THE REGULAR

A debut novel focuses on a surly literary star.

Marvin Goodspeed has found great success as an author. He left the corporate world to write a “satirical epic” of modern life that has fans entranced. Even if some critics are skeptical, his first book, The Satellite Man,has sold well. Not that the casual onlooker would know Marv is a famous writer. He drinks a lot, spending a good deal of his time at a local establishment called Asa Inman Blue Ribbon Buffet. He’ll also smash a radio to smithereens if it disturbs his writing. He’ll even turn violent in an interview if the questions get too confrontational. When readers first meet Marv, it is 1997. He lives in a Southern city in the midst of a revitalization/gentrification movement. Though gang violence occasionally occurs, the place features hip curiosities like a former gas station that’s been turned into a cool bar. This city is also home to an alternative local paper called The Weekly. Cyrus Cleburne is an enterprising Weeklyjournalist bent on trying to get to the bottom of the renowned local author and all that makes him tick. The prose throughout Buckhout’s stylized literary novel produces dense poetry. Marv’s city includes a “zone separating the immaculate staged snapshot city leaders wish to portray from the cordoned-off beat down blocks no one outside them needs know exist.” At one point, Marv reflects on how, for the average worker, “freedom is painfully incremental, a thing achieved in small slivers over expanses of well-murdered time, if at all.” Such passages paint vivid, nuanced pictures. But some of the details about Marv’s complex journey are not as enthralling. Readers learn much about his life, such as the events at the bar he frequents and the day he broke free from the corporate world. The activities at the bar are exactly what readers would expect (arguments over Bob Dylan; excitement about a baseball game). Marv’s freedom story is equally predictable (he’d “stopped not even to clean out his desk”). Readers will instead be interested in finding out where the truculent protagonist will eventually land. After all, the ’90s won’t last forever. What will the future hold for a wild genius like Marv?

A lyrical, unsparing, intricately woven, if not always surprising, portrait of a celebrated writer.