On occasion I connect with my students when and if we talk about personal reading.  This might be before or after class.  They might ask me about a book or an author, and when they do, they reveal an enthusiasm for reading that most keep hidden away.  This makes teaching so much more fun — to hear students tell me what type of books most interest them.  I mean, personal reading just doesn’t come up in classroom discussions.  I hear it all the time:  Who has the time to read outside of class?

Jaja.  I just read Denis Johnson’s 1980s novel The Stars at Noon. I probably bought it at a Salvation Army store in El Centro.  25 cents for paperbacks.  50 cents for hardbacks.  I like passing by the thrift stores on my way home after teaching.  Most often, I’m more than a little stressed out, and shopping for books kind of brings me down.  Driving home with a few new books at my side helps me breathe a little better.   Here in Imperial Valley bookstores are few and far between.  I’m not sure how my students find their books.  I probably read Denis Johnson when he first came out – this is like forty years ago –  so when I ran my finger down the titles on the thrift store shelf, The Stars at Noon probably jumped out at me. I ask my students how they choose their books.  Most of them go to Walmart or Target to look for theirs. They tell me they make their purchasing choices based on the synopsis included on the back of the book jacket.

After reading The Stars at Noon again, I’m still not sure how to summarize the plot.  It’s not all that clear to me.  I know the narrator is a young woman trapped in war-torn Nicaragua.  The story becomes increasingly gloomy and nervous, dangerous and uncomfortable.   In the middle of this chaos, she tells everyone that she is a journalist, but she doesn’t seem to do much writing.  In fact, a sleezy army teniente has taken away her work papers, and now she’s forced to turn tricks for money.   No surprise, this Nicaraguan lieutenant becomes her most frequent client.  I’ve been to Nicaragua.  I appreciate the details, colors, lights, and shadows Johnson integrates into his settings.  I also recognize the danger a young woman can face traveling on her own in a third-world country.  The narrator – we never learn her name –  eventually hooks up with a mysterious British oil executive.  In the beginning, he wants her as a whore, but she feels something different for him.  She finds he is in more trouble than she is.  She is stuck in the country, but if he doesn’t leave, he is going to get killed.  We never learn about the past history of the woman.  The Brit never gives up the truth about why people are looking for him. Man, I would be hard-pressed to WHAT happens between these two or WHY it happens.

Johnson seems careful not to annoy the reader with psychological analysis. The novel is organized around the lives of two desperate individuals that need each other at a specific moment. They may not LOVE each other.  But they NEED each other.  The narrator has been working for an organization called Eyes for Peace.  There may be a nugget of truth there, but when she loses her press crediential, everyone in town knows how she earns her keep.  She’s running out of money and options fast.  The Brit has apparently sold Nicaraguan oil industry secrets to the Costa Rican government. He didn’t think anyone would find out, but now groups from two different third-world governments want him dead.  Maybe the Americans are in on it, too.  Both the narrator and the oil executive need to cross the border to safety, but they have no idea how.  I think this is the plot:  the woman’s ony way to save herself is to save this man.

I live in Mexicali, Mexico.   Johnson  has a keen eye for third-world atomosphere.  The narrator rents a room in a Managuan neighborhood that may not be too distant from the neighborhood I reside in.  Johnson creates scenes of color and smell that I experience everytime I walk out my front door:  “As soon as the first drop of dawn dilutes the blackness, the neighbors begin their unbelievable racket, first the roosters, the the radios, then the live accompaniment to the radios – an then it’s time to wind up the little children and start their screams and tears and finally with the pots and pans…”   The narrator may feel superior to her surroundings, but she is not.   All she has going for her is a duffel bag full of Costa Rican money that is almost worthless in Nicaragua.  She holds on to it for what it is – it’s the end of her rope.   She can’t spend it in  Nicaragua.  She can’t smuggle it back into Costa Rica. When she manages get her British lover to the border, things only get worse.  Surprise!  The two are separated by by mysterious miltary and/or secret service groups.  He’s taken to a jail cell, and she is advised to go far, far away.  Like right NOW!  Soon thereafter, she finds herself alone in a cheap bungalow near the ocean when she enters the shower in the middle of the  night to find blue crab crawiling out of the drain:  “I ran from the room, collapsed naked on the walk outside," she screamed, "and screamed until the light came on in the neigboring bungalow and the desk lady’s husband came and carried the thing away to have it cooked.”

But, I’m not writing a book report here.  It’s probably because I couldn’t.  The person telling the story is what we call an unreliable narrator.  She has been lying since the first chapter.  She may have said she loved this guy, but when it came down to choose between him and her safety,  she sold him out.  We don’t know what happened to the Brit.  We don’t care either.  I get the impression, this guy has made a lot of money exploiting the poor, but doesn’t send much of it home to his wife and children.  We know that through his conversations with the narrator.  He never stops treating her like a whore.

I would never mention this book inside the classroom.  The characters are second-rate people.  Their love story is based on the lies they tell  each other from the beginning to the end, but I still like the story for their awareness of their own mediocrity.  They are at the end of their tether.  They have nowhere to go.   How could I possibly  lead a book talk or a classroom discussion based on this novel.  There is nothing  remotely optomistic.  "Why does the ocean roar?"  I would ask my students.  Because if you had crabs on your bottom, you would roar too.