently gives up his gun, lest he go berserk and kill any black man who reminds him of the guy who got away...
...Eventually the ordeal of the Haitians and the undoing of Bob Dubois begin to converge, bringing the ultimate horror to hand...
...there is an earlier attempt to give the title cosmic significance, when a family of Somali-speaking nomads on the Horn of Africa tries to escape to freedom and fails, as countless others have failed and will fail: "We must cross deserts alone and often perish along the way, we must move to where we must start our lives over, and when we get there, we must keep on knocking on the gate, shouting and pounding with our fists, until those who happen to be keepers of the gate are also moved to admiration and open the gate...
...Vanise, whose body is tossed up on the beach, is the sole survivor...
...Eddie, to the great joy of his wife back home, commits suicide to escape the bill collectors...
...Continental Drift is a riveting novel, written with maximum suspense and convincing detail...
...The flaw is that in Banks' world, noonemovesup, only down—to destruction...
...Is Banks' message, Don't venture out...
...The narrative gathers pace relentlessly, from sleazy beginnings to a horrifying conclusion...
...As for Bob Dubois, while he wants to pursue his materialistic and sexual goals he has no resources, moral or intellectual, to get even that far...
...Vanise, a young mother with an illegitimate baby, is forced to flee the country after her nephew, Claude, steals a ham from an overturned truck...
...The interference, though, is not the sort that blunts the suspense or leaves you feeling less than unqualified admiration for Banks' power to create gripping scenes and memorable characters...
...It concerns the I aloof a moderately "good" lower-middie-class man with plenty of sex drive, but no other noticeable resources, who decides to cut loose from a steady job as an oil-burner repair man and move his loving family from his native New Hampshire to Florida...
...We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire, and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism...
...Many Americans, and even quite a few Haitians, do improve their lot, as go-getters and immi-grantsdidinthepastin quest of the American Dream of freedom...
...Is humanity that bad...
...Vanise supports her family throughout their voyages with her body, and on one occasion she and Claude are gang-raped...
...There would be no need to ask more of it than that, except that Russell Banks begs us to...
...Bob lacks enough money, however, to carry on the casual sexual adventures that had already been distracting him up north...
...Fine...
...But just short of its Florida destination the overcrowded fishing vessel is intercepted by a Coast Guard cutter...
...Is Bob Dubois the hero he has in mind...
...Bob looks on, appalled yet passive, as the Haitians, none of whom can swim, are forced to jump into the angry ocean...
...As an old Haitian hand (perhaps the oldest among outlanders...
...But where are they...
...The theme is embodied in the continental "drift" or odyssey of the protagonist, Robert Dubois...
...He finds Vanise, her eyes still glazed from her latest encounter with the loa of death to whom she has been taken for exorcism...
...Choosing the latter as the lesser evil, he goes to the Bahamas with a Jamaican assistant to pick up the latest batch of refugees...
...He soon launches into an affair with Marguerite Dill, a strong-minded black woman, and freaks out for the second time in his short, aimless life...
...Meanwhile, in alternating chapters, another narrative is unfolded...
...Reviewed by Selden Rodman Author, "Haiti: The Black Republic," "Artists in Tune with Their World" Russell Banks has a great story to tell and—once he forgets about the burden of being an intellectual (he teaches a writing course at Princeton)—everything it takes to make the tale carry an important theme...
...The Jamaican, brandishing a shotgun, yells to Bob that there is only one way to avoid their being boarded and imprisoned...
...At the outset in Florida, Bob runs a liquor store owned by his older brother, Eddie...
...Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle...
...Although I can' tdothesameinthecaseof the horrors Vanise and her family experience along the route of their escape, these seem credible...
...Moreover, the author implies that the cards are stacked...
...Dubois and his best friends betray each other, not alone by seducing each others' women but by pretending to help one another in business ventures where the real concern is personal gain...
Vol. 68 • May 1985 • No. 7
