12 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLI
April
eveningsout
The scapegoats of the 1950s have a very familiar look
Shimmer
by Sarah Schulman
Bard, 272 pages, $23
In a year in which we have seen the nation's political and media elites obsessed with such weighty matters as the president's sex life and a certain Gap cocktail dress, it's really not much of a stretch to believe that less than 50 years ago, the country was equally obsessed with ridding the Republic of the scourge of communism. It was a time when
lives and careers could be ruined in the blink of an eye merely because one may have held opinions that stood out from the mainstream's definition of acceptable beliefs.
Sarah Schulman's new novel Shimmer uses this period of American history as a context for telling the story of a diverse group of New Yorkers whose lives intersect in a number of unforeseeable and usually tragic ways.
When asked why she chose to write about this particular era, Schulman said, "I've always been interested in the McCarthy era because I'm interested in scapegoating.
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McCarthyism and familial homophobia resonate with each other. I also wanted to use the broader social context of the Red Scare as a metaphor for homophobia."
that this is a story of how this same Protestant white male establishment runs roughshod over Jews, women, gays, and of course, people of color. What is surprising however, is that the forces of political cor-
Shimmer
Homophobia is essentially what makes Sylvia Golubowsky, one ofShimmer's main characters, such a tragic figure. Sylvia is an outspoken, intelligent girl who meets rejection at every turn. She's too much for her family who expect her to demur when her dense brother receives what should have been her job promotion because she is seen as a liability in the workplace for not having signed a loyalty oath.
Homophobia is but one of the social pathologies at work in Shimmer. One of the char· acters, Cal Byfield, is a black playwright with dreams of having his work performed outside of the traditional venues for blacks, but he is foiled at every turn by the prevailing racist mores of the time.
rectness do not triumph
in the end, because Austin Van Cleeve survives to a sleek and satisfied old age, saving the book from being merely an exercise in political correctness.
SARAH SCHULMAN
Both of these characters find themselves at the mercy of the Protestant white male establishment embodied by the odious Austin Van Cleeve. Austin is a scion of an oldmoney family of Roosevelt-haters who is the nexus of the machinations that comprise Shimmer's plot.
As you read Shimmer, it is very obvious
"The anti-New Dealers that Austin Van Cleeve represents did outlive the ideas of social responsibility at the root of Roosevelt's social programs," said Schulman. "I believe that Clinton's final blow to welfare in 1996 marked the
end of a more
than fifty year battle by the greedy to defeat the New Deal, so I had him outlive his opposition both literally and metaphorically as well."
All of this is to Shimmer's benefit. Schulman's noir vision of New York is a place where all the endings are not necessarily happy, making what could have been a PC diatribe into an interesting story of politics and human frailty.
music
Mellow, dreamy songs are strong point of new release
What is Not to Love
Imperial Teen
Slash Records
Following up on its 1996 debut Seasick, Imperial Teen returns with What is Not to Love. While the band explores a somewhat diverse musical territory, its two predominant sounds are smooth and easy grooves à la Cowboy Junkies, and harderedged, more ravaging songs that scramble ahead on a Violent Femmes-like vibe.
What's Not to Love begins with pop-oriented “Open Season." A similar sensibility prevails on the bass-driven "Lipstick," one of the best songs on the album. "Hooray" also impresses with a Velvet Undergroundinfluenced bridge, though "Yoo Hoo" and "Year of the Tan" lose their appeal due to a lead vocal that borders on whiny.
Imperial Teen captures some of its greatest moments when it wanders through more mellow, dreamy songs like "Beauty” and "Crucible." The latter is decidedly deceiving as the lush instrumentation and vocal runs incongruent to an anything-but-gentle lyric.
As for the words, Imperial Teen lives successfully in the land of intelligent, oblique lyric writing. "Open Season," for ex-
Imperial Teen
ample offers, "One of us faking Victorian/ What a fuss, picture of Dorian/follow a trail, corrupt an au pair/a lesson in lust/the prince lost his hair."
The Imperial Teen lineup openly-gay Roddy Bottum, Lynn Perko, Will Schwartz, and Jone Stebbins includes plenty of switch hitters. All four sing, and play at least two instruments somewhere on the album. ✔
Harriet L. Schwartz is a Chronicle contributing writer living in Pittsburgh.