New Book: David Masiel, "The Western Limit of the World"

I’m new here and just wanted to suggest a book we all shouldn’t read, OK? The book is by author David Masiel and it’s called “The Western Limit of the World.” It’s a “sea adventure” without any adventure at all, about a chemical tanker. Well, it tanked all right. Caveat emptor, people! This review tells you everything you need to know.

http://www.nypress.com/18/52/books/books1.cfm

No Prose, No Plot
Publishers heed Hollywood’s death rattle
By Michael Leone

I started David Masiel’s second novel, The Western Limit of the World, with considerable anticipation. After all, his previous book was a Times Notable Book of the Year, and the present one has been praised by such worthies as Richard Russo. His publisher, meantime, boasted that the story, which takes place aboard a chemical tanker, was a “journey through hurricane and revolution,” with “corrupt officials, unscrupulous traders, and a mutinous crew.” Think Melville, think Conrad, think Naipaul.

This is the paragraph where I should begin to summarize the plot; unfortunately, there is no plot. What story I could string together involves a tanker called the Tashish that is transporting chemicals to West Africa. Only the boatswain, Harold Snow, a World War II veteran who suffers from nasty nightmares, and his first mate Bracelin, a pointlessly angry man, are in on the scam.

For some reason, the rest of the crew seems determined to hang with Snow and his first mate until the very end. This is more than any reader will want to do, as most of these characters do little more than exist as names on the page.

As I struggled through the novel, waiting for some plot illumination, some important revelation of character, I found myself increasingly frustrated. The lack of plot forced me to pay attention to Mr. Masiel’s teeth-gnashing prose.
He writes English like a man learning it for the first time.

The writing is fraught with redundancies: “Overhead a ceiling fan turned slowly...” Um, where else would a ceiling fan be? Old-fashioned crap appears as well: “He couldn’t not see them in his mind, how it would look.” These are just two sentences among thousands that are so blunt and pedestrian, so devoid of refinement, that the book is almost hostile to any aesthetic sensibility.

Though there are images, we can’t see them: “Lately, his eyeballs played old film, like movie screens showing heinous scenes...” Yes, I puzzled over that sentence too. His eyeballs are playing old film? On a screen? Does anything in that sentence make sense? The sentence is more heinous than the image not being properly conveyed.

The rest of the book reads like a technical manual wrapped with seaweed and spattered with salt crud. Yes, Mr. Masiel has spent some time on a tanker. Check out his web site and see the brawny and bearded photo of him. Technical jargon abounds: “Explosimeter,” and “ullage cap,” and “anemometer.” Rather than lend the book verisimilitude, however, these awkward constructions merely mallet the reader between the eyes. Maybe if Mr. Masiel spent less time posing on tugboats and more time learning how to write sentences, he could have actually done something with his experiences.

Meanwhile, as the story flounders on, Snow pines for a woman named Beth. Why he is in love with Beth, other than the fact that she is 30 years his junior and the only babe on board, is a mystery. In fact, we learn nothing about Snow. Why is he involved in this trans-oceanic scheme to sell bulk chemicals? Why does he have a house in Liberia with a pouch of diamonds buried beneath it? Why should we care?

Most perplexing, why is Snow the center of consciousness of this book? We are in his mind for the entire journey. Masiel gives us no clue as to what Snow thinks.

Today, every novel written about the sea must be freighted with Melvillean epigraphs, squalls, and mutinies. Masiel is happy to oblige. In his hands, however, episodes in the story bear no relation to one another. It’s all haphazard, as though Masiel is flipping burger patties in the air to see where they land.

There is a bout of malaria and a coup d’etat in Liberia. Eventually, characters we have no feelings for are killed off. If that sounds action-packed, bear in mind that the episodes are separated by scenes with Snow skulking around the ship and engaging in pointless, humorless dialogue with the wooden-mouthed crew. By page 30, we’re scratching our backsides wondering why this “adventure story” has no adventure or story.

Here’s one explanation: This past year has been a baleful one for Hollywood. Endless articles have been written about how the Hollywood studios are losing millions of dollars with each picture, stuffing our gullets with the same concept-driven but content-less crap in hopes of cashing in on the next blustery blockbuster.

For some reason, publishers seem to be heeding Hollywood’s death rattle. In hopes of turning books into marketable commodities, publishers are unloading bucketfuls of concept-loaded, ready-to-please books that are almost deadly, they’re so dull.

On the surface, everything tells us that The Western Limit of the World should be great. Forget about great writing, forget about “deep characters”—this book should be a damn good story.

But the truth is that there is simply nothing to recommend in this novel. Like a Hollywood assembly-line product, this is a concept-driven book, all salt and no soul, and thus it fails at every aspect of story-telling.

The Western Limit of the World
By David Masiel
Random House, 290 pps., $24.95