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Sushi
Central by Alasdair Duncan. University of Queensland
Press, St Lucia, Queensland, 2003. ISBN: 0 7022 3399 4. |
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What
is it that a young gay man thinks about the most? The
answer is, of course, himself. This realistic generalisation
is one of the first things to hit you when reading Sushi
Central, the debut novel of Brisbane writer, Alasdair
Duncan.
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Sushi
Central's main character, Calvin, is sixteen and has
slept with more men than he can remember; but he has never
loved any of them. He's not sure he believes in love anyway,
but is obsessed with the idea of it. Calvin is by no means
a sympathetic protagonist. He is agonizingly self-obsessed,
vain and indulgent, but isn't everyone at sixteen? The
reader is left constantly wanting to slap him. It's an
excruciating characterisation, but perfectly executed.
Calvin never gets his well-deserved talking to in the
story. It's not like his father doesn't try, but Calvin
is too shut off, too much the victim, to let any of it
sink in.
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When
Calvin meets Anthony, a ludicrously attractive, unfeeling
porn star, there begins a downward spiral of sex and obsession
that can only end in despair. A lot of Calvin's story
seems like middle-class angst. The ever-mysterious death
of his younger brother, perhaps Calvin's only real claim
to any sense of actual tragedy in his privileged world,
is barely touched upon. Much more pressing and traumatic
to Calvin is the inconvenience of being checked out by
an ugly, old guy.
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Duncan
does try to run through the whole gamut of gay experience.
There's coming out, promiscuity, drugs, booze, AIDS, nightclubs,
loneliness and more. Sometimes it seems a bit heavy-handed
but these are the things that young gay men want to know
about. Suchi Central is to be marketed as a broad
literary title, but I believe it would do much better
if targeted at the youth market. While it is possible
for an older reader to relate to the character of Calvin,
personally I did so nostalgically, for Calvin is discovering
and learning things I found out about years ago.
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Duncan's
writing style seems to have been intentionally constructed
to play on the modern gay syndrome, flicking between entries
in Calvin's diary, screenplays and Calvin's own stream
of consciousness and littered with an endless stream of
pop culture references. The material and the physical
rule Calvin's world. Calvin first defines people by their
beauty, then by what they wear. In fact, most of the people
in Calvin's world seem to be beautiful; the greatest diviner
of ugliness is age. Occasionally Duncan gets snagged on
a gay cliché, as 'We were fourteen/fifteen and
totally denied an outlet for our fears and desires etc.'
At times, the novel may also be a little regionally specific
with many of the Brisbane sites that Calvin visits completely
foreign to anyone not from South East Queensland. A little
more description of these thus wouldn't have gone astray.
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With
the constantly changing writing style Duncan seems to
be selling his own abilities short. The last chapter of
Sushi Central is four pages of prose and it is
the most touching moment in the novel, as well as its
most disturbing. As Calvin is finally drawn into a world
of pornography and prostitution, letting all of his inhibitions
and standards dissolve, he is flooded with memories of
happy childhood holidays. For the first time you can see
that perhaps this angst-ridden teenager isn't so tiresome
after all. Behind all of his self-importance and the lies
he even tells himself, he is lost, alone and most of all,
terrified.
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In
writing Sushi Central, Duncan is wading into uncharted
territory. You would think there would be a range of titles
for young gay men and women, but there aren't. So, in
a way, this novel is a benchmark for gay youth fiction,
but I would not expect any GLAAD media awards. Duncan's
characters are far too realistic for that. |
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