Ben Tanzer

Rating: 4.125* of five

The Publisher Says: With Orphans, Ben Tanzer continues his ongoing literary survey of the 21st Century male psyche, yet does so with a newfound twist, contemporary themes set in a world that is anything but. In this dystopian tale of a future Chicago, workers are sent off to sell property on Mars to those who can afford to leave, leaving what’s left to those who have little choice but to make do with what’s left behind: burnt out neighborhoods, black helicopters policing the streets, flash mobs, the unemployed in their scruffy suits, robots taking the few jobs that remain, and clones who replace those workers who do find work so that a modicum of family stability can be maintained. It is a story about the impact of work on family. How work warps our best intentions. And how everything we think we know about ourselves looks different during a recession. This idea is writ large in the world of Orphans, where recession is all we know, work is only available to the lucky few, and this lucky few not only need to fear being replaced on the job, but in their homes and beds. It is also a story about drugs, surfing, punk music, lost youth, parenting, sex, pop culture as vernacular, and a conscious intersection of Death of a Salesman or Glengarry Glen Ross with The Martian Chronicles. Looking to the genre of science fiction has allowed Tanzer to produce something new and fresh, expanding both his literary horizons, and the potential market for his work. Tanzer also looks to the story of Bartleby the Scrivener with Orphans, and the question of what are we allowed as workers, and expected to be, or do, when work is fraught with desperation. Ultimately, Orphans is intended to be a contemporary story about manhood and what it means in today’s world, told from the perspective of work and family, and how any of us manage the parameters that family and work produce; but it’s a story told in a futuristic world, where our greatest fears are in fact already realized, because there isn’t enough of anything, and we are all too easily replaced.

My Review: Good gravy! That description of Orphansis pretty much what I planned to say in my review. I agree with all of it. The book is a small, rough diamond of Maleness, familiar to anyone who is approaching middle years or has passed through the horrors of middlescence into the Useless Years. I mean, I mean, GOLDEN years, GOLDEN of course haha. Tanzer's Norrin Radd (is that a 70s punk name or what?) is a father in deepest love with his child, Joey, and would do literally anything to feed, clothe, house, and protect him. His wife Shalla, although he is fixated on her presence, is not the focus of his world, nor he of hers. This is the inevitable pattern of family life, as parents struggle to figure out who they are in relation to birth families and work mates and the endlessly shifting sandbars in their home waters.

Norrin is a schlemiel, a perpetual underdog, not even beta in the pack hierarchy of maleness but more the omega. His escape is surfing Lake Michigan, renamed along with Chicago after a complete takeover of the country by a Chinese corporate hierarchy. The world hasn't really changed all that much from our own. Norrin would be begging for scraps and hustling to support his drug habit and his family in 2016 as well as this dystopic future. Norrin's love of surfing is telling: Speed is freedom, rushing along the surface of an illimitable deep gives him his only small mastery of the deeps in his life. It's all too short, and even Norrin seems to realize it's an illusion; after time on his sailboard, he sits with the wise man (humorously named Lebowski, as in "The Big") who treats him as a grown son. He's mildly impatient and endlessly willing to listen and advise. In short, he's a dad. Can't help but wonder whose dad...that'll make more sense after you've read the book, which I strongly suggest you do. After all, what other writer has the confidence to casually mention in passing that many places in and beyond the Solar System are inhabited?

Orphans is unjustly underknown. In spite of some copyediting irritations, eg "bare" for "bear" throughout the book, likewise "reign" for "rein" etc etc etc, the prose is vintage Tanzer. It is without gonfalons and ormolu cherubs or even pseudohip fake-slang, all of which date a book mighty soon after it appears. This is someone's subtle dystopia TV show (blessedly without zombies!)...maybe the Esquire Network? It could be filmed on the cheap in Detroit, and they need original programming...heck, why not Participant Media, those lovely lefties, as producers? I hate wastefulness, and that's what leaving Orphans on the shelf when it can be so much more is.

DISCLOSURE I am acquainted with Mr. Tanzer across several social-media sites. I did not solicit, nor did he or his publisher offer, a free copy to me. I paid retail like any other schlub.… (altro)

very enjoyable. appreciated his ability to put into words many hopes and fears and frustrations I experienced; esp liked the end of the essay 'Lost in Sleep': "There was an empty space and the doctors had to fill it, it's what they do. Parents of course do the same thing. You see that there is an empty space in your life and you want to fill it. You have a child and then you see that they also have empty spaces in their lives and you try to fill those."
And at the end of 'Underwater' when discussing how it took hard work & constant effort for him to be a better writer and now's he's watching his son in speech therapy: " . . . it's not clear anything is happening at all until it is, . . . . I am struck that this is how it works, and that there is no escaping it."… (altro)

When I discover authors like this one, it reminds me why I seek out new authors. His voice is so fresh, so uniquely beautiful that he makes reviewing a pleasurable joy.

In Lucky Man, Tanzer gave us a coming of age book about four adolescent boys. It was one of the most real stories I read in 2008. Now Tanzer has returned with his second novel, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine. This time, we meet two couples in their mid-twenties, struggling through a budding romance. Each comes with their own personal baggage that follows them through the relationship.

Some readers have a thing for covers. I have a thing for titles. The whole way through a book, a title will bother me if I can’t figure it out its significance. For those trivia buffs and title crazies like me, it comes from a Bob Dylan song - something I didn’t know, but fit well with the story.

One of Tanzer’s strongest attributes in his first novel was his ability to tell a realistic story through the dialogue of his characters. In his second book, there was the same strong trait for the most part, but the two female characters, Jen and Rhonda, blended too close together in their speech. It was hard for me to distinguish them at times. Even with this minute issue, the story was well worth the price of admission. I look forward to more of Ben Tanzer.

A copy is being given away at http://j-kaye-book-blog.blogspot.com/. Details in the right sidebar.… (altro)