You Can Make Him Like You
You Can Make Him Like You (Ben Tanzer, Artistically Declined Press 2011, 214 pages)
[caption id="attachment_2556" align="alignleft" width="314"] You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer[/caption]
Is Ben Tanzer "the High Priest of Pop" as Scott McClanahan's glowing praise decries from atop the front cover of You Can Make Him Like You? This is the first novel by Tanzer that I've had the pleasure of reading, and I did just coincidentally hear the exact same phrase applied to no less than David Bowie in a documentary I happened to catch on Netflix only a week ago -- so I'll reserve my judgment on that moniker until I've gotten through this fine author's entire catalog. But having the same praise heaped upon you and your book as was once heaped upon a post-Ziggy Stardust legend like Bowie is a pretty nice place to start, indeed.
You Can Make Him Like You is Tanzer's third novel since 2007, making him a pretty prolific young author so far. As the official site will tell you, the story "is an adventure in being a grown up, in facing relationships and jobs, friendships and parenthood. A true exploration of what it means to live in our world, saturated with pop culture in the midst of real life struggles." All this is true. But there's more.
First, let's talk about novels. I don't ever feel like I read enough of them and what's worse, I am rarely disappointed when I finally crack a cover and get through one, so I have no excuses as to why I don't make them a higher priority in my life. Or maybe more specifically, I tend to be a generous enough reader where I'd be hard-pressed not to be able to find something of merit, something worth talking about or exploring upon finishing a novel. And there are many types of them, too, from the sprawling epics to the post-modern tomes to the minimalist renderings of formal beauty to the page turners that tell us something about a singular moment, a point of personal development, a life episode on the way to growing old -- and this last area is probably where Tanzer's novel best fits in.
To the best of my understanding, Tanzer's mission statement or elevator pitch for this novel might read something like this:
For a male, reaching true adulthood has something to do with making the transition from being productive -- in terms of career, life accomplishments, besting one's comrades with things like ingesting the most alcohol or knowing the minutiae that surrounds a cutting-edge alt-rock band -- to being reproductive, meaning, to abandon the insecurities, family troubles, drinking bouts, sex fantasies and idle flirtations with co-workers better associated with one's twenties, for the greater maturity and personal accountability that is inherent in and required of fatherhood.
Ok, so that would have to be a pretty long elevator ride, but in a nutshell, that's what I think the book offers, among other things, to its readers.
Taking its name from a popular (?) song by The Hold Steady, You Can Make Him Like You dabbles in pop culture moments of the immediate present, offering another pathway into the novel for many readers. In the wake of contemporary cinema and the ubiquitousness of television, we all tend to see ourselves as the star of our own miniseries. We soundtrack our experiences, we relate ourselves and our friends to characters on t.v. shows, we reference the heroes and villains of music, or fashion, or politics, in an effort to understand what the hell might be happening to us at any given time in the world. This is how we make sense of our time on the planet, which might be something particular about being American, I'm not sure. That said, the framework that the title establishes serves as a guide for navigating the text -- and this may very well be a significant reason behind exactly why the pages of this book turn so easily and quickly.
Here's a perfect example, from page 152 in the novel:
Are we not all Vic Mackey? We are, and so was John McCain once. So sure in himself, always knowing what was right, right to him anyway, and always as McCain as he could be, never embracing what was best for him or whatever direction the political winds happened to be blowing. And so regardless of what I may want to believe or say publicly I do wonder what's happening to him. Is winning really this important to him? And, if so, what might the cost of victory be? His credibility, moral authority, what? And yes, I know, I have to ask how this ties in with my dad and his bullshit because it must tie-in with my dad. You don't need to be in therapy to know that.
Vic Mackey, of course, was the always-troubled, family-focused, means-justify-the-ends type of cop who was willing to bend every rule in order to mete out justice in a world. He understood that the bureaucracy of the criminal justice system moves all too clumsily when faced with the challenge of punishing ever more aggressive and reckless bad guys. That was the subject of the Emmy-award winning cable t.v. show, The Shield. With a bald head not unlike a bullet, we watched Vic Mackey in episode after episode, and we were drawn into the drama of his life -- progressively siding with his ability to get things done, finding ourselves willing to let more and more corners get cut or rules broken, for the sake of fast, precise (sometimes) vigilante-style order. And this is how Tanzer's thirty-something narrator is analyzing himself in this exact moment.
He wants to believe that he can continue to live his life on his own terms, which probably involves being a great deal more selfish than a healthy marriage will allow. He wants to believe that he can rise morally above his friends, who may actually cheat on their wives while he only considers it, but doesn't act on it. He wants to believe that John McCain represents a version of his former self, confident, bold, decisive -- a man of action and stubborn enough not to let the winds of change (or reason, or whatever) push him off of his path. But ultimately, most of this just represents a person's last-ditch efforts to resist change, to cling to the past, to "fight the good fight" -- even if he knows it's wrong. Tanzer's narrator knows deep down in his heart that Vic Mackey doesn't really fit that well into the world he lives in, and suffers greatly for his maverick tendencies. Maverick, did you say? McCain is just another embodiment of the same tragic character -- were he to actually be a human before being a politician, with every compromise that entails in today's high-school like political and journalistic atmosphere, then he might stand a chance at winning. But he can't be a human before being a politician -- it's not his fate.
"Is winning really this important to him? And, if so, what might the cost of victory be?" the narrator asks himself, probably already knowing the answers. And what exactly is the victory in question? Victory of his own maturity and growth over his adolescent tendencies? The "Victory" of his self-interested desires to stay young, to remain irresponsible, to in effect, not grow up? Is it his wife's Victory, getting what she wants, namely a child and perhaps more importantly, a partner in the raising of said baby? As Obama wins the presidential election that takes place concurrently with the action in the novel, McCain bends and eventually breaks, offering us a parallel universe of understanding this notion of "victory." With McCain goes the lesser version of Tanzer's narrator, and though it happens with a great deal of reluctance, the ascendancy of Obama as the unlikely hero and victor of the presidential race tells of what is to come for the newly evolved narrator, as well.
Somewhere between Don Draper and Vic Mackey, Tanzer's narrator initially finds and then grows tired of the comfort he has taken from shaping his own personal identity or creating his own set of rules. We are ultimately not disappointed by him, unless of course, we're also not quite ready to grow up ourselves. You'll cut through this novel quickly, which is a compliment to the writer -- there are few if any sentences out of place, and the narrative moments are strung together in a manageable, lean sort of way. I could continue analyzing the meatier points of drama in You Can Make Him Like You, which is also a high compliment: there's a lot to think about while reading this book. All in all, I enjoyed the experience and will be looking forward to more work to come from Ben Tanzer.
* * *
Visit the Official You Can Make Him Like You site now for a peek at the first chapter.
Buy You Can Make Him Like You by Ben Tanzer from Amazon now.
Support Artistically Declined Press, and : buy Ben Tanzer's You Can Make Him Like You now.
Video for The Hold Steady: You Can Make Him Like You