This review is from In Denver Times Oct. 29:

*

In the Light of You

by Nathan Singer

Bleak House Books

238 pages

While reading Nathan Singer’s raw and beautiful novel, In the Light of You, I kept being reminded of a key quote from another of my favorite books about Nazis, Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night. In Vonnegut’s novel, the protagonist, Howard W. Campbell, is an American double-agent, broadcasting secret information to the Allies in a Nazi radio show which he produces. The only problem being, as Campbell comes to understand, is that his value as a propagandist to the Nazis is far greater than the information he’s been broadcasting. As he realizes, “we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Nathan Singer’s Nazis are a different breed than Vonnegut’s. His protagonist, Mikal Fanon, is a poor white Kentucky boy who is, as a teenager, moved by his burn-out parents to a poor black neighborhood in an unnamed Ohio city. After years of being “beaten, threatened, robbed, ridiculed, and run down as a matter of habit,” Mikal joins up with the Fifth Reich under the leadership of a charismatic neo-Nazi by the name of Richard. It’s a world where race may not be exactly everything, but class most certainly is, and though these Nazis are a very different sort than Vonnegut’s, Vonnegut’s lesson holds. Mikal becomes a Nazi not so much because he has any great interest in the advancement of the white race, but because it offers protection and a sense of identity in a brutal, dehumanizing environment. Not that this makes any of his ensuing atrocities any more palatable. As Christopher R. Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland reminds us, some of the worst atrocities of the European Holocaust were committed because they were, for one reason or another, simply convenient to the men committing them.

Very much to his credit, Singer takes his subjects seriously. He provides round characters, not caricatures. They’re poor white kids, floundering, grasping about for anything to pretend to be in a world that’s pretty much foreclosed on all available options. They drink too much beer, don’t have much in the way of a future, economic or otherwise, and are more often than not bored stupid. Like most other young men, they listen to loud music, fall in love far too easily, and have a predilection towards casual and senseless cruelty. Mikal describes the life as follows:

I’m often asked how True Aryan Warriors spend their time day in and day out. Let me tell you, there is a lot of Tetris involved. And the importance of Sonic the Hedgehog to the struggle for total ethnic supremacy simply cannot be overstated. Speaking just for my chapter, we also spent an inordinate number of afternoons at vinyl record swap meets, Richard being the most dedicated vinyl fetishist I’d ever met before or since.

It’s this kind of wry commentary that sells Mikal to us, even when we don’t particularly want to be sold, even when we know a racist beatdown is just on the next page. The world Singer creates is seamlessly authentic, and Mikal is the kind of complicated, flawed, and completely compelling character that very few writers could pull off. Singer’s prose is as stark and brutal as the world he describes, but it’s also riveting. And when Mikal stops pretending to be a “True Aryan Warrior” and becomes the character we’ve seen glimpses of throughout the book, it carries the kind of redemptive power that reminds us why we read novels in the first place.

By Benjamin Whitmer October 29, 2009

http://www.indenvertimes.com/book-review-in-the-light-of-you/

*

Big thanks to Benjamin Whitmer for this.  Also, I should note, that I was fortunate enough some time ago to see an advanced copy of Mr. Whitmer’s debut novel Pike, which I’m assuming will be out soon.  Keep an eye out for that one, it’s a CRUSHER.