Blinding Light by Paul Theroux very definitely shifts my opinion about the writer’s being a kindred spirit of Graham Greene, to his being Graham Green’s descendant hippie cousin who is having a hell of a lot more fun. Theroux’ absorbing 2006 novel touches on a number of engaging and amusing themes that are aired mainly by the story’s principal character: Slade Steadman, the oversexed, spoiled, lovable pain-in-the-ass central character, and also, to a degree, his lover, Ava Katsina, a similarly narcissistic, sexual being, but, appropriately, so very much smarter and purely selfish than our protagonist Steadman.
The story is laced with contemporary, tell-all glimpses into the rarefied world of accomplishment and power with Slade Steadman at its center. Steadman, a celebrity A-lister inside the heady East Coast best and brightest set—i.e. he is tight with the President, the Walter Cronkites, the Bill Styrons, the Mike Nichols, all of whom make cameos in the book-- is an author who earlier on penned a seminal travel book called Trespassing, based on a two-year world adventure he made in his late twenties without passport, credit cards, luggage—nothing.
We don’t need too much information about Steadman’s book to understand that he struck gold with his simple idea of boldly traveling the world, defying authority and legal barriers while making grisly, exciting discoveries in the world’s darkest corners along the way. His book spawned an image and a brand—as his handlers frequently and forcefully remind him—that led to an industry known as “TOG”, “Trespassing Overland Gear,” a retail empire that sells high-end travel accoutrements—knives, watches, compasses, clothing. In short, Steadman’s Trespassing became a lifestyle and a look—a la Ralph Lauren, or Eddie Bauer-- with huge mass appeal, not to mention a feature film, a television series and so much product development that Steadman is a fabulously wealthy fifty-year old one-hit-wonder living in his native Martha’s Vineyard. When we meet him, he is a self-loathing gentleman farmer living in his walled estate, who thinks only about his failure to write another book, and about sex.
“Virility, he thought, was not just an important trait in an imaginative person but was a powerful determiner of creativity.”
We are introduced to Steadman and Ava together as they make a journey to Ecuador in search of a possible story idea—a drug tour—that might help trigger a new book for Steadman. At this point, Ava and Steadman’s affair is winding down, though they had committed to the trip, and so begins the first section of the book. Theroux’ use, to my way of understanding, of a limited third person perspective is unwavering from start to finish, which is perhaps why I have come away from the story with bemused frustration, and affection, for Steadman—the paradox. We see so much through his eyes, yet not his voice. So, as he travels to Ecuador, somehow we are in on a conversation in which we really understand his disgust with his company of new-rich travelers in search of the next best jaunt, and, naturally, ensconced in the most expensive TOG clothing and accessories.
“…Trespassing had spawned so many imitators, it created a genre, inspiring a sort of travel of which this Ecuador trip was typical: a leap in the dark.”
Of this trip, we get Steadman’s cynicism, and sadness that adventure and risk are somehow disingenuous if all it takes is money:
“Trophies, all of them. And this – the trip to the Oriente, the visit to a shaman in a jungle village, the search for a true ayahuasquero and the trance-drink itself was another trophy for these romantic voyeurists.”
Adding insult to injury, one of the travelers is packing Steadman’s Trespassing, carrying it with her as if it is a survival manual. When asked about the book, and unaware of Steadman’s identity, she describes the author as a “notorious has-been.” Readers can hear his grumbling self-pity, and the journey has only just begun.
Theroux’ mastery is hard to describe, but without feeling preached to or hearing loud messages, I could still feel Steadman’s heart race and pulse rise with every mishap, and moment of pleasure. In Ecuador, Steadman finds what he needs, a drug with a pretty name, Datura, that essentially blinds the user temporarily. However, in lieu of seeing black and morphing into a sightless, frightened invalid, Steadman’s blindness gives him the subconscious visions that drive the story line for his second novel. His Datura, a flowering plant whose root he dissolves into liquid and drinks each morning so as to achieve his visions and heightened perception, transforms our spoiled hero into something of a confident, sexy, sardonic Mr. Hyde. Upon returning from Ecuador, he and Ava remain together at his Martha’s Vineyard estate for the year, their physical relationship having taken on new meaning by their erotic pact in the name of finishing the book. She will take dictation and role play according to his every memory, unfinished boyhood fantasy and fetish. He, for example, cherishes not the flesh, but what exists between him and a woman’s flesh, as is evident in some of his prose that will go into his second book:
“Certain items of women’s clothing unfailingly raised his lust…the soft hand of silk, the open weave of lace, the tug of elastic, the neat cut of pleats in a short skirt, the way the satin smoothly bulked over the skin –and particular loose combinations, warmed by a warm body. Much more than a woman’s nakedness, the clothes were the powerful aphrodisiacs. They were veils of enticement.”
Such is presumably the tone of Steadman’s entire novel, brazenly named by the author The Book of Revelation. No doubt a knock at today’s publishing industry, Steadman’s comically bold title isn’t even questioned by his book agents, surely because of the presumed formula for success that Steadman represents to these reckless publishers, regardless of whether the novel is good or not. In fact, it is made clear several times over that reviews are poor but sales are great.
