The First Bad Man (2015)
Miranda July (1974)
276 pages
Authors often seem to establish a certain tone and intensity early on in their novels that they then, aside from some quickening around the climax, maintain through to the end. Not so Miranda July in her book The First Bad Man. What begins as a rather riotous character study explodes suddenly into an erotic duel before taking a vertiginous drop into adulthood. The one constant is a comedic backbeat that both softens the edges of a cast of quite odd characters, but also serves to make them feel more real.
As the story opens, Cheryl Glickman is headed to an appointment with a doctor recommended by a colleague at work; the doctor is only in town a few times a year, and Cheryl has made the appointment principally in the hopes of meeting her colleague in the doctor’s waiting room, and so establishing a connection with him outside of work. Convinced that he will be there when she enters, she approaches the office door practicing the conversation she will have with him, so that it will come off with just the right level of nonchalant surprise. Her preparations are for not, however, as she finds only a receptionist present when she opens the door to the waiting room.This opening scene serves as a fitting introduction to our narrator, and her method of coping with the struggles and disappointments in her life by experiencing much of her interaction with others deep inside her own imagination. The illusion of control and rationality that this allows her may make the world a less scary place for her, but proves an unstable foundation as, not surprisingly, real people and situations continuously veer off the scripted path she has laid out, forcing her to react to things she had not anticipated and so feels supremely unprepared for.
Cheryl most perfectly realizes her desire for control when at home. Living alone, she has developed a carefully structured set of behaviors that individually can seem not quite unreasonable when she describes them, but together form a picture of a compulsive, obsessive personality. She has, for example, packed away all of her dishes except for one set, so that she never ends up with a sink full of dirty dishes; and, like a fuel-conscious driver, she optimizes tasks in such a way as to maximize the efficiency of each trip through her house. She has a system in place at home, and she sticks to it.
This constant struggle for control has its consequences, however: Cheryl suffers from a psychosomatic illness, globus hystericus, the feeling of a lump in the throat which obstructs swallowing, though no actual lump is present. Cheryl experiences this to various degrees whenever she feels overwhelmed and unable to maintain her desperately tight grip on her life and surroundings.
Cheryl’s ordered, if fragile, world comes crashing down when she reluctantly agrees to take in Clee, the 20 year old daughter of the couple who own the business where she works. Monosyllabic, messy and self-absorbed, Clee quickly turns Cheryl’s carefully constructed life upside down. As Clee ignores or maliciously violates the cleanliness and order of the house, Cheryl descends into a case of globus hystericus that leaves her barely able to drink even water.
Eventually things come to a head and Cheryl strikes out in frustration, physically attacking Clee. She loses the battle to the much younger and stronger woman, but to Cheryl’s surprise, the scrum does temporarily resolve her globus hystericus; it also unleashes unexpected feelings between the women. As the mercurial and ill-defined relationship between the two develops --- with its own peculiar and very physical rules of attraction --- Cheryl must balance her natural tendencies for control and structure in her life with the uncertainty and disorder that accompanies these new feelings. When Clee then reveals news that completely redefines the relationship between the women, Cheryl must confront the comfortable world she had created in her imagination, and decide whether to let that it go for a new and radically different life.
Many scenes and passages in the story had me laughing to myself as July’s cast of oddballs reveal their neuroses and blind-spots. But her humor does not come across as malicious. When we laugh at what a character says or does it is accompanied by some portion of sympathy that comes from recognizing through them the parts of ourselves that we try so hard to hide --- our own neuroses and blind-spots. Thus we can engage with the characters in the novel, instead of simply laughing at their flaws.
It must be mentioned that anyone squeamish about reading sex scenes may be put-off by this book. Though the scenes mostly play out in Cheryl’s imagination, or are reported to her after the fact, they encompass a fairly wide range of rather explicitly described activities, and so are not for the every reader. Some are actually more unsettling than erotic, and others so over-the-top as to be more humorous than erotic, but July doesn’t hide behind implication or flowery language in these scenes.
Hopefully that warning won’t scare you off of The First Bad Man, however, because it is an affecting read. What begins as a fairly innocent comedy evolves into a rowdy, over-the-top love story in the middle third, a careening ride of confused passions. In the final third July executes a dramatic shift that, like a rider on a roller coaster dropping into a free fall, provides a precipitous drop into new emotional struggles that had me glued to the page to find out how things would be resolved.
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