White Apples reviewed by Helen Pilinovsky
New York, NY: Tor Books, 2002; $24.95 hc: 304 pages
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a conversation concerning White Apples, Jonathan Carroll said that good
writing should be like a stimulating conversation. By that definition,
and by most others, Jonathan Carroll’s writing is very good writing
indeed, and White Apples is no exception. Carroll is the author of fourteen
books, spanning topics as incongruous as abortion, angels, antiques,
acting, and architecture, to name only a few. White Apples treads territory
familiar to those who’ve appreciated his work since the beginning
– Life, Death, God, love, lust, betrayal, redemption – while
offering new ways to perceive them. New readers will find the uniquely
idiosyncratic style of writing to be enticing, and, ultimately, addictive.
In writing about Death, a state that Carroll paints as being welcoming,
fulfilling, and unendingly fascinating, he provides an apt parallel
for the state that readers enter when they approach his work:
Imagine you go to a dinner party where you’ll know no one. It’s in an apartment where you’ve never been before . . . when the door opens you’re greeted by the most delicious aromas you’ve ever smelled. And everyone you meet at the party is brilliant, funny, good-looking, and most of all interesting. Wits and scientists, artists and adventurers, great beauties . . . on and on and on. Within half an hour you realize that this is the most remarkable crowd you’ve ever encountered . . . (177)
Welcome to the party that is White Apples.
Carroll himself refers to the tale as being his love story. While one might argue that all of his books, from one angle or another, can be termed as such, here the elements of love are magnified, so that rather than being part of the plot, they are the plot. Love provides both the galvanizing force of the story and its structure. Fundamentally, White Apples is the story of the life and death of Vincent Ettrich, which could, with equal precision, be termed his death and life. Vincent is an affable advertising executive with a single weakness – women:
Some people are defined by their job, or the damage they do, the children they have, the legacies they build, the way they see the world, or the way they trick the world into seeing them as other than they are. Vincent Ettrich would not have minded if someone said he was defined by the amount of women he had known and sometimes loved in his life . . . (38)
From all accounts, Vincent would score highly by such a measure. Described as possessing an “impressive rabbit-like promiscuity,” (212) we meet Vincent through his impression of a woman, Coco Hallis, whom we will eventually discover to be both more and less than a woman. Nevertheless, our first perception of Vincent is filtered through his attitude towards women:
When it came to women, Vincent Ettrich’s eyes were the most voracious part of his body. Even when he wasn’t fully aware of it, his eyes saw everything that had to do with women: what they wore, how they smoked, the size of their feet , the way they pushed their hair, the shape of their purses, the color of their fingernails . . . 14)
Coco, specifically, is described as having the “thin carnal face of a naughty angel,” (14) a description that proves to be unexpectedly accurate. Vincent meets her by walking into a store that may or may not be there, a store selling lingerie, a store that, as Vincent later observes, acts as a kind of a trap. He says “I’m crazy for women, so Coco sells lingerie…” (53). Vincent is unaware of his “condition” at first. His enlightenment comes about gradually, at Coco’s hands (or, to be entirely accurate, neck . . . you’ll see). Coco is, in a way, a continuation of Big Top and Rabbit Hat from Outside the Dog Museum, Pinsleepe and the myriad angels of A Child Across the Sky, or Beenie Rushforth from “Uh-Oh City” … not entirely a verz, not likely a traditional angel, and in all probability not a major component of God, but definitely not human. At one point, Vincent observes that, “ [f]or a Guardian Angel or Grim Reaper or spirit or whatever she was, Coco chose to live in a pretty meager apartment” (37). That more or less encapsulates her: she may not be human, but by having the apartment, the corporeal form, and the motivation behind it all, she’s choosing to try to comprehend the mortal state, with varying degrees of success. One of her greatest successes, or failures, depending on one’s point of view, is her helpless love for her subject, her very human inability to resist caring:
Coco didn’t begin to understand how any of this worked, but that wasn’t the point. She wasn’t there to study human behavior. She was there to protect Vincent Ettrich from all of the bad things that were likely to happen to him from this day on. That was what she had been sent to do. What she hadn’t planned on was falling for the man . . . (68)
However, that unexpected complication turns out to be a boon. It grants her insight into Vincent’s situation that no one who has not experienced love first hand could ever hope to comprehend.
