Review of Kevin Chong’s Beauty Plus Pity (Published in Existere — Journal of Arts and Literature Fall/Winter 2011 Vol 31.1)
Reviewed by Ofelia Legaspi
Kevin Chong, in his take on slacker comedy, dusts off an endangered specie of fiction: the “practical” artists. Yes, there’s nothing terribly romantic about them. They’re about as financially secure as accountants, minus the confines of spreadsheet cells and the balance sheet-induced emotional imbalance. Practical artists make money doing (approximately) what they love. Kevin Chong succeeds in championing these literary underdogs by portraying the artistically compromised as almost Byronic in their choices and definitely comedic in their attempts at pursuing the often cringe-worthy lower stratum of art.
For Malcolm Kwan, the twenty-something protagonist and narrator, his privileged, liberal upbringing leads him to the unexpected path of least resistance. As a child, he had stared at an original Picasso in Madrid. His mother has familiarized him first-hand with the classic artistic temperament most only read in Sylvia Plath. He has observed his father’s filmmaking ambition atrophy as he embraces directing 2-for-1 pizza commercials and corporate training videos starring lecherous bosses who spit out workplace sexual harassment lines like “These grease traps aren’t dirty, but I am.”
Almost as a way of ticking off the exigencies of his musical leanings, Malcolm resigns himself to a part-time job at a record store. To stay in the periphery of his parents’ artistic shadow, he pursues modeling, the beginnings of which involved leather and body oil, and playing the unabashed nude model for a life drawing class his mother teaches. Instead of indulging his literary gift and writing his one-act play, he follows instructions to be “vacant-looking sexy” and to pose like “someone throwing an invisible Frisbee or rehearsing a soliloquy from Hamlet.”
All these career missteps, however, are just the amusing backdrop to Malcolm’s more significant follies. It turns out, Malcolm’s personal relationship history is not as gleaming as his oiled model body gracing the back of free alternative weeklies. This narrator intrigues us with a plot structure that is telling. Malcolm wants to reveal himself slowly before showing us the grand flourish: his transgressions from the past.
Therein lies Chong’s skill in characterization: in keeping Malcolm likeable even when the protagonist’s endearing cocoon of vulnerability eventually peels away. Malcolm finds himself unable to forgive his ex-fiancé Claire, who timed her departure from his life to rival the plot twist of a Greek tragedy. In a self-deprecating fashion, she casts Malcolm in a vague starring role in the breakdown of their relationship.
Meanwhile, cast in Claire’s role as the betrayer, Malcolm accepts unsolicited forgiveness from his ex-girlfriend, Sandrine. He reveals slowly that his abandonment of her makes Claire’s magnificent betrayal seem like euthanasia – inevitable and merciful. Curiously, Malcolm does not transmogrify. In fact, we see him even more delicate, as if he’s molten into some graceful monarch butterfly – lovely, even in his weakness.
Malcolm’s imprudence in the past becomes a necessary underpainting to what he is becoming. He finds a redeeming grace in his long-lost half-sister Hadley, who turns up at his father’s funeral. With her, we see an overcompensating Malcolm who could probably race Mother Teresa to sainthood. However, his repentance does not reach full realization because, as a medium to balance out his mistakes, Hadley proves to be temporary. It is with the past, with what is tainted, that Malcolm must extend his newfound maturity.
The strength of the novel is in the narration that boasts of accomplished detail work. Malcolm’s muddled feelings for his ex-fiancé finds a flash of focus in one incisive comment about the void she has left: when he likens his suddenly bare walls to “the skin around a wound after pulling off the Band-Aid.”
Chong describes this family as “miscast” in their roles, but the voice of the characters is a singing love letter to this family of misfits. When Malcolm’s mom bursts into a room saying, “I’m looking for your father,” referring to her husband’s misplaced ashes, it paints a scene that is both comic and heartbreaking. When cleverly playing her family, she uses the instrument of threats and insults to create a harmony, relying on the sonorousness of guilt as glue. There is beauty in this fragile bond, and the resulting contrapuntal music, though unique to Malcolm’s, sounds like the universal cacophony of families.
When Malcolm is met with another tragedy toward the end of the book, the details are curiously sparse. Chong’s restraint is useful in this case: it humanizes Malcolm who says a lot with his uncharacteristic silence.
There are twists to this novel that seem out of character, but most of them are a welcome jolt of levity. It’s as if the universe is reinstating order in the cosmic joke of Malcolm’s life, rewarding Malcolm, and us, the last laugh.
Beauty Plus Pity by Kevin Chong is published by Arsenal Pulp Press. ISBN: 978-1-55152-416-0
