I’ve come to expect a certain amount of discomfort from a good novel. I expect the plot—or some plot device—to move me from a place of relative comfort and make me question the very idea of this comfort. In J.T. LeRoy’s Sarah, the discomfort is evident from the opening scenes and reaches its zenith with the realization that this is a world occupied by cross-dressing lot-lizards (truck stop prostitutes), truck driver johns, and the pimps who make their living off of both. In particular, this is the story of a 12-year-old boy, the narrator Sarah, who is coming of age in this world, whose main goal is to become a force within this world, and who will stop at nothing to gain the coveted talisman—a raccoon penis bone—to wear around his neck to impress his sister/mother. At the same time, the story is about a search for identity, a boy searching for his mother by becoming her, and about loss and redemption, of Sarah’s being lost, then found, then ultimately lost again. In some ways, this is a novel that could have been written by William S. Burroughs, though LeRoy displays so much more sympathy toward his characters than Burroughs was ever able to muster. In other ways, this book reminds me of the diaries of Jim Carroll with all of the raw energy, bleak settings, and vast decay. LeRoy makes no excuses; he simply tells the story, mixes in a huge amount of hyper-reality, and leaves the reader feeling like he or she needs a good, long shower.
posted by Jeff 1/19/2004
