January 31, 2000
BOOKS OF THE TIMES
`Chaos Theory': Troubled Teenagers in a Troubled City
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
e are a long way from the Hardy
Boys mysteries in Gary Krist's new
thriller, "Chaos Theory," about political corruption in the city government of Washington. Still, an appealing atmosphere of adolescent companionability lingers on, as Jason
Rourke and Dennis Monroe, juniors
at Robert F. Kennedy High School,
try to unravel why their attempt to
buy a couple of joints in the Northeast section of the city has gone so
terribly wrong.
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Timothy Greenfield-Sanders/Random House
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CHAOS THEORY
By Gary Krist
347 pages. Random House. $24.
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Jason and Dennis are both bright
and mildly troubled. Jason still feels
the aftereffects of the suicide of his
mother, who suffered from clinical
depression. He lives uneasily with his
father, Graham, who feels guilty
about overprotecting him. Dennis is
considered an "Afro-Saxon" by the
other blacks in his class, "a brother
hanging with the white kids" like
Jason, "playing at being white." Yet
"he understood that copping ghetto
attitude was a loser's game -- something that would get him absolutely
nowhere in this world."
So it seems plausible enough that
after suffering a classmate's "sedate, alcohol-free birthday celebration" that included a prayer of
thanksgiving, they decide to cut out
and buy some grass. The problem is
that when they do, their dealer starts
shouting about being betrayed, pulls
a gun on them, sticks it in the window
of their car and tells them to get out.
Instead, Jason grabs the man's
wrist and tells Dennis to drive away.
The dealer, after being dragged
along the street and firing a harmless shot into the car, collides with
the back of a parked car and falls to
the ground. The next day Jason and
Dennis read the newspaper headline
"Undercover cop slain in brutal
Northeast attack." The article explains that Detective Ramon Harcourt was found dead with two gunshot wounds in him, lying near a
weapon that had been discharged
three times.
But later, when the newspaper
runs a photo of Harcourt, Jason and
Dennis realize he isn't the man who
attacked them. And of course they
soon become the focus of a threatening police investigation.
Mr. Krist -- whose previous books
include two noted collections of
stories, "The Garden State" and
"Bone by Bone," and a novel, "Bad
Chemistry" -- does several things
well while untangling this mystery.
He gives us striking snapshots of
Washington scenery: "Across a quiet stretch of the Tidal Basin, the
Jefferson Memorial floated: a big
white jellyfish, the pillars hanging
down like tentacles. He could just
make out the statue of the president
inside, about to be swallowed."
He paints a complex picture of
what Jason's father refers to as "the
great racial divide" that "no D.C.
resident could ever forget, living in a
center of white power that just happened to have a population that was
over 60 percent black."
The trouble is, what lies behind
Jason's and Dennis's problems is a
good deal easier to figure out and
considerably less shocking than Mr.
Krist counts on it being. So his plot
can't bear the weight of an analysis
that sees Washington as a city emasculated because it can't "tax the real
estate of its major tenant or the
income of its commuting workforce."
"Since the hard money to run the
city still had to come as a handout
from the federal government," the
analysis continues, "paternalism
was practically built into District
affairs." But in truth the corruption
that Jason and Dennis get caught up
in could occur in any metropolis.
Closer to the truth is the remark of
one of the story's villains: "They're
all talking about accountability now
-- openness, order. Responsible, accountable government. But you ask
any businessman, he'll tell you about
accountability. Why do you think
they're all running to Russia and
Eastern Europe nowadays? It's the
chaos."
"Chaos is just another word for
opportunity," the villain continues.
"The weak person's crisis . . . is the
strong person's opportunity."
Still, it is the Hardy Boys element
of companionship that makes "Chaos Theory" appealing: Jason and
Dennis reaching across the racial
divide to help each other out of a
pickle, as Graham Rourke continues
his musings about race in Washington: "Could people like Graham and
the Monroes ever hope to harmonize
their interests, or even remotely understand each other's interests? It
was a big, unanswerable question,
relevant in every American city but
especially in the District of Columbia. . . . Would it take new dogs --
puppies like Jason and Dennis, maybe -- to learn this new trick?"
Mr. Krist's novel, while somewhat
flawed as a thriller, holds out the
pleasant hope that puppies like Jason
and Dennis will learn this new trick.
