Deals
with the devil are a literary staple—too innumerable to start
listing here. Bartered with the fork-tailed angel in Craig Russell’s
Black Bottle Man (2010) are the pregnancy of two women for the
nomadism of their husbands and a teenage son. The three men not
allowed to stay in one place longer than twelve days or meet certain
death, the only way to eliminate the pact is to find a champion who
can defeat the devil. Naturally, the devil gets to keep the soul of
every failed champion, plopping it neatly into his black bottle.
It’s a premise that makes only partial sense, but a premise
nonetheless given the novel’s subtitle is A Fable…
The
majority of Black Bottle Man occurs in the Depression-era
Midwest. Teenage Rembrandt wanders the countryside with his uncle
and father, learning the ways of hobos, yet never staying in one
place longer than twelve days. Life on the road is tough for him,
particularly as drama after drama strikes he and his family. The
fact they fail time and again to find a champion to defeat the devil
doesn’t make things any easier.
In
a secondary storyline set in NYC of 2007, a former school teacher
lives with the guilt of having warned a shooter in her classroom that
the police were about to kill him, and because of that he was able to
kill several children before police captured him. The media casting
the woman as evil, particularly since she asked after the shooter’s
wellbeing in the aftermath of the event, she has become a shell of
her former self, now living homeless on the street. She and
Rembrandt eventually meeting, it is at the convergence of their
storylines that Russell delivers the message of his fable.
Black
Bottle Man is marketed as a YA novel, which makes for an
interesting albeit minor discussion point. I say this because, the
book’s non-linear structure and subsequent pressure on the reader
to piece the story together themselves is not something one typically
associates with teen literature. Russell pulls it off with aplomb,
however, in fact, better than many books that are intended for
adults. The same pressure, however, is put on the reader in more
negative ways, for example forcing them to try to understand aspects
of the story that do not have enough background or context. While
the novel’s climax is understandable in thematic terms, its
fictional elements don’t quite gel given that things previously
were perhaps not given the attention they needed. As mentioned, I
daresay the deal with the devil also forces the reader to stretch
their willingness to suspend disbelief more than it should. Trading
children in the womb for the very fathers who would support them
after they are born, particularly in Depression-era USA, defies some
reason. Adding the magical hobo signs to this mix seems spurious, as
well, seeming more ornamentation than necessity. And the title... It has a nice ring, but it is far from the point of the story--the opposite, in fact, one might say.
I
don’t know. Perhaps I read the Black Bottle Man as
semi-disguised Christian propaganda and therefore apply the fine
toothed comb of criticism more than usual? The novel’s message
regarding the importance of compassion can be recommended, and as
mentioned likewise the atypical structure (and not mentioned,
Russel’s capturing of colloquial dialogue). But overall the pieces
don’t cohere into a fully comprehensive entirety. A few of the
main plot devices seem forced rather than organic, and some of the
context, plot build up, and details of character are not always
present in enough quantities to deliver a rounded whole. Again, I
don’t know… I somehow feel this story would have been all the
better in traditional, linear fashion. The fable feel would have
been stronger.
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