Baxter’s Literary Puzzle

by Dana Crowell, 2008-03-27

Charles Baxter’s The Soul Thief is not a typical novel. It is not formulaic. It is not plot-heavy. And, its characters are not predictable. Rather, The Soul Thief is Charles Baxter’s literary experiment to merge fiction and the real, a literary game for the literary-minded. Baxter’s novel grabs you on the first page and doesn’t let go.

The novel is set in the early 1970’s, “days of ecstatic bitterness and joyfully articulated rage,” and then jumps several decades into the present. It tells the story of Nathaniel Mason, a graduate student, and his relationship to a small circle of friends and lovers in Buffalo, New York.

There are many wonderful, memorable moments in The Soul Thief that display Baxter’s expertise in characterization, subtext and scene. Readers will remember when Nathaniel surprises a burglar during a robbery of his apartment and ends up making him a cup of coffee, when Theresa and Nathaniel sit in the rain “because it’s so Gene Kelly,” when Nathaniel returns to reality only after Mansfield Park is read to him aloud. It will be hard to forget the beautiful characterization of Theresa, Nathaniel’s initial love interest, who lives above an ice cream shop. “All day, Nathaniel imagines, she inhales the smell of waffle cones. That’s what he smelled on her earlier: confectionary scents, cream and sugar spackled all over this girl.” We can almost taste Nathaniel’s infatuation.

Throughout the novel, Baxter keeps readers in a constant state of agitation, thinking, questioning, and doubting, yet tempers the suspense he creates with warm humor. This suspense is created by the spoken and unspoken inferences and innuendos that carry undercurrents of ominous meanings and associations. Readers familiar with Baxter’s fascinating collection of essays entitled, “Beyond Plot: The Art of Subtext” will recognize many of his ideas put into narrative form in The Soul Thief.

Not surprisingly, there is no strong plot in The Soul Thief. Baxter is a writer’s writer. He is a playful lover of language who enjoys playing games with the literary form of the novel, trying out new ideas, questioning tried and true “rules” of writing, tinkering with point of view, stretching the capabilities of language to its border and beyond, rather than delivering a linear, structured plot.

He also enjoys testing the boundaries of fiction. In The Soul Thief, fiction merges with reality until characters and the reader aren’t sure what is real, what is fiction. When an act of violence occurs in the novel, it is explained as, “A narrative necessity, a required episode of violence … to keep readers awake and alert.” Characters live out movie roles. At the zoo with Coolberg and Theresa, Nathaniel realizes he has slipped into the fictional dream and “become their straight man.” Baxter employs this seamless slipping from reality into fiction and back repeatedly throughout the novel making one question reality.

Baxter advocates the power of story-telling and narratives while at the same time warning us of their illusive charms. Are our lives anything more than narratives, Baxter seems to ask? And who is the author of our stories’ narratives? Are we in control of our stories, or are we merely controlled by outside influences, our cultural heritage and our societal influences?

As Nathaniel loses his grip on reality during the first half of the book, the reader, like Nathaniel, loses her grip as well. Is Nathaniel an unreliable narrator, or is his version of events the one to be believed? The tension in the novel rises as the reader now must question all her own alliances and her beliefs.

If the art of fiction is important to Baxter, the theme of identity is an ongoing current running through his works. And, in The Soul Thief, Baxter takes his exploration of the nature of identity as far as he can take it in novel form. He questions the value of identity, whether identity truly exists, or whether identity is a figment of our imagination, or worse, someone else’s imagination.

If we are unique, then why is it so possible for our identities to be stolen by others? “What good is an identity? …The rubble of the personal, the dust motes of the specific. .. Every identity consists of a pile of moldering personal cliches given sentimental value by the fact that someone owns them. The fallacy of the unique!...” He asserts that the power of the unseen (the soul) and unseen virtues such as love, forgiveness, and tolerance matter more than identity as we have come to define it in American culture.

Charles Baxter’s The Soul Thief is not for everyone. The point of view can be confusing, the characters and plot are not grounded in time and space, (yet perhaps that is precisely Baxter’s point, to express that identity is not “what we do” but rather who we are at a “soul” level), the structure can feel a bit disjointed at times (the narrative sums up two months in a huge jump), and the final payoff that one would expect in a novel with such intense narrative tension, just isn’t there.

Baxter’s ending does not fulfill the promise set forth by his artful creation of narrative tension. I expected an apocalyptic close to the novel, a cataclysmic encounter between Nathaniel and Jerome Coolberg, anti-hero of the novel. Instead, I discovered a literary device, a trick of the art form, one of Lucas Samaras’s mirrors forcing me to shake my head and mutter, “huh?” in a puzzled sort of way, when, I suspect, a light bulb was supposed to flash in my mind causing me to joyfully utter an epiphany-like, “aha!”

Was Baxter aiming for something other than an epiphany? Did he intend all along to call into question the literary tradition of beginning, middle and end? Does he suggest that endings should be viewed as beginnings?

All I know is that after finishing the book I felt compelled to read it again. Had the author “played fair,” as the author maintains at the novel’s end? Had I indeed been given “clues,” or was Baxter’s ending nothing but a literary way-out, indeed a “trick,” to end a complex novel that couldn’t possibly satisfy the suspense that had been generated?

Despite the controversial ending, reading Charles Baxter’s novel is like eating an artichoke. Pull away enough leaves, being careful to avoid the spiny thorns, and one will find a delicious heart inside, well worth the time and effort, especially if you are a literary reader who appreciates the art of language/writing more than plot.

The Soul Thief is a brilliant experiment in literary fiction. Baxter makes us question identity, the things we value most, our trust in outward appearances, our faith in the written word, and our reliance on reality. What more can a literary reader ask from an author and a novel?