Word: hectoring
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Susan Ded is Hector's best friend, a college friend who calls him "darling" and has strong opinions, though love's treatment of her has made her opinions "less vivid." The story belonging to the Deds and the story belonging to Hector move along at roughly the same speed, and as Bill Ded hires prostitutes to call him dirty names, Hector loses weight; as Susan moves toward alcoholism, Hector is hospitalized...
...Death arrives like a pig in a blanket, like a carrot in a pot," says Hector, "salted, salted." Which might make you think that he's not taking the experience very seriously. He is not, however, without fear or selfpity. What makes his experience visible to the reader is that he does not demonstrate his lack of denial, as he says, by non-stop screaming. AIDS leaves him quite clearly a human being, as it does in fact to all of those who contract it, and because we have not known Hector previously, the story is new, we have...
What makes Mr. Kondoleon's novel the success that it is his ability to reveal Hector to us, even though Hector is in the process of losing himself. Any points Mr. Kondoleon has to make about 'life in the age of AIDS," as book jackets and television shows like to call the time we live in are gently submerged within Hector's character. The comedy of the novel is gently submerged as well within its obvious tragedy, but the submersion is so delicate that the tragedy at times seems to fade. But while Hector does manage to transform "peace...
...girlfriend Shush, for instance) and in their banality (Mag calls to tell Hecetor that her assistant Joseph has died from the disease, but that she doesn't see it as just "a lot of rotten luck," but "as a doorway into the New Age"). But if the cast surrounding Hector approaches satire, it is perhaps as his situation dictates. They are all around him, and they are with him, but not for long. Only his death will remain, and it only will have any substance. In this sense they can only be hollow...
...however, that Mr. Kondoleon's humor becomes wholly ironic. The comedy moves alongside the tragedy, and the tenuous relation of the two generally manages to avoid seeming bitter or sarcastic. One does not necessarily override the other Death is not funny, maybe, but Hector certainly is. And while death is surely present in the novel, we are detached from it to some extent. We are busy listening to Hector...