Treatise by Noah Cicero

Ennui is a tricky thing; if not handled right, the emotional core of American Beauty can turn into American Tale and leave the reader wondering why they give a shit about a mouse and its existential crisis. In Treatise, though, Noah Cicero weaves through all the conventions of the soul-searching novel without being patronizing or hackneyed.

When Misail, the narrator, finds that his IT job will be outsourced to India, he gives up the creature comforts of his father’s suburbia to find a life of his own. His father, who believes that the TV show Coach is a masterpiece of storytelling—because CHIPS is too intellectual—threatens to disown Misail, telling him that anyone who doesn’t work in an air-conditioned office is either a lout or a harlot. He ‘considered himself a god because like God he was never wrong [even though] he never allowed any new information to enter his head after age eighteen.’ With a patriarch like that, it’s no wonder Misail beat feet out of the cathode ray glow that enveloped his father’s existence, headed to blue-collar Nirvana.

Against his better judgment, Misail lands a gig pushing buttons inside an air-conditioned office in a factory, the workers glaring at him while dripping with sweat. Several searing class-stratification rants follow and Misail eventually finds himself at a bar. But even after pages of paraphrasing Marx and citing everything from Myspace to blindly voting Republican as the piss in society’s spiritual bowl of Cheerios, as he watches a random cowboy sing karaoke, all Misail can manage is: ‘I felt happy.’ In the world of Treatise, where the strip-mall landscape seems to shape the characters into spiritually devoid autonomous units in much the same way as the post-apocalyptic coast shapes The Road’s grifters, these three words seem so simple. Trite, even. But damned if I wasn’t cheering along with him.

In a voice that floats somewhere between the product of Chuck Palahniuk’s more acerbic satire and Jack Kerouac’s mundane ecstasy, Misail’s journey winds from a romantic encounter—‘We eventually had sex. It was not bad sex. It was like ordering spaghetti at a restaurant’—to a blue-collar position inside the sweaty area of a factory—‘[Misail’s family] didn’t ask questions about the factory—for neither of them had entered one—for fear of inciting a guilt reflex, and it was too nice of a day for that. So they talked about Global Warming and why people should stop smoking’—to a pizza parlor, where he becomes involved in an equality scheme reminiscent of A Confederacy of Dunces and morphs into an almost Dianne Fossey of the blue-collar jungle.

Some of his ruminations wrap around themselves even more than that last sentence and become more convoluted, yet remain strangely lucid. Combined with the disconnected morality and black humor, he constructs a world that’s just slightly off, which makes it feel uncomfortably real. These philosophical musings seem to be the thesis of the book almost, followed by two other bold choices Cicero makes.

On the first page, he says that Treatise is ‘A remix of Anton Chekhov’s My Life’ and if you’ve read My Life, you already know where the story is going, but you’ll want to read on anyway. All of the characters—these being the middle-est of the middle: (presumably) white, median income people living in the suburbs of Youngstown, Ohio—bear the same handles as in Chekhov: Misail, Kleopatra, Radish, Blagovo and more. Is this drawing parallels between the plight of various middle-classes, and later working-classes? Lampooning our supposed worries versus 19th century Russia’s? Saying that we try and try and try, and a hundred years and two continents later we’re in the same comfortable rut? Or just remixing Chekhov to provoke discussions like this?

The second bold (maybe: odd) choice is Cicero’s editing, or lack thereof. Treatise is a perfect example of the power of a strong voice. The text itself is littered with typos. And odd sentence structures. Which some could say, I don’t know, maybe alter the way the reader connects to the story. In talking about this, one theory that came up was, in the same way the narrator is obsessed with the ways of the working class, the text itself is more about the raw production versus the polished final draft. Whether there is a metaphysical purpose to the actual text, whether an extra proofread or two would help the story, you have to admire a writer who—in a time of tireless editing and crafting every single letter of every single word—seems to take such joy in just producing, in the craft of storytelling.

And let there be no mistaking: Cicero tells one fantastic story.

Review by Nik Korpon

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Author: Noah Cicero

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