At the last Albany Book Festival, I stopped at a local writers organization table, being manned by poet Mary Panza, a powerful personality. She ordered me to take a free book. I picked Harvey Havel’s The Wild Gypsy of Arbor Hill.
Harvey too is an acquaintance (now absconded to Las Vegas) and an indefatigable writer. I’ve previously reviewed his book of blog essays. Hadn’t before read any of his many self-published novels.
Wild Gypsy’s protagonist is Charlie, a very white preppy collegiate. More preoccupied with his whiteness than is normal. Reflecting (as did his blog book) Havel’s own ethnic hang-up. He’s actually caucasian, his color barely even beige. But he seems to think it’s a sexual turn-off.
He’s also quite nice looking, in my opinion, which he doesn’t share. Charlie too apparently is good-looking, yet like Havel is plagued by a sense that women ignore him.
I can relate, being sexually invisible to women at 5’4″, but didn’t obsess over it, just worked harder at the game. (Actually I was so clueless it took me ages to grasp the height effect. Never thought of getting shoes with lifts.)
Anyhow, Charlie haunts college frat parties ogling gorgeous inaccessible women, feeling sorry for himself. (Havel’s own thing about female looks was evident in his blog book too. I thought his problem was not relating to women as people.) Eventually though, Charlie does snag a beauty. But their torrid affair ends with pregnancy and abortion, and her dumping him.
So, disillusioned, he quits school and washes up in Albany, where he can get a cheap slum apartment and crummy junk collector job. Gypsy is a gal he hires to clean his place; turns out she sells other services too. Soon he’s utterly hooked, besotted with her. Despite her being no beauty — and continuing to charge him for sex, and stealing from him. Also she’s a crack addict.
This dismal unfolding saga reminded me of Somerset Maugham’s classic 1915 novel, Of Human Bondage. Likewise centered upon a “respectable” man’s strange fixation on a very unsuitable woman who treats him like crap. I’d read it half a century ago, while trying to catch up on all the great literature I’d ignored in college, and had the time because girls were ignoring me.
Charlie’s well-heeled parents had pretty much written him off. On a visit, his father insists he go on a blind date with a Harvard Law graduate. He hates the idea. She’s actually attractive, yet he deliberately sabotages the date with crazy babble about space aliens and sex.
Her name is Mildred, which seemed weird. Nobody’s named Mildred any more. Then it struck me: Mildred was the name of the woman in Of Human Bondage. Coincidence? Or Havel’s literary homage to Waugh?
Charlie goes back to Gypsy, who spurns his repeated marriage pleas, while helping him become a drug dealer. Leading to his best friend’s death. Then Charlie freaks out catching Gypsy practicing her profession with his drug connection. Well, enough spoilers. I did put the book down with a “wow.”
The word “uneven” applies in spades to this book. It held my interest, kind of like gawking at an accident scene, and had some strong literary touches. But it’s incessantly marred by sloppiness. The book is a first-person narrative, except occasionally when it isn’t. Line breaks are often messed up. Too many sentences don’t scan. Et cetera. No proofreading.
Still, it did rate that “wow.”
