Order ON THE BLACK here
The publishing business suffers from several philosophical dichotomies, but one in particular is more interesting than the others: are we selling product or art? If a novel is published because it is expected to fulfill the demand of their targeted audience and therefore will make a lot of money, is it literature or entertainment? Certain novels bring back this dilemma by their nature alone. No editor right in their mind aside from Broken River Books would've taken a chance on ON THE BLACK, by Ed Dinger on the basis that it's difficult and depressing alone. Truth is, it's a challenging, melancholic mystery about the fatality of old age and the ruthlessness of existence. I didn't identify with the protagonist and it didn't make me feel better about myself, but I'm glad it exists and I would read it again.
This is quite complicated yet enjoyable to unfold, so I'll try to keep the synopsis as lean as I can. Clay White is a retired private detective battling senile dementia. He suddenly comes to his senses in a Philadelphia hotel room with a gun in his hand and a stiff on the floor, a situation he would've been right at home in a couple decades before. Clay has no idea what the hell happened though, his only leads are post-it notes in his pocket an a blonde girl in the doorway, saying she just called the cops like it was the most natural thing in the world. Clay doesn't know how much time he has before his memory gives in or before the cops arrive. In fact, he doesn't even know if anything the girl said is true.
I can already imagine the idea of an elderly protagonist with a degenerative condition making you want to stop reading this review right now. It would be a mistake. Clay White is a tremendous protagonist because he's struggling so hard to stay alive. He's not bitter or morbid. He's trapped inside his head, but it doesn't make him useless. He uses the swarms of memories coming back to him to scan his own life for clues to what's happening to him at the present moment and keeps notes on a series of post-it stickers, so that he doesn't forget. Clay is by far the most disadvantaged character in ON THE BLACK, yet he's the smartest, most organized and most resourceful. That's why it doesn't matter that he is old and slowly dying. Ed Dinger turned the least appealing thing about his character into a positive trait.
''He's no mormon.''
''He also said you were a sucker for a damsel in distress.''
''So I guess this is the part where I ask if you're in distress.''
''No, this is the part where you say 'this is the part'.''
''So, are you in distress?''
''What girl isn't when she needs to be?''
It wouldn't be fair to ON THE BLACK not to talk about its challenging, byzantine and thoroughly original plot. It would've been a rather straight mystery if it wouldn't be filtered through the fragmented mind of Clay White and punctuated with comebacks to present time. So, not only Ed Dinger makes you feel a deep sense of attachment to his protagonist because he is energetically fighting a battle he cannot win, but he gives you a killer puzzle to solve at the same time, so ON THE BLACK is both enjoyable for literary reasons and as a pure intellectual challenge. The narrative is twisted, difficult, it'll keep you wondering if you missed an important detail in the previous pages, but it's crazy rewarding because not only you have a mystery to solve, but you feel like you help Clay solving it.
The cycle of life for human beings is absolutely ruthless: you are pertinent to society for as long as you have something to offer. When you stop being a productive member, you are basically dead before your body gives up on you. ON THE BLACK confronts this atrocious fatality in a cerebral, engaging, compassionate and awesomely understated manner. The fact that it is a challenging novel about the fatality of human life will probably condemn it to live longer in the minds of crackpot genre theoreticians like me than on the shelves, but it's a damn shame because ON THE BLACK is art. It is meant to challenge you as a person and transform your perception of things and there is no higher calling to writing than that. The question is: are you up to it?
