Word: earl
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...tenth novel Author Thomas Berger claims squatter's rights to the plot of the beleaguered household. Earl Keese, middle-aged and overweight, lives with his wife Enid smack at the end of a cul-de-sac somewhere in exurbia. Their plans for a normal Friday night have been made without reckoning on Harry and Ramona, a younger couple newly ensconced in the only other house on the block. Ramona appears first, while Enid is in the kitchen seeing to supper, and makes some lewd advances toward Earl...
...invites her to stay for supper, only to learn from Enid that they have nothing to serve but frozen succotash. Next comes Harry, a blond, muscular lout, eagerly accepting the invitation that Ramona has relayed. Earl is abashed and thus vulnerable to Harry's demand for money (to buy takeout food) keys (Harry claims that his own car has a broken fuel pump...
Something tells Earl not to give money and car to a total stranger, but "to have an outright enemy as one's nearest neighbor, when one lived at the termination of a dead-end road, with only a wooded hollow beyond, a weed-field across the street, was unthinkable." What follows during the next 24 hours suggests that Earl is right to worry. Bad enough that Ramona accuses him of trying to rape her and that Harry claims to be the victim of his homosexual advances; worse that Enid placidly believes both charges. Keese keeps throwing his new neighbors...
...unexpected but manages to be consistently surprising never theless, introducing new twists and outrages that not even the most warped spectator could have foreseen. The novel adopts a formal, almost fussy style to convey lunacy, as if Berger were describing low deeds to a maiden aunt. At one point, Earl finds himself face down in a swamp, having been punched from behind by Harry. Berger writes: "He was not paralyzed, but someone's large foot was planted in the middle of his back. Owing to this impediment he could not rise...
...redeeming, and those who read books to gain warm feelings or philosophic nuggets will come away from this one empty-handed and probably angry. Berger has tucked away no meanings here, provided no key to get at the order hidden behind all the slapstick. He raises the possibility that Earl, not his tormentors, may be bananas, but anyone who takes this seriously will find everything twice as senseless as before. What Berger has produced is a tour de force, his most successfully sustained comic narrative since Little Big Man (1964). Like the best black humor of the 1960s, Neighbors offers...