Mostly Fiction BOOK REVIEWS
"Draining the Sea" by Micheline Aharonian Marcom
Reviewed by Poornima Apte MAR 13, 2008
One of the greatest writers of the Beat Generation graces the pages of
Micheline Aharonian Marcom’s latest novel Draining the Sea. At the end
of the book is a quote by author Jack Kerouac: `I never felt sadder in
my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.’
This statement is fully verified by the novel’s unnamed protagonist
who lives in Los Angeles eking out a meager existence by picking up
and disposing of road kill (mostly dogs). The dogs could be viewed as
metaphors for the many casualties of war that he has personally come
across. One dead woman in particular haunts him relentlessly – a
Guatemalan woman called Marta. The reader gathers that the narrator
was somehow complicit in her murder during the Guatemalan civil war
which raged for decades between 1962 and 1996. Marta was an indigenous
Guatemalan – a member of the Ixil Mayan group in the country.
In her earlier award-winning work, Marcom has written about the
Armenian genocide and here too, she hints at the narrator’s Armenian
heritage. There isn’t much of a story to follow in Draining the Sea
and for many readers that might be frustrating. In perhaps another nod
to Kerouac, instead, Marcom follows a `stream of consciousness’ style
of prose in which the narrator constantly describes his memories of
Marta and also speaks about the larger horrors of war. The prose while
arresting, is comprised almost entirely of phrases which can make the
reading quite difficult at times.
Marcom is fiercely critical of America’s complicit involvement in
Guatemala’s civil war. She is also relentless in her criticism of all
things American, especially American consumerism – a factor she
implies contributes to its attendant loneliness. `Things are certain,
the rules have been cast, the weather makes no difference to the
American, we condition air and alter what we abhor,’ she writes. `We
buy products, diets, fats, to feel good, and cremes and machines for:
driving digging seeing, and we don’t walk the streets of this city and
buy machines for walking; magazines to learn how to do it: making
love; buying guns; safe-keeping our properties and ourselves (alarms
steel bars locks and thick glass).’ At the same time she also paints a
very romantic picture of the victims and their cultures. While nobody
will dispute the nuggets of truth in these portrayals, the writing can
come across as overly simplistic.
In interviews, Marcom has pointed out Americans’ apathy toward
history. `There is a certain damage done by not remembering, by
willfully forgetting the past, which, as Americans, I think we do a
lot of,’ she has said, `there is a certain historical amnesia in
America which is pervasive.’ Her efforts at erasing at least some of
this damage through Draining the Sea is quite commendable. Marcom’s
powerful prose and the parallels she draws between genocide all across
the world – be it the Armenian genocide or the Guatemalan civil war –
are shocking and will hopefully, have readers sit up and take
notice. Marcom has admitted that while literature might not be able to
redeem suffering, it can at least `make something beautiful out of
something awful and atrocious.’ That, Draining the Sea, certainly
does. It successfully leaves what Marcom has called, `a kind of
authentic record.’
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