Thursday, October 2, 1997
Novel sluggishly trudges through bleak existence
BOOK: Clever language supports lone character’s dejected,
apathetic life
By Vanessa VanderZanden
Daily Bruin Staff
His mom dies. His dad dies. Then he searches for the meaning of
life and a chick. Sound like juicy reading? Unfortunately, it
isn’t.
Instead, Colin Hester’s debut novel, "Diamond Sutra," ends up
being much more of a bore. Yet, the slumber Hester’s writing style
induces actually stands to promote his work. Hester forces readers
to stumble along on main character Rudyard Gillette’s bumbling life
of scant hopes and dreams. And in the midst of having no clue as to
what really grabs him other than Mickey Mantle and the occasional
pretty face, Hester allows readers to experience vapidity
firsthand. Only, how many readers can admit to wanting to taste the
mundane fruits of those with pointless lives?
Hester introduces unintriguing character after unintriguing
character into Rud’s life to further emphasize his lack of emotion
and inability to connect with those around him. From his drunken
father to his bullying half brother to his two-timing girlfriend
(whose only interest for him is purely sexual anyway), Rud fails to
relate deeply with anyone. Even after his father commits suicide
and he attempts to come to grips with the incident by hooking up
with an old flame and a Buddhist wise man, Rud never quite manages
to sink his teeth into any relationship forming around him.
Instead, he floats through his days taking in the bare minimum
necessary to remain somewhere above the comatose level. And the
reader has to sit though this bland existence for 338 pages.
However, it must be noted that Colin Hester expertly styles the
novel to accommodate this dullness. Instead of directly quoting
dialogue, Hester indicates communication with dash marks preceding
each new speaker, usually without bothering to note their
mysterious identity. In this way, all discussion remains slightly
ambiguous, allowing readers to relate firsthand to Rud’s
disinterested point of view.
Yet, distancing the other characters from Rud’s sense of
importance causes readers to side with Rud, when little, if any,
inclusion of Rud’s own thoughts and feelings surface. Hence,
instead of providing secondary characters to which the readers can
compare Rud’s estrangement, Hester only manages to reveal a world
in which all people seem equally petty, cold and worthless. And
when readers find no reason to care about the figures being
presented within the textual bounds, they find it that much easier
to set the book down for good.
Still, Hester’s uncanny use of simile keeps "Diamond Sutra" a
halfway- worthwhile read. For example, within the first few pages
of narrative, Hester describes Rud’s father as having breath "like
leaves you picked up off the ground." On the very next page, he
goes on to pack the lines thick with comparisons like "council
houses and factories with chimneystacks as gray as elephant
trunks." By novel’s end, though, these vivid literary wanderings
fall by the wayside as Hester rambles through the overdrawn
storyline.