From the very beginning of “This is How it Really Sounds,” you know you are entering a rare world – one created by an expert story teller. One of the beauties of reading a masterfully written piece of fiction is that it exists on so many different levels. Some of these possible realities don’t become apparent until the book is completed, after you’ve stepped away from it and had a chance to ponder what’s happened. These epiphanies sometimes arise in the midst of forming an opinion about a character or a plot point and in that instant you realize you’ve gotten it all wrong and that the book is about something else entirely.
That miss came through loud and clear when I was talking with Juneau resident Stuart Archer Cohen about his book. An upbeat, candidly refreshing fellow, he quickly and gently let me know that my hypothesis of what his book was about was all wrong.
“You mean,” I said, “your book is not an existential exploration of self?”
“No,” he replied, “although that is an interesting supposition.”
So, if Cohen’s book is not a riff on existential angst, then beyond a cryptic quote from Lao Tzu in the book’s opening epigram, what’s the deal with “This is How it Really Sounds?” Well, Cohen shared, he loves skiing and snowboarding, is intrigued by fading rock stars and has traveled extensively throughout the world, including Asia. He decided it would be a lot of fun to mix all these into a giant soufflé. However, he wanted to wrap this tale for the reader with something meatier. What then evolves is a whimsical dissertation on man’s obsession to control his destiny. Cohen says “We see this with men who want to name stuff. Get their name on a building. Control something by naming it.” And that desire runs smack into the reality as Cohen puts it that “We can’t really control anything.”
He pulls this off in an almost magical way. In fact, Cohen confides his “book is a series of magic tricks.” On the surface this translates into a fun, tongue-in-cheek adventure following the lives of three men, all whose last name is Harrington. The story opens with Harry Harrington skiing down the side of a mountain, doing summersaults hundreds of feet above a mountain’s crag. We’re then introduced to Pete Harrington, catching a glimpse of him before he metastasizes into an aging, floundering rock star, searching for his next mega-hit that will keep his lavish lifestyle and healthy ego alive and well. Finally, we meet the other Pete Harrington, a jaded Wall Street trader, who has just become obscenely wealthy after “legally” ripping off his many clients for millions of dollars.
Their lives become inextricably wound together in an intricate web of deceit, revenge and redemption. Each of these men enters one another’s lives in ways that are entirely unpredictable and yet when they do intersect it all makes such perfect sense. Perhaps it’s the quixotic, restorative qualities of redemption that inevitably links these disparate characters together as they attempt in their own idiosyncratic ways to rekindle more joyful moments and find the juju that made them feel alive.
This consuming passion to redeem oneself ultimately resides in your perception of who you were compared to who you are today. It is a pursuit to return to an ideal of who you believed you used to be. But what if your perception of who you are is completely off? Cohen poses this quandary in some non-linear ways. No plot spoilers here, but some characters question their own perception of who they were, who they are and who they may become.
Let’s face it, how many of us will become rock stars or world famous Xtreme skiers who soar to stardom, then crash and burn? Bernie Madoff infamy – who wants that? The reality of living these types of lives is a remote possibility for almost all of us. Yet, that’s the irresistible tug of Cohen’s conceit – just what if, what if you or I could slide into anyone of those lives and for an instant, vicariously experience their existence. The cinematic twist of Cohen’s story is that each of the protagonists wants to accomplish that within their own lives – they want back into what they’ve lost. Or, more to Cohen’s point, what they believe they’ve lost.
Can that happen? Can we find our way back to a real or perceived reality? The answer is a definite maybe, especially in a novel that explores the possibilities of “if.”
Originally published in the Anchorage Press on May 7, 2015.
• David Fox is a freelance writer who resides in Anchorage. Contact him at dfox@gci.com.
