The Soul Thief

Readers who enjoy metafiction, fiction that is about storytelling itself, will have more than a little fun pondering Charles Baxter's newest novel. This is not his first book to call attention to the circumstances of its own creation. A Feast of Love begins with, guess who, Baxter himself out for a late-night walk while trying to get his next novel started. He comes upon a friend who suggests the title and the content of the first chapter. In The Soul Thief, things are more kinky. The story starts with the protagonist's college days in the 1970's, when he meets a particularly annoying but mesmerizing trickster. Soon articles of clothing disappear from the narrator's apartment, and eventually we contemplate the question of if, when, and how his soul has been stolen as well. Who is he, and, as David Copperfield wondered before him, is he the hero of his own story? At its best, metafiction is both comical and disturbing, as when Baxter seems to ask what, after all, this thing called identity is. In Tristam Shandy, the narrator struggled to get himself born, which only happened half way through the book. In Calvino's, If on a Winter Night a Traveler, the reader stepped in to write the story. Charles Baxter's The Soul Thief is a wonderful companion to these earlier novels in the metafictional tradition.

For readers who knew this graduate student scene at UB in the early 1970s, Baxter's evocation of its inside terrors is a very convincing performance. It was a real scene with occasional interlopers like Gregory Corso, the beat poet camp follower, who used to show up on the outdoor staircase at those Chenango shotgun flat parties out of nowhere. Baxter's book is not so much a novel with developed characters, as your reviewers complain, as Hawthorne doing that time and place. That's why the narrator calls himself Nathaniel, and why the ending is "unrealistic." Remember what Leslie Fiedler, the Lord of Misrule in that distant Buffalo moment, used to say--"reality" is a word that always ought to appear in quotations marks. As a parable of twisted intellectual inhabitation Baxter's parable rings absolutely true to the occasion. That's its realism.

Charles Baxter is mining new territory in his latest novel THE SOUL THIEF, and while his trademark keen character development ability remains intact, he takes a step further into the realm of spiritual surrealism - and makes it work on every page! Nathaniel Mason is the character with the 'available soul', a graduate student whose life is operating on a subsistence level, partially due to circumstances beyond his control (loss from his father's death, and his sister's accident that has left her isolated and mute), and partially due to his misjudgment of relationships. He encounters the beautiful Theresa on a rainy Buffalo, NY night, is enchanted by her beauty and her presence, but also conflicted by the fact that she openly admits to being in a relationship with the bizarre Jerome Coolberg, a strange lad whose writing is as bizarre as his interaction with those around him. It is Coolberg who sets about hiring a thief (Ben) to enter Nathaniel's humble apartment to rob him of anything pertinent to Nathaniel's character -clothes, personal items, and anything that will allow Jerome to appear as Nathaniel, including his writings, his ideas, and his style. Oddly, caught in the act of the aborted robbery, Ben and Nathaniel become 'friends' - Ben hangs out at a soup kitchen where Nathaniel cooks and serves the indigent. Also working at the soup kitchen is lesbian artist Jamie with whom Nathaniel forms a somewhat symbiotic relationship and soon the players - Nathaniel, Theresa, Jamie, and Jerome - become involved in the gradual 'theft' of Nathaniel's soul. Nathaniel is not a stable personality and Jerome's very personal 'robbery' drives him into a state of psychological dissolve. The story jumps forward in time to a Nathaniel who has survived his breakdown (due largely to his sister's regaining her voice to read to him when he is in his near comatose state). Nathaniel has married, has children, and subsequently re-encounters Jerome Coolberg, his soul thief, and the changes in the two men's personalities and lives bring the story to an end. Yes, there are moments almost supernatural that test the reader's ability to stay with the story, and the concept of stealing (or selling!) a soul is not a new one: Goethe comes to mind throughout the narrative. But the strangeness of the story allows Baxter the freedom to rise above the pure narrative and wax philosophical, a technique that feels new to his work in comparison to previous novels. 'No one knows who we are here, in this country, because we're all actors, we've got the most fluid cards of identity in the world, we've got disguises on top of disguises, we're the best on earth at what we do, which is illusion. We're all pretenders.' Toward the end of the novel there is a statement that seems to echo the experience most sensitive readers will experience after reading THE SOUL THIEF: 'Is there anything more restorative than the act of one person reading a beloved book to another person, also bel

This book has the general sense of unease of much of Harmony of the World and Through the Safety Net mixed together with the more mainstream readability of The Feast of Love. Much like the novel The Reader, this is a very engaging short novel that can be read in one sitting. I love the book, --it's pleasantly creepy, like a good David Lynch movie.

This is one of the finest, most beautiful and mysterious novels I have EVER read. Seriously. It details the confusing final year of grad school for our narrator, who may or may not be the victim of a serious identity prank. That is all I will give away. I read it in one sitting and you will too. Buy this book -- then start delving into Baxter's short story collection. I promise you will fall in love with this author's ease and flow. Reading will become fun again...