Word: codrescu
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Millennium madness is upon us. With the countdown to the end of the world in full swing, cultural icons assault us with visions of the coming apocalypse, passing judgment on the last century of human progress and awaiting the Second Coming and the birth of the Antichrist. Codrescu's messiah, impressively, manages to surf the web, enjoy an orgasm, save humanity and open a restaurant all in time for Mardi Gras...
...girl who has survived the internment camps of Sarajevo, appears mysteriously at the door of a convent. Quickly taken in by the nuns and the scholars in residence, this girl, Andrea, charms everyone. Her obsession with the show Wheel of Fortune becomes a central theme of the novel. Codrescu's interest focuses on Vanna White, a subject of mass worship who brings meaning to the world by connecting letters into words. References to the game-show throughout the novel bring with them the hope that somehow all the loose ends will eventually be tied...
There is something sad about these plot twists, for in them one is exposed to an imagination that strives for credibility and falters. Codrescu's attempts to integrate supernatural images into the novel are neither fantastic nor interesting, but merely commonplace and uninventive. And while it is clear that he is trying to set a foundation for some interesting interactions between famous historical personas, he is completely unable to invent an interesting conversation between any of them...
...Codrescu is certainly amusing at times. Typically, he manages to find "carroty orange baby penises" in an airplane meal. Yet his obsession with breasts and genitalia often seems out of place, almost like a forced concession to the Freudian tradition and by no means necessitated by the logic of the text...
Ultimately the novel fails because Codrescu's ideas are more banal than fantastic. Conspiracy theory, millennium madness, channeling of spirits: these are dated visions, and the date on the can has expired. Angels hovering above New Orleans, Albert Einstein reincarnated in the body of gigolo and pessimistic condemnations of consumer culture no longer have anything to offer us. Perhaps half a century from now a Hist & Lit concentrator writing a thesis on millennium madness will come across this novel as yet another example of kitsch ushering in the end of the world...