Mortals, by Norman Rush
“Okay. Let’s talk.”
Norman Rush’s Mortals relates the cautionary tale of Ray and Iris Finch, who discover the dangers of adhering to worldviews that no longer hold.
Status quo ante: Ray works at a private school as a John Milton scholar in 1992 just-post-Cold War Botswana, when he is not fulfilling his obligations as a CIA field officer. He loves Iris, a brainy, sexually vigorous woman who shares his nerdy-quirky love of language and they seem like a married couple entwined for life. Then, a stranger comes to town.
Actually, Rush introduces three strangers: 1. Davis Morel, an American black holistic doctor with cult leader like-charisma who seeks to free Africa from the yoke of western Christianity. 2. Samuel Kerekang, an Alfred Lord Tennyson-loving Xhosa intellectual who earns the ire of his own government for calling attention to the spreading AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa, while also becoming a target for imperialist powers by opposing cattle ranching. The CIA reads Kerekang as a lefty at a time when they need new Communist baddies to use as foils. 3. Ray’s estranged brother, Rex, a pompous gay man who is dying of AIDS that comes into the story off-stage via Iris, such as sending her a 1000-page post-modern novel for Ray to rehabilitate.
Iris announces to Ray that she is seeing Dr. Morel as a patient, and Ray watches her emerging infidelity with flawless clarity, like an oncoming slow-motion train. Ray will not bring himself to voice his concerns, however. As a humanities scholar, he cannot speak simply (as a humanities scholar myself, I can assure you we over-complicate everything). As a CIA operative, his training does not allow him to speak his mind. As an overthinker, he falls into the trap of feeling that others should share his concerns through telepathy.
Instead, Ray’s interior ramblings take up most of the novel’s 700 pages (185,000 words, small font). As both a writer and a covert agent, Ray composes portraits of lives, which means that he seeks to build mental associations out of everything that passes through his senses. On top of this tendency, he cannot stop talking to himself, and at times to others. When he confronts Morel over Iris under surreal circumstances, he preambles for so many pages that Morel snaps, “Make your point. Stop the overture. End it.” Morel stands in for the reader in this sense as Rush bludgeons us with unending dialogue.
Rush takes us down detailed tangents at first and then the word deluge becomes intense towards the end. Ray resists untethering from reality altogether during the story’s climax, although he comes close. In fact, I would almost characterize Ray as not just an unreliable narrator, but a neurodiverse one. We get a joyful glimpse into a protagonist’s POV with mental difference in Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime—and an equally delightful stage confection adaptation courtesy of playwright Stephen Simons—though the tone of Mortals might be closer to a prolix version of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
As a complex work that incorporates satire, Rush seems interested in lampooning the archetype of the American ‘90s Sensitive Man. I recall a popular Heracles TV series from the long-haired grunge times, for example, where the brawny hero accomplished great deeds out of a sense of obligation, but much preferred to talk through problems with his friends. On Ray’s infatuation with Iris, “Of course the true main effort of his adult life was and always had been to have Iris’s love, which sounded selfish put in that way, selfishly concentrating on his well-being, in essence, and not hers. But this subject was outside the realm of things he could deal with now, in the desert.” As we’re getting to know the characters, Ray spends a full page observing how Iris brushes her teeth. He smothers her, in other words. To be uncharitable yet honest, any woman would cheat on a man like Ray.
Mortals is not an easy book to get through. Ray’s stream-of-consciousness (James Joyce haunts all of us who write) becomes exhausting. Also, in addition to the usual venal writer sins (passive voice, unnecessary words, etc.), Rush’s tics include a mid-sentence “what” to indicate reaching for a way to express something, as in, “The novel’s use of ‘what’ as a thought-prompt becomes what, maddening after the 103rd repetition.” Although that usage might amount to, what, personal preference, it sure becomes annoying after a while.
For all that, Rush has birthed a major effort with Mortals, and it appears on many a recommended list. How can imperfect partners build sustainable relationships rather than fall short against impossible standards of medieval courtly love? Does American meddling overseas do more harm than good? Why does the world have such a tortuous time addressing global health crises? These questions remain as present today as they were three years after the Berlin Wall fell.
If you pick up this novel, stick with it, as you need the payoff at the end for the effort to make sense. I can’t say I enjoyed Mortals while reading it but like most books am glad to have read it, and in fact like it more afterwards.