BARTLEBY'S REVENGE

In Robitaille’s debut novel, two childhood friends follow different paths in the 1960s and beyond.

In 2017, Jimmy LeMond is watching a peculiar news story on television: A shrimping boat crewed by a group of LGBTQ environmentalists has purposely hit an oil company’s ship in the Gulf of Mexico. The crew’s captain is a trans woman named Patty LeBlanc, but Jimmy, who knew her in high school, remembers her from before she came out as trans. The two shared a strong bond that was only strengthened after a fishing trip, during which Jimmy’s friend lost a finger—as well as a father. (Jimmy still isn’t sure exactly what happened during the outing, as he fainted during key moments.) The two lost touch after high school; Jimmy went to college and became involved in protesting the Vietnam War, developing a deep appreciation for Herman Melville along the way and working on an intricate digital project called Bartleby’s Revenge. His friend went to Vietnam as a Mennonite peace worker and found a deeper level of truth there. After four decades, can Jimmy reconnect with Patty and learn about all that’s happened to the person whom he thinks of as his Bartleby? Robitaille’s prose is smooth and sharp-eyed, as when Jimmy sees his mother for the first time after returning from college: “His mom wore a mismatched flowered housedress and threadbare sweater. Her hair had turned so gray he wondered if she was wearing a wig.” He has a talent for crafting character and detailing relationships, particularly the complex ones that exist between family members and between friends who are more than just friends. The main problem with the novel is its excessive length at nearly 500 pages, the majority of which are devoted to the education and early academic career of Jimmy, the less interesting of the two main characters; it’s standard, nostalgic baby boomer fare, referencing 1960s music, drugs, and watching the moon landing on TV. The background material regarding Patty is more intriguing though still not terribly urgent. For all the talk of Bartleby, the work feels more like a shaggy, low-stakes Moby-Dick.

An overlong story of self-discovery.