The rumor around town is that debut novels have to have that “what’s next”quality, something to care about, even compelling. I have been stuck on the “compelling” issue of late, probably because a friend read something of mine and said, “there is nothing at risk here, nothing to care about.” I admire the slice of life novel, because to me that is compelling. Your good friend tells you a story about how a mutual friend is suffering a marriage breakup, via infidelity. You listen, you hang on the words. That is compelling. Or, you both share a memory from your past, that is something worth listening to, because it happened to both of you. A story about a kid just out of high school who would rather get high, fat and make countless excuses for doing nothing, is not supposed to be THIS compelling.

In Flatscreen, Adam Wilson has written a novel way beyond his years. Eli is both stupid and handicapped by his smarts. In the first pages we see that his mother is selling his childhood home. So much of this book takes place in Eli’s head, but it never really leaves the present tense. Eli whips us with is quick wit, savvy tongue. He can’t stand his brother, and his mother is “putting up” with him. There is a wave of depression that wafts from these characters. It does not crush the book, but gives the sense that even prozac won’t help. These worries are permanent. Eli is especially lonesome. He has not moved out, and is not planning on it, which means his mother will have to board him at her new place. So Eli becomes friendly with the former movie star named Seymour Kahn who buys his house. Kahn is handicapped, and this makes for an uneasy friendship, especially when Eli starts supplying Kahn with pot.

The book is fairly straightforward at this point. But then Eli tries to get laid and takes Viagra to help him out, and he sleeps with an older woman. Like someone’s wife. As in, someone his mother’s age. What happens next is a series of hilarious incidents that are both sad and depressing because they feel true.

In the last one-hundred pages Eli crashes spectacularly, and begins to write about possible endings to his life. Each one smacks of Hollywood, and could be made into a movie. Along the way, he sprinkles in facts about his parents, how his father disappeared for several months, (which may have led to his parents divorce) and how his second best dish is pheasant. I woke the neighbors up with my laughter over this culinary admission.

Wilson is both aloof and engaging in this wandering exploration into the pains of being twenty something and not in college. I can suggest you skip page 305 (galley only) and read an exchange between Eli and his brother, where his brother admits that “his memory has been strengthened by the indelible events of our childhood.” And finally the Possible Ending #19 (Triumphant) where Eli realizes a movie could be made out of his life’s experiences, and imagines a writer who writes a great debut, tries to write the epic follow-up and drinks himself to death in the process.

Wait! The section where the homophobic movers clean out Eli’s childhood home is brilliant.

This story is both definitive and endlessly endless.

Flatscreen by Adam Wilson

Harper Perennial – January 2012