Review: PERMANENT OBSCURITY by Richard Perez
Review: PERMANENT OBSCURITY by Richard Perez
Book review by Anna Ventura
PERMANENT OBSCURITY: Or a Cautionary Tale of Two Girls and Their Misadventures with Drugs, Pornography and Death by Dolores Santana (as told to Richard Perez)
Author: Richard Perez
Original Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Ludlow Press
ISBN-10: 0971341540
ISBN-13: 978-0971341548
Drawing loosely from tabloid scandal culture and the trash-exploitation era of American movies, Richard Perez has fashioned a riotously funny and energetic "cautionary tale."
But what is this novel exactly? A bohemian satire? A lampoon of sexploitation film-making? A spoof of media celebrity? An anti-consumerist black comedy? Apparently it's all of these things and more, but it's centrally the story of a friendship that turns into a toxic love-hate relationship.
Dolores, our narrator (and purported author) and her best friend Serena are two lackadaisical drug-dependent "bohemians" living in New York City's East Village. The predicament and real life situation shared by these two -- as for all artists -- is this: how to find "the job of least hours and responsibility that would allow us maximum time to pursue our own creative interests and grow." (pg. 107) Of course, the answer to that question never materializes, and the two would-be artists survive as best they can outside the world of legitimate employment. It's only a matter of time before the two turn to scamming, and Serena is first in this game, posting ads on Craigslist as a dominatrix.
Permanent Obscurity, then, becomes a (would-be) artist's lurid adventure of desperation and survival, survival in the arts, the survival of poverty and extreme desperation ... and finally the fall-out of drug addiction -- all told from the point-of-view of a sarcastic, foul-mouthed narrator. It is, almost completely, about a friendship, and the rise and fall of that friendship -- that of Dolores and Serena -- and the question asked is: how much can a relationship withstand before betrayal sets in?
The major plot of the novel turns on the idea of these two teaming up (at Serena's prompting) to make a half-baked "femdom" or female domination movie to pay back money owed to drug dealers. The subtext of this novel underscores the kind of self-sabotaging nature of these two women: on the surface -- of "wanting" to succeed vs. actually doing everything in their power to wreck their chances. Partly, this is a source of comedy in the book, and the author seems especially fond of a kind of demented slapstick humor (even in his naming one of the characters Serena "Moon."). One could easily draw comparisons with Alex Cox's 1986 film, Sid & Nancy -- with drugs adding to the recklessness and manic storytelling style, ultimately undermining everything and contributing to a fabulous train wreck. Much like that punk-inspired movie, this novel occupies a similar gritty do-or-die world.
The title of the book -- Permanent Obscurity -- draws from the familiar question in the arts of overnight fame vs. permanent anonymity, and as the book begins, we're uncertain which fate might be preferable. And this is the climactic irony that the novel turns on.
One thing for sure, this is a unique, often hilarious (sometimes bleak) story that will keep you turning pages until the savagely funny and surprising climax.
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