The reason behind her presence is to try to guide Vincent through the experience of resurrection. Vincent has been brought back from Death by the love of his life, Isabelle Neukor, at the behest of their unborn child, Anjo. Isabelle is described, in Carroll’s gorgeous trademark prose as being “[t]he great, the sublime Isabelle . . . Three quarters perfection, one quarter broken glass” (40). The love that these two bear for one another is inexplicable, overwhelming, and all-consuming. Ettrich the womanizer leaves his wife and family for the love of Isabelle. However, that sentiment, badly expressed when he says “I gave up a life for you!” (81) causes her to flee from him, later explaining to him, “[Y]ou said you left your family because I wanted you to. You made it sound like you weren’t a part of the decision –- you only did it for me. Not for you, or us, only for me.” (80) Her anguish at the perceived linguistic separation, and his at being abandoned, are achingly true to the small details of life that so few writers can accurately portray. Likewise, in depicting the love that could cause such anguish with the threat of its loss, Carroll captures the kind of passion that would send one past the borders of Life when he pens a letter from Isabelle to Vincent, writing,
There is something terribly urgent that I need to tell you about, Vincent. Something always important. A nuance, a gesture, a sound, a belief, a memory, a vision, an anonymous black steel grave marker in the town cemetery, a flock of birds flying overhead outside Hansy’s Gausthaus window, the man and his retarded son we watched eating lunch that day, the smell of a kiss, the sounds of sex, the sweat in your palms, the tears on my cheek, the coffee smell in the air at AIDA, that whitegray of a winter’s evening breath. There is always something terribly urgent that I must tell you about. Because you are essential, because you are mine, because you understand, because you brought my life back to life again. Because of so many other things. Thank god for you . . . I have this one wish. Take whatever time you need, and if it takes you years, it doesn’t matter. Here it is: write me a letter with your own hand, in your beautiful handwriting, telling me all you want to tell me, all I am for you, all I am, all you are for me, all we are, so that if one day I will not be able to take baths anymore, I can read that letter and it will be beloved water. (39-40)
Jonathan Carroll loves all of his characters; that much is clear in the care with which he crafts every aspect of their lives. However, White Apples may be the most loving piece of work that he has created, from an internal point of view: his characters, with all of their flaws, are truly devoted to one another. They draw strength from their love; in order to meet its’ demands, they change for the better when they must.
Isabelle Neukor has been a coward and a thief, according to her own assessment, and in the accounts of others. She is aware of the problem: at one point, she reflects on the fact that she is “a coward. Much as she would have liked to change, she did not have sufficient inner strength… Having money in the family was like cigarettes – the trouble with both was that they were always there for you. Too often in Isabelle’s life when the going got tough she …had run from too many things” (94). Waiting to see her after their hiatus from one another, Vincent ponders the possibility of confronting her, thinking, “In leaving, you took away a part of my life that didn’t belong to you. It was mine, Isabelle, not yours, and not ours in common. Which makes you a thief” (57). Later, we learn that, in fact, “When Isabelle Neukor was young, she was an incorrigible thief. But because her then white-blonde hair and cobalt-blue eyes made her look like a sprite, Tinkerbell or a tiny angel, she fooled people for years,” (127). Finally, we witness another character’s chastisement of Isabelle: he tells her, “You’re a terrible coward, Isabelle, and have been your whole life. Luckily your family and their money have kept you safe from harm. But it hasn’t made you stronger. Just the opposite – given the choice, you have almost always run away whether physically or psychically” ( 273). Isabelle is similar to some of Carroll’s tragically flawed female characters, such as Veronica Lake from Kissing the Beehive, but one crucial factor saves her from repeating that fate: love.
The need to preserve that love, and the rewards of its reciprocation, motivate her to change, first almost unconsciously, and then more decisively. This is a woman courageous enough to go into Death to bring her love back, all on the word of a never-born phantom, not because she has to, but simply because she can, because the choice is offered to her, and the thought of living a life without Vincent is, simply, unthinkable to her. As Coco tells Vincent, explaining the course of events and Isabelle’s role in them, “she was the one who decided to go and get you. It was an incredibly courageous act . . . She went because she loved you and was given the chance to bring you back” (192-193). That courage grows through the course of the novel, and the choices that Isabelle makes; to confront her past, and to guide her future so as to protect her nebulous family, Vincent, and Anjo.
The character of Anjo provides a fascinating expansion upon one of Carroll’s most interesting themes: the unborn child. Used to great effect in Bones of the Moon through the character of Pepsi, the spirit of the Cullen James’ lost son, who returns to save his mother’s dreamworld, and her physical life, and in Outside the Dog Museum, where Nicholas, the yet-to-be born child of Walker and Maris Easterling acts as a guide for Harry Radcliffe, here, Carroll takes the theme further by bringing the prenaturally wise child fully into the material world. Unlike either Pepsi or Nicholas, Anjo will not be a spirit reaching out from Death or unlife to right wrongs or guide the events of reality. He is intended to be born, to become aware of his identity with the guidance of his parents, and to effect change in his own right. It’s a heavy burden, and that’s why he needs both Vincent and Isabelle.
