Gavin Pate’s novel, The Way to Get Here, is a rare example of literature passionately produced, enough so to imbue the reader with a sense of that creative energy. Every word feels siphoned from the author’s own personal violent well. From the distorted sense of place through to the impressive intelligence so many of the novel’s characters possess, this novel feels like its author. I’ve never met Gavin Pate the person, but I have the author; I doubt the two ever exist separately.
The Way to Get Here examines the unique situation of country-wide blackouts, focusing more on the idea as a looming enclosure slowly suffocating the populous than as a hi-concept device geared toward pushing some artificial plot. The author allows his characters, and the oft-eloquent language used to craft them, shape the story more than external devices. In fact, the blackouts are mentioned sporadically, only as necessary as conversation amongst already numbed citizens would warrant. The blackouts are the specifics of war in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, or the cause of Cormac McCarty’s The Road’s apocalypse; they are setting. Strong, interesting setting, but simply setting nonetheless.
At it’s more engaging points, the setting acts as a point of commiseration, forcing an increasingly isolated community to reflect upon the exterior in order to understand the interior. In a particularly apt example of character revelation, the following section appears as the protagonist stands spectator to a man and woman couple engaging in conversation that suggests some sort of preexisting relationship. Note that the novel’s narrator looks to the world around him to discover something deep within himself:
Then he hit her…I shouted down at him, but my voice evaporated before it reached the ground…He left her unconscious and disappeared around the next corner. After some time she dusted herself off, looked both ways down the street, and started after him…My head felt better but this endless trail of disaster was getting the best of me. I could feel it in my teeth. I only hoped that memories would have limits too, like lives… (pg 52)
The novel does however, about halfway through, begin to get caught up in its own violent aesthetic, going so far as to abuse the protagonist to a level that should kill him multiple times over. The plot, though unnecessary and non-important it may have been until this moment, suddenly feels detached amid the back alley blood pool, and becomes necessary amid so much physical chaos. At this point the protagonist has embarked on a quest to retrieve an artifact only important to a group of local ruffians. As the narrator discovers new things, so does the reader, however neither has enough knowledge of what exactly is happening to encourage the timid reader to continue. It’s a shame to see the plot twist into confusion despite such brilliant lyrical control prior.
The journey is a fantastic one, however, and well worth the occasional meandering and confusion. I felt for most of the read much like the protagonist as he enjoyed a drunken evening with new, yet potentially unreliable friends:
The songs sung at funerals felt like the same ones sung tonight, confused in their glory, my ears unable to discern, my fine tenor loud and sensuous, linking my arms in theirs, having a go at the next verse, and the next. (pg 93)
Gavin Pate. The Way to Get Here. Lowell, Massachusetts: Bootstrap Press, 2006. $17, paper, ISBN: 0-9711935-1-7.
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