Review of Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson
Review by Art Edwards
Originally appeared in JMWW in 2011
As a purveyor of rock lit for the past decade or two, I was excited to hear about Eleanor Henderson's debut novel Ten Thousand Saints. The story promised to center around the straight edge punk scene of the 1980s, a cultural phenomenon I was ignorant of as it was happening, and I've always felt like I missed out on something. Also, I feel rock culture has been largely underutilized in fiction, even though rock lit's failures far outweigh its successes. For every High Fidelity and The Commitments (the books, not the movies) out there, I could name legions of rock-tinged novels that, for one reason or other, don't quite qualify as memorable reads (I'm looking in your direction, Camden Joy). The love of music might inspire many to tackle the form, but they'll need plenty more than that to someday--perhaps years later--type the last word of their rock lit epics. Did Proust make it through In Search of Lost Time because he loved madeleines? Still, I'm hopeful the great rock novel epoch is still ahead of us. While Ten Thousand Saints may not be the bellwether of a rock lit renaissance, it does prove that era-based rock and literature can co-mingle, if not exactly thrive, together.
Henderson's ability to craft a compelling plot out a rock milieu is Saint's greatest asset. Between the concerts, drug use, fist fights, teen pregnancies and potential disease contraction within these pages, there is never a threat of not enough happening. Her main characters, teenage rock types who spend most of the novel avoiding conflict with each other, aren't the deepest set, so Henderson needs these external bells and whistles to keep the reader's interest and the story moving forward.
Henderson's writing style, mostly bricks and mortar, comes alive when she allows herself the odd lyrical passage. Of Jude's mom Harriet's first meeting with her ex-husband's girlfriend Di: “She was pretty, but not as pretty as Harriet had feared. Hers was the kind of makeup you could see from across the coffee table, dusting each of her perfect pores as pale as chalk”(271).
Henderson's powers of observation seem to come to the fore when writing from Harriet's perspective:
Harriet watched the boys come and go. From the basement to the van, from Jude's room to the fridge. She listened to them on the stairs, on the fire escape, to the ring of the phone and the drone of their showers and the puerile wail of their guitars. She observed Jude's romance with straight edge as she might have observed his first love—warily, with a mother's pride, hoping that, in the end, his heart wouldn't break too hard(220).
Saints doesn't disappoint with its peeks into the straight edge mindset, as when Jude describes the weird anti-rock stardom radiating from mentor Johnny as he plays in his band: “It was unfame, the opposite of fame—he was touchable and entirely knowable, he was memorizable, like a sister or a dog”(134). And when Eliza speculates on why Johnny--her husband-of-duty as the half brother of the dead father of her unborn child--doesn't consummate their marriage, Henderson backs into a wonderful understanding about straight edge ethos. “Maybe he really was a virgin, like his brother had been. He was so monastic, so chivalrous, almost squeamish in his chastity”(287-8). Yes, chivalrous. That's straight edge culture. People being oddly--even overly--respectful of their fellow man as them slam into them. When Saints shines, it shines when Henderson penetrates past the sheen of type and finds something deeper, rarer.
Still, I can't call Saints a great novel, or even a great rock novel. Much of it feels a draft short, like Henderson had finally gotten her plot points in order only to call the story finished before a final pass for tightness and cohesion. Of the four teenagers the narrative focuses on, there are too many step brothers and half sisters and adoptive and natural parents to seem worth keeping up with. I was bugged by the sense that all of these nuances weren't vital. Writing a novel is about making the hard choices to keep whatever is unnecessary out of the way. I spent far too much time concerned over which of Jude or Teddy had red hair and which had black.
And the characters in Saints don't break from type enough. Pothead fathers, drunk or controlling mothers, petulant teenagers, all seemingly incapable of surprise. I have no doubt Henderson was intrigued by the world depicted in Saints, but I felt disconnected from her troupe, like their stories happened outside of her, like she didn't need to write about them. The list of possible band names toward the middle of the novel was the first time I felt I really knew--and liked--Jude and Co.
Literature is a wonderfully accommodating medium. Writers have taken plenty of disparate cultures and rendered them well through the novel form. We have classics set in war, in the old west, in a bedroom, in outer space. There's no reason the various subcultures of rock can't find homes within the pages of a well-turned novel. Even though Ten Thousand Saints doesn't reinforce my hope that rock lit will soon see its In Search of Lost Time, there is enough tension and sparkle within it that one's time spent therein isn't wasted.
