John Hinckley Jr. would probably write a mean autobiography. Since Publisher’s Weekly hasn’t announced that just yet, you will have to settle for a fictionalized version of his life prior to shooting President Reagan. Readers of this page-turner will need to digest new names surrounding that moment in history, which were changed presumably to avoid a lawsuit. The big picture here is that Hinckley wanted to show his love to Jodie Foster, and the only way to do that was to impress her, draw attention to himself and become the star he longed to be.
Imagine that kind of love for another person. Hard to believe it actually exists. The flip side to this story is that the rest of the world was spinning. Dinners were being made, kids going to school, and mothers in the suburbs were losing their minds. Enter Andrea Kleine and her own childhood that is bizarrely woven into this slice of American history.
If you came of age in the 1980’s, then this coming October it would be wise for you to pick up the Calf by Andrea Kleine. After admiring the cool jacket art, you get to roll around in its dueling narrative; Jeff Hackney (the fictionalized John Hinckley) and his wobbly urine stream story arc. Idling in the other chapters is a girl named Tammy who lived in a Washington, DC suburb and had the great misfortune to have one of her friends murdered in her sleep on the eve of Tammy’s twelfth birthday.
Jeff Hackney, no surprises here, was a lonely kid, last one out of the nest, generally lazy, and with no real direction. Don’t all early twenty-something’s suffer that kind of kind of malaise? He fell in love with the first pretty girl he saw on the big screen, (Jodie Foster). Ms. Fancy-Pants in the novel is an imagined actress, icky garbage follows and stalker-like behavior is by the numbers but still riveting.
If you live anywhere outside of a shoebox then you’re familiar with this part of our history. Imagine a life where you are an A-list celebrity, nearly “out” and friends with Mel Gibson! Plus you had a man try to kill the President of the United States just to show you his love. That is Jodie Foster, she speaks French better than the French do. Then there is the movie Taxi Driver, which is another zinger fold in this Royale with Cheese, because it was the gateway drug for Hinckley.
Jodie Foster is a catch, right? I mean come on, who can blame the guy? It is really interesting to hear Hackney’s thoughts, how he was mired in becoming a singer-songwriter without any noticeable talent. He stumbles off to Los Angeles, California for a time, meets what he thinks is the actress he has a crush on and later kills for, and it turns out she is either a dream or a whore, like Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver.
When I put my head down on the pillow at night I think she probably didn’t exist. It is a sneaky little section of the book, which has haunted me for weeks since I finished reading. It is all imagined, yes, that is what I believe. How can you take a moment like the assassination of a President and fictionalize it to the point where it becomes its own fever dream? That is the magic here, and it is really impressive to read.
I remember being home alone watching General Hospital and having the adventures of Luke & Laura cut short by BREAKING NEWS FLASH President Reagan Has Been Shot (it probably didn’t say that, but it is what I can recall). This happened after John Lennon had been shot dead in NYC. In my weird little suburban world I then became a Beatles fan because of it.
Not to relate Tammy’s experience with my own, but her parents basically ignore her adolescence and saddle her with supervising and parenting of her siblings. This wrecks havoc with her eleven going on thirty sensibilities. She just wants to be left alone so she can fit in with the cool kids up the street, go to parties and get drunk. She wants adulthood so fast that she is willing to trade her youth for it.
There is a wacky sense of symmetry at play here with these two stories. Jeff is a loser. Tammy’s Mom and Dad are weak authority figures who discipline with violence, and have become obtuse to the needs of a teenage girl. Jeff’s version of home life isn’t too far away from what Tammy endures. He has to feign sickness just to get mom off his back because she behaves like those stray hairs after a haircut. Tammy actively rebels to get her own mother and stepfather to pay attention to her or so it seems.
What she really wants is to be left alone. There is a wonderful moment when Tammy gets a swimsuit just like her rich-kid girlfriend up the street, and wears it to the pool for group swim. The shame she feels when the other kids make fun of her for buying the same swimsuit is mortifying to read and laser sharp with teen angst.
The run up to this novel boasts a love affair between Jeff and Valerie who meet in the institution where they are both placed after Jeff changes his own history and Valerie releases her child from this mortal coil. Valerie kills her daughter, shoots her dead while she sleeps. No way to sugarcoat that. It is textbook matricide.
Both of these characters (also real people in real life) have their own demons, and what they think are good reasons for what they have done. Valerie believes in a higher power that will take the pain away, and Jeff just wanted to show the fictionalized Jodie Foster his love.
The novel’s version of Foster is thinly coated, and it is like she is wearing a Halloween costume that she bought November first on sale at Walgreens. Jeff wants to be recognized and says so much in the book. But don’t we all want that? Isn’t that what the human experience is all about?
I would have enjoyed less Tammy’s coming of age, which I realize is probably Ms. Kleine’s own childhood, and more love affair at the psych-ward where Valerie and Jeff end up. That kind of crazy is what “making it up” is all about. That is my own want, to be sure. Ms. Kleine lived this story or a version of it and has written a compelling novel about those formative years of her life, which is often hard to look at, and even harder to look away from.
Calf will be published by Soft Skull in October 2015.
