An Exciting Alternative to Other Book Reviews
The title of Calvin Westra’s second novel is Donald Goines: An Exciting Alternative to Other Novels. This is a bold claim to make before the first page.
But in this case, all is not what it seems, as Donald Goines is not only a novel, but a ubiquitous consumer brand within the world of the novel itself. Donald Goines is akin to Amazon Essentials: something you buy when you don’t much care about the quality of the thing you’re buying. In this context, Westra’s intent with the title becomes clear: he’s winking at the reader, sharing a self-deprecating joke that ultimately isn’t very self-deprecating at all. Because if the title of your novel requires a paragraph of explication, then you’ve most likely produced something a bit more polished than the brand known as Donald Goines.
Published by Expat Press in 2022, Goines is a picaresque adventure that plays by its own rules. This is evident in the narrative structure, where Westra presents the reader with chapters that unfold like aphorisms (in fact, sometimes they are aphorisms), along with a bundle of other writerly tricks. But Westra’s rule-breaking isn’t simply a matter of technique; it’s in the very air of the strange world he creates.
Goines imagines a reality like our own, but different. People still get high and want to “chew [their] fingers off,” but the way they get there is a bit unusual. They don’t inject liquified powders into their veins. Instead, they use knives and scissors to open wounds in their arms and ribs, into which they rub solid slivers of the drugs themselves. Afterwards, they bandage the area, letting it all percolate. In the world of Donald Goines, drug addicts resemble post-modern mummies, arms and ribs wrapped in duct tape, the bandage of choice for the thrifty user.
This vision of self-mutilative recreational drug use is rather incredible. After all, who would willingly cut his own skin and wrap it with duct tape, even for the greatest of highs? Then again, isn’t the notion of injecting a foreign substance directly into one’s own veins, sending it on a bullet train to his heart and brain, a bit of a radical practice itself? And yet, intravenous drug use is all too commonplace today. In Goines, Westra shows us that what is common may yet be strange.
Goines has a plot, but it’s rather simple, a means by which Westra can introduce us to characters like Dunnie, the Pig, and Honduran Emerald. The Pig is a very fat man who has great drugs and masturbates while you buy them from him. Honduran Emerald is Dunnie’s boyfriend and a regular customer of the Pig’s. Through Honduran Emerald, an initially reluctant Dunnie becomes a customer of the Pig’s, too.
This novel is in many ways the story of a great fall.
Honduran Emerald starts the novel with Dunnie and then loses her, ultimately losing much more as the narrative drifts toward its climax, the breezy style highlighting the brutality of the events taking place.
When the reader first meets Dunnie, she’s living with her family and employed at a good job (at least, as good as jobs get in an economy dominated by “exciting alternatives” to better things). By the end, Dunnie only has herself and her addiction. But at least she can trust that the Pig will always help her satisfy the latter, if only temporarily and for a price.
For his part, the Pig wasn’t always the Pig. He was once a frightened and chubby young boy name Pablo who had lost his father. But by the time the novel starts, Pablo has become the Pig. Corpulent and corrupt, sexually deranged, devoted to business at all costs, the Pig is the future.
And this future is grim. For one thing, every last product is made by the consumer-packaged goods brand Donald Goines. As noted above, Donald Goines markets itself as a “refreshing alternative.” But in truth, it’s just cheap and worse; not really an alternative at all. And this is true of society more broadly, Westra seems to suggest: “alternative” is a euphemism in this new American century, where you’ll take what you can get and learn not to expect too much.
The good news is that Donald Goines is no Donald Goines. It is not a cheap knockoff or a lazy imitation. It’s its own weird, wonderful thing. And there is no alternative, refreshing or otherwise. Enjoy it under the glow of your Amazon Essentials lamp.