This Dream Called Death - A review

A Review 

By Michael Willis

Peculiar....it seems as if I had it figured.

Having read just one-fifth of Stephen S. Janis', This Dream Called Death I actually thought I had comprehended the entire book a prior.

Yes, the story was well crafted, thoughtful, and unique. The plot too, was smart and complex.

But just a couple of dozen pages in it appeared the psychological issues that emerged to propel the narrative forward would ultimately be the author's  undoing.

This was heady material.

A story which presumes to incorporate and expose the natural flaws of a overbearing prison system, institutionalization, systemic marginalization, racism, classicism and corruption, all filtered through the metaphorical axiom of a city afraid to dream?

Seriously?

This was the reason I had This Dream... figured so early.  Because I have personally experienced all of these ills. And although I was impressed by the ease with which Janis formulated his characters and built the separate worlds of Balaise that would eventually collide, just one-fifth through This Dream Called Death and I began to wonder if Janis was up to the heavier challenge inherent to such powerful issues. I began to believe there was nothing new to offer here. Or was there?

One fifth-through This Dream....and I figured it to be just another white-liberal closeted superhero wet dream story in which the white knight does for the black community that which the black community cannot, is unable, or is unwilling to do for themselves. A story where the "pale savor" solves the immediate issue of the black community and, as if by magic, salvages the fading hope and faith of the blue collar peoples of a once great and soon it shall be again city. And to think, no one other than a white man could contribute to the cause. No one other than a white man possessed the necessary impetus, opportunity, strength of character, combined with spiritual and political acumen to the successful where the black community had been so terminally unsuccessful.

Truly, on fifth through, This Dream... and I was certain that I was reading another literary offering which embodied the White Knight Syndrome. You know, the antiquated psychological perspective that white is right...that while it better...tat it takes the white man to do what others cannot. Conversely and just as dangerous, "The White Knight" syndrome also subtly implies that black men, brown men, red men, and yellow men are weaker, less intelligent, and mostly secondary.

It's an offensive viewpoint, and any work exploring this perspective is inherently flawed from its inception. indeed just one-fifth through "This Dream..." and I was getting the feeling Janis had bitten off more than he could chew. I was beginning to believe there would be nothing contained in these pages which might add to the conversation surrounding the valid issues that this work was attempting to lend voice.

Just one-fifth through This Dream Called Death and I was both confused and offended.

There had to be something more here, something buried beyond the text and tone. What was I missing? What was Janis attempting to convey?

I wanted to know, so I set- aside my prejudice and cleared my mind. I allowed myself to become lost in the subtle, succinct flow of Janis' prose. I suspended my disbelief and warmed to the story. I opened myself to the plot and it was there, between the clam of mind and Janis' sleek, minimalist brush strokes that I found what had been missing. It was then, I was finally able to recognize the author's understated ability to deftly reveal situational complexities and emotional intensities with a single observation or an extended metaphor, that all of Janis' sparkling literary jewels came rising to the fore.

What emerged then was the ambitious imperative that was pushing Janis' pen. What emerged were the questions this book was intended to raise but not answer.

A journalist by trade, Janis stuck to the role of a reporter here in the most effective sense, by simply posing questions as a means to an uncertain end.  To shed light on that which is hidden, and to lend form to that which is obscured so that the reader can decide which side on which side of the line they reside.

It's done well here, with obvious respect for the reader's intelligence. And as I proceeded to read on, the metaphors of mind and subconscious as the real divide between rich and poor, black and white, the disenfranchised and dutiful shed light on what the main character, the seeming white knight was all about.  What came to light was the fact that he was an amalgamation of them all. I realized that the main character is the hero simply because he is the focus, the unpalatable lens through which all the psychic disquiet of the book flows naturally.

It is through him, not his skin color, that the story moves.  What gives the entire narrative credence is the fact that Janis chose a prism filled with flaws.  A character who is weaker than expected, and a character who is driven by self- preservation and little else to help save the day. The main is more Clark Kent than Superman and it is because of this that his successes and failures, his feelings of powerlessness and his ability to churn his way through the twist and turns of the story give the book a surprisingly universal appeal.

There were moments, despite my misgivings, where I felt true concern for the main during his journey of rude awakening.  As he grasps his own role in the subjugation of errant dreamers, in the mass incarceration of entire race of people, he experiences the consequences of institutional prejudice consummate with his cause.

This natural desperation and futility made This Dream more than just vaguely appealing to me. The flawed passage of the main made the novel compelling not simply because the main was broken in, getting a taste of what it's like to be on the so-called 'other side.'  No, it was appealing because in those moments, The Main was experiencing one of the most resonant fictive depictions of how it truly feels it be marginalized that I have ever read.  In this sense Janis was able to delineate how power really works, how the urban black male is actually parsed into something less than a whole,  how the moving parts of our excessive criminal justice system have coalesced into a contemporary 'final solution,' for the black male and his seemingly self-constructed social isolation.

It is through the main's failures that we understand it.  The transformation of his character by experiencing life on the other side that I also came to care about him and the story he was trying to tell.  Janis made the main character matter to me while disproving my first impression of the novel to be as wrong as the 'White Knight Syndrome.'

This Dream Called Death is a fine read.  It is subtle yet intellectually seductive.  It is both implausible and surreal, intricately designed to make a single metaphor evolve in a compelling web of social dysfunction and despair.  Janis has a lot to say in this novel, and much of it is revealed though emotional and psychic misdirection.

Thus my advice is to clear your mind before reading, or you just may miss the ambitious intent of  this book, a novel about the insights gained through failure, and how the power is premised on the misfortunes of the many.