Naturally, in the course of writing his book, in which Ava is both formidable, indulgent lover and cautious, sober doctor, Steadman gets carried away and embarks on a grand deceit that will ultimately, scarily crumble around him. In public, he feigns his intelligent, psychic blindness, coming off as a brilliant Seer, the upbeat, resilient role model of a cripple. Even the President wants the alluring Steadman to sit by him at a Martha’s Vineyard Clambake, so that Steadman, the stoned, psychic showoff, can recite every geographical twist and turn of the villages across Nantucket Sound, blind and at night, while jaws drop around him and he, in effect, upstages the Commander in Chief. At the dinner, Steadman keeps coming back for more, such as when the President gets word that Princess Diana has been in a car crash in Paris, and Steadman enthralls the glittering guests by advising them, as if a prophet: “Don’t die today. No one will remember.”
As Steadman’s mid-life drama plays out, his disastrous, self-adoring character is carefully juxtaposed to the President himself, who also happens to be a shameless narcissist with a secret. In what makes for a good read probably because of our media saturated culture, Steadman is exposed for having written his book with the aid of a mystery drug—and then, because of his damaged karma, actually goes “bag over his head” blind in the process. Concurrently, the President is brought down, too, by his own stench of a scandal concerning a White House intern. These sad, sorry days enshroud the story—and, we long for things to improve.
Steadman’s rise and fall are to be expected. Ava’s growing disgust with Steadman’s abuse of the Datura provides enough foreshadowing for us to be prepared for Steadman’s rather nightmarish discovery that real blindness is about to eclipse his psychedelic blindness. For any of us who have felt despair for whatever reason on the streets of New York, the egoistic Steadman suffers his initial spiral into a handicapped hell, appropriately, on these mean streets.
It is normal for Steadman to fail to see his good fortune—his pleasant status quo—and so every mishap is a metaphor for his lack of gratitude. The poor sod, for example, is groping his way from the Carlyle, no less, across the east side, where he gets hijacked, robbed and yelled at in the process, just so he can lob any evidence of Datura into the East River. Finally, Ava comes to New York and rescues Steadman from his book tour that has officially gone to hell along with his eyesight, and Steadman is returned to his Vineyard house, this time an infantile, paranoid victim. At this point, the course of his and Ava’s relationship has changed:
“She was in charge; she made him feel lost and helpless. She too seemed like someone else, bigger than ever. The way she touched him had seemed rough and abrupt…She seemed less like a lover than a caregiver—one of her hospital words.”
And while Steadman consistently fails to see that he is a lucky man, his much-deserved treacherous odyssey notwithstanding, he will be just fine. And this is why we like him, for in spite of his being a petulant, self-absorbed, sexually obsessed man (with his own sexual history more than anything else), Steadman is a nice guy with a very good sense of humor. Even when he is smug, he isn’t cruel, such as in a fight with Ava about his self-induced blindness at the clambake.
“Yes, he had liked being noticed at the party. It had reminded him of the great days when he had been a celebrated prodigy.
‘So, I’m as vulgar and susceptible as everyone else—so what? Hey, what about the president?’
‘You liked upstaging him.’
‘Probably,’ Steadman said. ‘Then Diana died and upstaged us both. What a night.’”
Steadman’s more run of the mill passions also reassure us about him and why we like the guy. His respect for the natives of Martha’s Vineyard, drawn in part because his family is among the island’s landed gentry, is a kind little homage to the locals as compared to the elite newcomers who occupy the island three months a year.
“Still it was home for him, and for that reason, prettier than anywhere else. Old money built discreetly and dressed down and didn’t show off and was famously frugal. Old money fraternized with the locals, formed alliances, got things done—or, more often, managed to be quietly obstructive, meddling for the good of the island. What new money there was remained intimidated by the locals, gently browbeaten, never understanding that the gentry prided themselves on and gained self-esteem by knowing the workers, for the boat builders and the fishermen and the ferrymen and the police and the raggedest Wamponoags were the island’s true aristocrats.”
Certainly the most vexing part of Blinding Light is its central subject: sexual desire, and the peripheral treatment of love. Steadman’s second book is, to his way of thinking, the height of personal drama, and, thus, a complete effort, a tour de force—a sexual bildungsroman that will define his canon of work.
“But if you used your own blood for ink, and what you wrote was the truth, and your life was the subject, one novel was enough; there was nothing else to know, no more to see, a heart laid bare. So he believed.”
Surely the fellow has to be brought down a few pegs.
Still, with Ava and the sexual passion they have in the beginning of their relationship as well as during the writing of his book, some heavy ideas come the surface, especially on the subject of love. Toward the end of his affair with Ava, Steadman reflects on how he and Ava never used the word love, disdainfully referring to “the moth-eaten expression I love you, which had become diminished and become so meaningless it had been reduced to a casual salutation.”
The two of them vow, as their sexual bond is on the ascent, never to get married, and she says:
“’I want to be your friend. It’s purer. It’ s much better. Friendship asks nothing, it gives everything, and friendship with desire is paradise.’”
And, Steadman, rejoins: “I agree. Love doesn’t make you better. It excludes the whole world. For a brief period you have an adoring partner, and later an enemy. Love is like some horrible twisted religion the way it changes you. An afterwards, when love ends, you’re lost.’”
Ultimately, I’d say I’ve bought into Blinding Light the way the fictional public of Theroux’ story bought in to Slade Steadman’s book Trespassing. With the arrival of Slade, you have a big character so funny, so tortured, and so attractive—you’re drawn to him, and he holds his own. In the end, Steadman is sick, alone and put to shame, yet somehow, as abject as his plight may be, he keeps his wits about him. For at his core, he’s a boot-strapper, a gritty New Englander, an island local who will just have to keep learning life’s lessons the hard way. Nonetheless, we want to believe that he’ll be back on his feet--smiling, in fact-- ever the sacrificial hero.
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