Author: Hari Kunzru
Title: White Tears
Narrators: Lincoln Hoppe, Danny Campbell, Dominic Hoffman
Publication Info: Random House Audio (2017)
Summary/Review:
This novel is narrated by Seth, a young white man working as a studio engineer as a partner to Carter, a friend from art school who shares his love for music. Carter comes from a wealthy family and is a douchey bro who claims to only listen to Black music from the analog era because of its “realness.” Seth is the narrator but Kunzru leaks through that he’s also not the most admirable person.
As part of his work, Seth records ambient sounds around the city that are digitally edited into musical recordings. On one occasion, he records a man singing a blues song and on Carter’s prompting, Seth edits it to sound like a scratchy 78 from the Twenties and they release it as a lost blues song by a musician named Charlie Shaw. They are then contacted by a record collector who informs them that he last heard this recording in 1959 and that Charlie Shaw is real.
This sets off the narrative in which Seth loses everything, possibly even his mind. It’s never clear if he’s beset by a phantasmagorical punishment for cultural appropriation or if it’s a story told by an unreliable narrator suffering mental illness. Seth’s narrative is interrupted by the record collector’s story (one in which he has a subservient relationship with a partner paralleling Seth and Carter) and Charlie Shaw himself. It’s a clever and creepy and gory and unsettling book, that’s nevertheless hard to stop reading.
Recommended books: Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson, Ghost World by Daniel Clowes, and Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
Rating: ***
Panorama of the Mountains 