Review by Art Edwards
Originally appeared in JMWW in 2011
As a purveyor of rock lit for the past decade or two, I was excited to hear about Eleanor Henderson's debut novel Ten Thousand Saints. The story promised to center around the straight edge punk scene of the 1980s, a cultural phenomenon I was ignorant of as it was happening, and I've always felt like I missed out on something. Also, I feel rock culture has been largely underutilized in fiction, even though rock lit's failures far outweigh its successes. For every High Fidelity and The Commitments (the books, not the movies) out there, I could name legions of rock-tinged novels that, for one reason or other, don't quite qualify as memorable reads (I'm looking in your direction, Camden Joy). The love of music might inspire many to tackle the form, but they'll need plenty more than that to someday--perhaps years later--type the last word of their rock lit epics. Did Proust make it through In Search of Lost Time because he loved madeleines? Still, I'm hopeful the great rock novel epoch is still ahead of us. While Ten Thousand Saints may not be the bellwether of a rock lit renaissance, it does prove that era-based rock and literature can co-mingle, if not exactly thrive, together.
Henderson's ability to craft a compelling plot out a rock milieu is Saint's greatest asset. Between the concerts, drug use, fist fights, teen pregnancies and potential disease contraction within these pages, there is never a threat of not enough happening. Her main characters, teenage rock types who spend most of the novel avoiding conflict with each other, aren't the deepest set, so Henderson needs these external bells and whistles to keep the reader's interest and the story moving forward.
Henderson's writing style, mostly bricks and mortar, comes alive when she allows herself the odd lyrical passage. Of Jude's mom Harriet's first meeting with her ex-husband's girlfriend Di: “She was pretty, but not as pretty as Harriet had feared. Hers was the kind of makeup you could see from across the coffee table, dusting each of her perfect pores as pale as chalk”(271).
Henderson's powers of observation seem to come to the fore when writing from Harriet's perspective:
Harriet watched the boys come and go. From the basement to the van, from Jude's room to the fridge. She listened to them on the stairs, on the fire escape, to the ring of the phone and the drone of their showers and the puerile wail of their guitars. She observed Jude's romance with straight edge as she might have observed his first love—warily, with a mother's pride, hoping that, in the end, his heart wouldn't break too hard(220).
Saints doesn't disappoint with its peeks into the straight edge mindset, as when Jude describes the weird anti-rock stardom radiating from mentor Johnny as he plays in his band: “It was unfame, the opposite of fame—he was touchable and entirely knowable, he was memorizable, like a sister or a dog”(134). And when Eliza speculates on why Johnny--her husband-of-duty as the half brother of the dead father of her unborn child--doesn't consummate their marriage, Henderson backs into a wonderful understanding about straight edge ethos. “Maybe he really was a virgin, like his brother had been. He was so monastic, so chivalrous, almost squeamish in his chastity”(287-8). Yes, chivalrous. That's straight edge culture. People being oddly--even overly--respectful of their fellow man as them slam into them. When Saints shines, it shines when Henderson penetrates past the sheen of type and finds something deeper, rarer.
Still, I can't call Saints a great novel, or even a great rock novel. Much of it feels a draft short, like Henderson had finally gotten her plot points in order only to call the story finished before a final pass for tightness and cohesion. Of the four teenagers the narrative focuses on, there are too many step brothers and half sisters and adoptive and natural parents to seem worth keeping up with. I was bugged by the sense that all of these nuances weren't vital. Writing a novel is about making the hard choices to keep whatever is unnecessary out of the way. I spent far too much time concerned over which of Jude or Teddy had red hair and which had black.
And the characters in Saints don't break from type enough. Pothead fathers, drunk or controlling mothers, petulant teenagers, all seemingly incapable of surprise. I have no doubt Henderson was intrigued by the world depicted in Saints, but I felt disconnected from her troupe, like their stories happened outside of her, like she didn't need to write about them. The list of possible band names toward the middle of the novel was the first time I felt I really knew--and liked--Jude and Co.
Literature is a wonderfully accommodating medium. Writers have taken plenty of disparate cultures and rendered them well through the novel form. We have classics set in war, in the old west, in a bedroom, in outer space. There's no reason the various subcultures of rock can't find homes within the pages of a well-turned novel. Even though Ten Thousand Saints doesn't reinforce my hope that rock lit will soon see its In Search of Lost Time, there is enough tension and sparkle within it that one's time spent therein isn't wasted.