Rachel Kushner’s ‘The Mars Room’ is a masterclass in writing of a particular kind of novel, the ‘issues’ or ‘social conscience’ novel, such as Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle’ or John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath’. And as in those two fine exemplars, Kushner basically lets her chosen victims do the talking, no soapbox, but we do get the message loud and clear.
Her protagonist is Romy Hall, a woman definitely more sinned against than sinning, although I struggled to understand why she was so done over by the Californian justice system, two consecutive life sentences plus another six years for killing her creepy stalker in a fit of rage and frustration. Deep down she’s a good-hearted gal and there are extenuating circumstances, but I guess it’s important for Kushner that she has us right onside for her heroine so we accept this gross injustice as just one of those things that can happen to almost anyone who, as Stephen King says in one of the celebrity quotes bulking the front of my copy, ‘have fallen through the gaping cracks in American life’.
Romy’s tale is in first person, whereas all the other stories are close third person (with one exception). Normally change of ‘person’ in a novel irritates me but it works well here with Romy as the central thread and the others like beads strung along. There are connections, and connections of connections, so by the time we’re approaching the climax Kushner has presented us with a pretty broad spectrum of the experience of being incarcerated and the various ways this might occur, the agents in and out of the system. This gives the novel overall a documentary feel, Kushner has done extraordinary homework, all the stories, men included, are detailed and convincing.
Kushner focusses on women’s prison, but we get the odd peak into the men’s tribulations too. For a literary work ‘The Mars Room’ covers some spectacularly seedy characters and settings, the title is a lap-dancing club in San Francisco where Romy makes her living. There is even a ‘noir’ thriller aspect to some of the prose which is punchy and unadorned à la Hemmingway, Hammett etc. Of classical influences Zola comes to mind, but Kushner cites Dostoevsky throughout, particularly ‘Crime and Punishment’, the Russian novelist’s sympathy for the marginalised obviously a spur and inspiration.
In ‘Crime and Punishment’, amongst many other things, Dostoevsky presents an ironic view of St. Petersburg, the glittering Czarist capital, which for Raskolnikov and others is a big verminous slum. So Romy and San Francisco, the lauded beauty of the city irrelevant and unseen by those born to poverty, neglect and struggle. Entering into the prison system― the novel opens with a long bus ride there―is like taking a trip down into the underworld, a sort of modern Hades. Once inside, we get a gripping up-close horror show of a self-contained territory that is largely out of sight and mind to relatively well-off middle-class readers such as myself. But chasing up the relevant stats in my own home town, Hobart, the scenario is not much different, so those cracks are not just Californian or American.
We accept that we need punishment for crimes against society, and incarceration, the taking of freedom, is an obvious answer. The problem is that once any system is established it becomes its own beast, and that beast’s purpose here is to crush any humanity out of both of gaolers and gaoled, which makes things wretched for everyone and does not serve society at all. So constant input is needed from outside, education, occupation etc. for the inmates, this is not news, but it does cost money, and there are no votes in it for politicians, whereas there are, unfortunately, always votes in beating a big law-and-order drum.
The same old story, we all know it, but we forget it or ignore it unless it impinges on our lives. And this is what Kushner seeks to do: wake us up to this particular inhumanity in our affluent nations, and maybe even somehow stir us into action. Still, whilst eliciting our sympathies, she is sensible to show there are actually bad people, in and out of prison, and not everyone is a victim. Amongst various portraits of undesirables, scattered at intervals is the diary of Ted Kaczinski (the exception), the Unabomber, just for an insight into a mind that is truly evil.
Nevertheless, the overwhelming impression is that of a widespread State-sanctioned injustice, lives and potential being crushed for no good reason, although the end of the novel, the climax and after, heart-stopping and heart-breaking, is oddly life affirming. In ‘The Mars Room’ Kushner has given us something that is genuinely chastening and literary to boot. Not too innovative or flashy, but powerful and accomplished.