Still Bored, Still Dealing Dope: Review

"I may be a criminal, but I have values," [Sonny] says, refusing to testify against her partners in the trade. Does she? What motivates these characters is boredom, a "need to live on the edge," as [Arthur Grimm] puts it, "the thin line where nothing but survival mattered.&q...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The New York times 1990
Main Authors: Atlas, James, James Atlas is an editor of The New York Times Magazine. He is at work on a biography of Saul Bellow
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Abbott, Jack
ATLAS, JAMES
Grimm, Arthur
Mailer, Norman
Stratton, Richard
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Summary:"I may be a criminal, but I have values," [Sonny] says, refusing to testify against her partners in the trade. Does she? What motivates these characters is boredom, a "need to live on the edge," as [Arthur Grimm] puts it, "the thin line where nothing but survival mattered." The trouble is, Mr. [Richard Stratton] never really examines this impulse. There's none of the nihilistic craziness of William Burroughs or Jean Genet in his bland meditations on criminality, nor any suggestion of remorse. The message of "Smack Goddess" is banal: Crime pays. In the end, Sonny escapes from a minimum security prison and fetches up in the paradise of Jamaica, still bored, still dealing dope -- yet somehow the very picture of health and vitality. Never mind that a lot of people, including loved ones, have ended up in dumpsters or otherwise dead. The notion of consequences, of a moral life, is absent from this book. "Smack Goddess" is about obtaining satisfaction -- no matter how. Sonny and Grimm are empty souls; their love is simply a matter of great sex. "They indulged themselves in their seclusion," Mr. Stratton writes of the couple's reunion. "They sat on the bed and slowly undressed each other, prolonging each divestiture as though discovering each other's nakedness for the first time. Then Sonny got to her knees beside the bed. . . ."
ISSN:0362-4331