Neighbors

Ollie, the loveable schlub of the Laurel & Hardy films, is essentially a decent man. He is content to mind his own business as long as no one pokes their nose into his affairs. In which case he might just poke back. Let someone push him too far and all hell could break loose. The essential Laurel & Hardy episode is the silent classic Big Business* (1928), "The story of a man who turned the other cheek and got punched in the nose." The boys have gone into the business of selling Christmas trees door-to-door. A minor misunderstanding develops into destruction on a grand scale. This kind of comedy picks at the scab of human malevolence. We laugh at what should be regarded as vicious cruelty. I get the feeling Thomas Berger (born 1924) is a Laurel & Hardy fan. Earl Keese, the hero of Berger's novel, Neighbors, is an archetypal nice guy in the tradition of Ollie. Berger doesn't give you a smooth transition from the normal to the wild and wacky. The madness starts on page one, when Keese glances out his dining room window and isn't sure if he's seen a naked person on all fours or a large white dog. By page five, Keese has already had "quite the most exhilarating encounter" with Ramona, the comely new neighbor he has just met. Her behavior is inexplicably rude and insulting, setting the stage for the hijinks to come. The narrative piles on wacky incidents like a toddler building a Guggenheim Museum with baby blocks. It is all delivered in a dry, clinical tone like a detective story. It is sort of a comical Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with sparring and one-upmanship between two couples who don't even know each other. Reading Berger's comic novels (Sneaky People and The Feud for example), you assume every character has a mean streak just beneath a thin veneer of respectability. The fun is in the zany way the respectability gets stripped away. People who commit unthinkable acts of road rage are probably decent family folks when not behind the wheel. That doesn't apply to me, of course. Road rage is beneath me. Right. Berger knows something a lot of us are afraid to confront: Those mean people are us. * Search for "laurel and hardy big business." You can watch the 18-minute classic online.

This is a book that gives us despicable characters in the raw, with such embarrassing moments I felt a little squeamish as I read it. Yet it is undeniably funny and well written, a truly wonderful novel. Much more rich than the screen version, this book gives us four characters who don't seem to understand each other at all, yet must live next door to each other as new neighbors.

If you're like me you were introduced to the world of Thomas Berger through the movie adaptation of "Neighbors" which featured John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in one of the most ingenious casting decisions of all time. Perhaps it's because I have such fond memories of the film (believe me, I had a long history with it before ever coming to the book) that I was somewhat alarmed at the book's tone. Both versions have Earl and Enid living peacably in outer suburbia when Harry and Ramona move suddenly into the only other house occupying their street. What ensues is a comedy of manners in which Harry and Ramona make life hell for Earl (Enid emerges strangely unscathed) all the while playing dumb and rebounding the blame back in Earl's court. You see, in the movie the ridiculous humor is played more or less strictly for laughs, and in my opinion it's one of the finer black comedies of all time (but then, I have a soft spot for compressed little films that have a wealth of material all occurring during one eventful night - ie. American Graffiti, After Hours, Dazed & Confused, etc). Berger's source novel, on the other hand, plays it a little bit more straight, and in fact hints not too subtly that a great deal of the mischief may be entirely a figment of Earl's imagination. This is all fine and well but Berger seems to take it a bit over the top at times. In particular, Enid and (later) their daughter Elaine seem to be picking on Earl and choosing sides against him more or less at random. Similarly, the ending goes for a Kafkaesque (circa "The Trial") bit of nihilistic mayhem that is unconvincing, insofar as similar incidents had been played out throughout the novel without the extreme response scripted in here. This is all the more disappointing considering the more or less realistic repartee between Earl and the Harry/Ramona tangent. Ultimately Harry has not had to prove his manhood for many a year (if ever) and it's this fatal flaw that makes his failures all the more tragically heroic. I still feel the movie managed to smooth out a few of the more incongruous plot points, but the novel is still an engaging read even after all these years.

I just finished reading "Neighbors" by Thomas Berger and am convinced that I should never go back to my favorite coffee house again. Every time I went there to read this book I embarrassed myself with spontaneous guffaws, chuckles, whistles, hoots, hollers, snorts, hee-haws, "pfts!" and knee slaps. I drew a tremendous number of piercing looks and some sad glances of well-wishers encouraged to see a man afflicted with such a debilitating case of turrets emboldened enough to step out in public and try to normalize. This is one of the funniest novels I've ever read. Berger has the wit and darkly comedic outlook of Vonnegut and the surrealism and sheer command of the English language that Beckett displays in his best prose. I hate to say that the end of the novel failed to live up to the rather high expectations I had for it but really, who cares? I'm thrilled to have discovered a new favorite author and can't wait to read some more of his work. Probably "Little Big Man" will be next on my list. I highly recommend this novel especially for authors if for nothing else but to study the work of a master craftsman.

It was with great pleasure that I read that Zoland Books was reissuing Berger's classic dark comedy. I had been looking for this book for many years and it has sadly been out of print. The book still stands as one of the funniest books of the last twenty-five years. Earl Keese is the classic surburban gentleman: well rounded, established, slightly boring. He is living the perfect conventional life until his entire world is shattered by the moving in of Harry and Ramona. These are at first glance the neighbors from hell. Younger, less sophisticated, crass and alluring they are everything Keese is not. The first hundred and fifty pages of this novel ranks as one of the funniest set pieces in modern literature. One has to remember that this is a novel of all out guerilla warfare between two adult neighbors. If the idea seems childish at first one has to remember that these are adults acting as children. The odd thing is Keese grows to like these new people at the expense of his own family whom he begins to see as they really are. Wife Enid is a boozy bore, while daughter Elaine is a petty thief. Nothing is to Keese as it has seemed. By the end of the novel Keese is doubting his own way of life and wants to be more like the neighbors that he started out hating. The book is extemely funny biut sort of sad also and well worth the read.