Everything Hurts

In the movie "Tropic Thunder," there's a great line spoken by Robert Downey Jr., who's playing an Australian actor who has been cast as an African-American character in black face: "I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!" I'll never be able to hear that line again without thinking about the origins of Marty Fleck, the metafictional, unintentional, self-help guru in Bill Scheft's wonderfully funny third novel, "Everything Hurts." If Phil Camp, the main character, who suddenly develops a mysterious, painful limp in Scheft's novel, represents the book's author (who, himself, suffered from an actual case of "phantom limp" while writing this book), then Fleck, who is created by the fictional Camp, represents something even more detached. When Camp writes under the pseudonym of Marty Fleck, he is allowed to operate unfettered, tapping directly into his subconscious mind to bypass the usual filters that are in place to protect not only himself (although especially himself), but also those around him. Marty Fleck is Phil Camp's id made manifest. It's no coincidence that Fleck's emphasis is on "baggage." It's the act of carrying around the baggage of our lives that weighs us down and cripples us emotionally. It's the act of carrying around the baggage of Phil Camp's life that has weighed HIM down and crippled him--both emotionally and physically. In the same way that physical toxins may eventually manifest themselves in the form of malignant tumors in the human body, psychic toxins, emotional pain ("baggage," if you will) can develop into cancers of the soul. Marty Fleck emerges from Phil Camp like a psychic tumor, a boil that eventually becomes self-lancing as Camp lies on a wrestling mat writing advice columns to himself. (I have an entire theory about the "beetle on his back" vision of Camp transforming into Fleck, and how it relates, as diametric antithesis, to Kafka's gloomy, cathartic allegory, "The Metamorphosis," written as he was dying from tuberculosis, but I won't go into that here.) Fleck becomes a kind of Ouija board, allowing Camp to unearth and access painful, repressed memories that are essential to healing both himself and his relationships with those who are important to him. Phil Camp is convinced that his imaginary creation, Marty Fleck, is simply the product of a happy accident and is nothing more than a big joke. Therefore, in one sense, Fleck is something other than an actual charlatan. He's something much funnier: a "pseudo-charlatan," if you will. What a concept! No harm is intended, but then no real help is intended either. However, in the end, the joke is on Camp (and us) as we come to realize that Marty Fleck has been responsible for a great deal of unintentional healing. The plot contains all of the elements of a Greek tragedy, but Scheft manages to keep the reader laughing through all of the pain. The concept of dual fathers is repeated until it becomes purely absurdist, comic symbolism, with Phil's es

Bill Scheft's latest novel has something for everyone: familial intrigue, Mamet-like dialogue, obscure sporting references, hilarious quotes and self-help authors who need help. It starts with Phil Camp writing a spoof self help-book called "Where Can I Stow My Baggage." Unfortunately, no one gets the joke but Phil. People take "Baggage" to heart and Phil winds up with the enviable kind of pop culture advice career that Dr. Phil would give his self respect for. Guess we're too late on that one... Phil soon discovers, however, that his candy-coated, feel good advice doesn't do anything for the psychosomatic pain he develops in his leg. Along the way we're introduced to Phil's estranged (and strange) family, his Irish Shrink, and a real self-help guru who just might be able to heal Phil if he doesn't kill him first for dating his daughter. With humorous and insightful scenes involving Phil's analysis, the romantic pursuit of his healer's daughter, his relationship with his brother and even the New York Yankees, Bill Scheft has hit another home run. Scheft can make you laugh out loud one minute, then have you holding your head in your hands as you recognize your own foibles in his deft characterizations. Enjoy his work. As always. Maybe this time the Thurber Award people will get it right.

Our hero, Phil Camp, is a worthy successor to College Boy and all the members of The Truants, stars of Bill Scheft's earlier hilarious novels. In EVERYTHING HURTS, Bill's third novel, Phil finds unexpected success when he writes a fake self-help book under a fake name and follows it up with more success writing a weekly column under said fake name. When a mysterious pain in (...) wrecking his life he begins working through painful issues in his past in order to find a cure, and along the way we meet a self-help guru and his amazing daughter, Phil's blow-hard, right-wing brother, a terrific teenage girl across the hall and a few other well developed characters, my favorite being the Irish Shrink--we could all use someone like him in our emotional corner. This is Bill's most mature work so far, dealing with real human frailty and failures, as well as healing, emotionally and physically. As we've come to expect from Bill, the subtle brilliant wit and outrageous guffaws are plentiful, but the surprise is the depth of the relationships he explores here with great success. The only downside I can see is that I'll have to wait a while for his next novel...

When Phil Camp writes a book in order to make an early payoff of his divorce settlement, he stumbles upon national fame as his biting alter-ego, self-help guru Marty Fleck. However, while Phil/Marty can write self-help columns that cut to the chase, he can't help himself out of a cutting leg/back pain that renders him immobile and isolated. After bailing out of disc surgery, he is introduced to a 'real' self-help guru, Samuel Abrun, who teaches that most pain is rooted not in physical injury but in emotional injury and anger. As we follow his pursuit of recovery, we see Phil find an unlikely woman to love him into mobility. We also meet his polar-opposite brother who can literally feel Phil's pain, but can't help inflicting a little more for good measure. His helpful neighbor Elly brings a youthful enthusiasm into his life that he discovers had been lost, and his therapist, affectionately known as the Irish Shrink, helps Phil dig beyond the nerve endings to the root causes of his anger (and his limp), even decades into his past. This work does a fantastic job capturing the dynamics of a man's relationship with the significant men in his life, the significant women in his life, and the sciatic nerve in his leg. There is brilliant laugh-out-loud humor throughout, but it never compromises the touching nature of the message. Sometimes pain doesn't go away by cutting something out, but rather bringing something (or someone) back in.

What can I say...I'm cracking up every other page. The main character is an author who stumbles into success when he was just trying to pay his alimony...what a nice dream.... And it goes on with an interesting plot, for example, his ex-wife calls in a bomb threat on the day of his wedding, but that is nothing compared to the funny things he writes. This is a book you keep on hand to read again and again when you need a good laugh.