Books

Dark Dreams, Indeed

Not since Hannibal Lecter has a serial killer seemed so, well, likable.

By Blair Kloman, M.A. English '94

When Dexter Morgan likens himself to a crumpled and recently emptied donut bag, he's not far off.

I poked at the white paper bag. There was nothing left inside. Just like me: a clean, crisp outside and nothing at all on the inside.

As the straightforward and unpretentious protagonist in Darkly Dreaming Dexter, by Jeff Lindsay '75, Dexter is forever reminding us what a real creep he is—a blank, empty, nonhuman-like human, whose only real pleasure is targeting elements of Miami's criminal underbelly and providing them with their final moments of redemption, as he methodically carves them alive into neat and symmetrical parts, drains them of all blood, then carefully wraps the tidy pieces in pretty, ribboned packages.

But here's the hitch: people really like Dexter. He's funny, smart, good-looking, well dressed, and endearingly self-deprecating.

And that's only the beginning of the many ironies that drive this strangely funny first novel. Dexter's job as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police is confounding because he can't stand blood (thus the draining of his victims). His self-proclaimed lack of human feeling is questionable as he becomes emotionally involved in the copycat serial-killer case central to the novel. And his supposed inability to relate to other humans is debatable, in light of the compassion he shows for his foster sister Deborah, also on the police force, and fragile girlfriend Rita. So while he is quick and eager to assert that he merely "pretends" at being human, the reader discovers something quite different by the end of this unexpected roman à clef.

But something strange settles upon Miami in the form of a dangerous and deliberate serial killer—something all too recognizable to Dexter. He finds himself caught in a web of conflicting emotions—yes, emotions!—as he struggles to find a balance between a desire to help his sister find promotion within the Miami ranks and his innate attraction to this particular killer and his signature style—which is markedly similar to his own.

With prose that veers from eerily demonic stream of consciousness to comedic theater of the absurd, Lindsay provides a twisting tale of murder and mayhem in Miami, while establishing the ominous start of an enduring character. According to Lindsay, a second Dexter novel is due out soon.

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Sweet Revolution

InTropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680, editor Stuart Schwartz '62 sets the stage for raising questions. While it's long been believed that sugar plantations, slavery, and capitalism were all well established as the Atlantic world emerged, these nine original essays by a multinational group of reputable scholars begin to re-examine the roots and realities of the so-called "sugar revolution."

By providing a comparative study of the earliest Atlantic sugar economies, Schwartz's contributors illuminate key similarities and differences among the plantation colonies. With particular focus on colonies of Spain and Portugal, these essays expound that—despite the reliance on common knowledge and technology—there existed considerable variations in the way sugar was produced.

Overall, the volume questions the very idea of a "sugar revolution" and instead relates how specific conditions of individual colonies influenced sugar production—as well as the impact that crop had on the emergence of "Tropical Babylons," those multiracial societies of oppression. 

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Talk of the Town

Residents of the charming New England town of Cornwall, Connecticut, like to claim that their little village (population 1,100) has more writers per capita than any other town in the region. James Thurber and Mark Van Doren once called Cornwall home, and in 1991 a local couple launched a weekly paper, The Cornwall Chronicle, that soon fell under the editorial direction of Spencer Klaw, a retired editor of the Columbia Journalism Review.

About a year before his June 2004 death, Klaw became inspired to publish a compendium of Chronicle stories, and he enlisted the aid of publishing consultant and writerEd Ferman '58 to collaborate on a publication that would best illustrate the Chronicle's creative and eclectic bent over the past 13 years. The result is A Cornwall Companion, a charming collection of 200 stories and letters culled from 150 back issues of the weekly paper.

Through articles carrying such titles as "The Black Spruce Bog," "School Vote October 19," and "Slouching Toward Cornwall," one is provided an intimate view of a tight-knit community nestled in the northwest corner of the Nutmeg State; Cornwall's "mom-and-popness" all but jumps off the pages and is delivered with a wink and a nod.

In "Cornwall Dog Days," Ferman writes about the results of dog registration month, listing the town's most popular breeds, the oldest dog, and most popular name. "License Number 1 went to Thunder, who hangs out in Cornwall Hollow and is a breed so exotic it would put you to shame if you have a dog as common as a black lab named Jake." (The most common breed and common name in Cornwall that year.) He continues: "Number 1 always goes to the town clerk or, as in this case, her assistant. 'Saves arguements,' said Barbara Dakin."

A Cornwall Companion is available by mail from The Cornwall Chronicle, 143 Cream Hill Rd., West Cornwall, CT 06796. Price is $20.

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Book Bites

Middlebury writer-in-residence Julia Alvarez '71 completed a pair of books in 2004: The Woman I Kept to Myself and Finding Miracles.(A review ofFinding Miracles can be found in "Faculty Shelf" in this issue. The Woman I Kept to Myself was a "Faculty Shelf" review in the spring 2004 issue.) Alvarez's 1994 award-winning novel In the Time of the Butterflies was selected as the 2004 fall pick for Chicago's citywide book club, One Book, One Chicago.

The Honeymoon, the debut novel from Justin Haythe '95 ("Mommy Dearest," summer 2004), was one of 22 books nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, one of the literary world's most prestigious awards. Haythe was the subject of a Times, London, story, in which the paper wrote: "A scriptwriter who struggled for years to find a publisher is among six first-time novelists who have been nominated for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, overshadowing literary heavyweights who had been tipped to make the long list. The publishing debut of Justin Haythe, 30, made such a dramatic impact on the Booker judges with The Honeymoon that they overlooked established writers such as V.S. Naipaul, Louis de Bernières, and Jeannette Winterson for the award." 

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Recently Published 

The Berkeley Literary Women's Revolution (McFarland Publishing Company, 2005) includes an essay by Doris Smith Earnshaw '46

Mortal Means (Cherry Grove Collections, 2004), poems by Kay Cavanaugh Barnes, M.A. French '95

Race and Time: American Women's Poetics from Antislavery to Racial Modernity (University of Iowa Press) by Janet Gray, M.A. English '87

We're Killing Our Kids: How to End the Epidemic of Overweight and Sedentary Children (Worthy Press, 2004) by Todd Hollander '85