Anjo alerts Isabelle to Vincent’s danger and to the fact that she can rectify the situation. After being made aware of the entirety of the situation, Vincent’s reaction is wholly understandable;
disbelievingly, he asks, “You’re saying our unborn child talks to you?” (77) Not only does Anjo talk to Isabelle – in the guises of giant dogs, ugly babies, and dead presidents, no less – but it is he who made it possible for Vincent to cross the border from beyond which (almost) no one returns. The reasons behind this are complex; as Isabelle says at first, gently, “He needs me because I’m his mother. Why does he need you, besides the fact that you’re his father? Maybe because he knows how much I need you.”(77) There is, however, more to it than simply that; also, Anjo, powerful as he is, will require tutelage after his birth; the extent of the knowledge he possesses in his phantom form will fade at birth, and he will need to relearn the shape of the universe all over again. The knowledge that Vincent possesses of the realms beyond the borders of life will literally spell the difference between success and failure in Anjo’s mission to save the Universe from Chaos.
Carroll’s perceptions of the shape of God and the Universe take new forms in almost every one of his works. He has an apparently never-ending series of metaphors to explicate the perception of life. Previously, he has envisioned God as a forgetful soul in “The Sadness of Detail,” men as reclaiming their divine heritage by remembering and rebuilding the shape of things as they had been before men sinned by using the Tower of Babel as a device in Outside the Dog Museum, and vampires as human souls capable of reincarnation as well as of symbiosis with man and great sacrifice on his behalf in The Marriage of Sticks. His vision of the Universe in White Apples stems in part from those earlier conceptualizations, simplifying the image while complicating the theories behind it. Basically, Carroll presents the God, and thus the Universe, as being a grand mosaic comprised of each and every individual experience amalgamated into a single glorious composite. After Death, each being visits Purgatory so as to contextualize his or her experience; then, they go into Death to become part of the mosaic. As Coco says, attempting to explain matters to Isabelle, “The big mosaic is not Death –- it’s God. The tiles that create him are all of the completed lives that have ever existed. Every single one of them has its place in Him. And without them all, he is incomplete” (174). That’s where Anjo comes in . . . because something has found that it likes things the way that they are, and has found a way to stop the tiles from adhering to the mosaic to keep things from changing, and Anjo will have to conquer that something: Anjo will have to conquer Chaos.
The title of the novel refers to the symbol of chaos, as it manifests itself in the demonstration mosaic manifested by Coco in order to explain matters to Isabelle and Vincent. She says, “Chaos has always been a part of God’s mosaic and always will be, no matter what form the mosaic takes . . .” (191). However, recently, Chaos has become conscious. As Coco says, “Before now, Chaos was always just an unthinking force, like nature . . . [but now] . . . It has become aware . . . . Chaos doesn’t want things to change. . . . For a long time it has been doing everything that it can to stop that from happening” (190). Coco can’t explain exactly how it is that Chaos is disrupting the flow of things, but she says that, properly raised, Anjo will not only be able to understand it; he’ll be able to put a stop to it. We learn that Anjo will be invulnerable to the forces of Chaos after his birth . . . a state that does not extend to him in his unborn state.
The symbolism behind the imagery of the white apple possesses interesting implications. Traditionally, the red apple represents the biblical fruit of knowledge. The act of human reproduction can be said to stem from it. The white apple represents the reverse. It is the fruit of deception. As well, from a scientific point of view, it is an impossibility. If it were to occur, it would be as a mutation, a sport, a mule, unable to further reproduce. This is a fitting symbolism for a force that cannot understand the motivation behind human relationship –- love -– except as a means for its own ends. The agents of Chaos accomplish their ends through trickery, half-truths, and outright lies. Their character appears to be entirely antithetical to humanity, as can be seen in their primary personification, Bruno Mann, who, emphatically, “hated being human, and … hated human beings” (211). Bruno’s dislike of the human condition stems at least partially from his inability to understand it. Like Coco, he inhabits the mortal coil without being a part of it. But, whereas she is granted a deeper comprehension of the state through her love for Vincent, Bruno only understands it as it relates to himself. Plotting to use Isabelle’s love for Vincent as a means to destroy Anjo, he says,
. . . theirs is a real love story, honey, and real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret … Love is a petri dish for chaos . . . just put it in there and let it spawn . . . (294)
Mann doesn’t grasp the correlative support proffered in love. Vincent, however, does. As he retorts,
Love is chaos, you’re right. But it’s not only chaos. Yes, you do lose control –- your control. One person. Singular . . . Because when there’s real love, it’s not just you anymore. That’s the hardest lesson to learn –- it’s not just you anymore. Together, you’ve created something new, a third thing . . . and in the end, that’s what saves you . . . (297)
Mann’s dominating view of love, in which relinquishing control is equivalent to invoking chaos, is incomplete, and thus, his plans are vulnerable to unexpected opposition.
Carroll’s revisioning of the literal power of love is both highly original and deeply affecting. White Apples represents a valuable addition to the oeuvre, both of Carroll’s writing, and to the genre. Carroll promises further exploration of this family’s saga. Fans will surely await further word of their adventures and travails eagerly. If good writing is comparable to a stimulating conversation, readers may well be at a temporary loss for words . . . shortly to be inspired to even greater fits of eloquence in praise of an established master of his art.
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Copyright © 2003 The New York Review of Science Fiction
