Existentialist Vince

Jonah Jerabek

Professor Sinowitz

Noir Film and Fiction

11/21/17

Existentialist Vince

            Boom. A small Vietnamese building is replaced by a roaring ball of fire. Corpses litter the ground, each with a conical straw halo. “Well done, hawks, well done,” Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore gazes down upon his handiwork. Nausea burrows deeply into my stomach before sliding up my spinal cord, twisting my thoughts and blurring my mind. I never could endure “Apocalypse Now”. Sliding my headphones in, I hurdle onto my twin bed, forcing wrinkles into the cobalt comforter. JD McPherson’s “A Gentle Awakening” sooths my twisted stomach and mind. “The people on the city streets, The farmers on the plains, All walking in the lucid dream, While the sky is set aflame” The comforter remains rumpled.

            I am an eighteen-year-old man. I should love “Apocalypse Now”. There is violence, cruelty, and war. What else could I want? Shouldn’t I admire the courage and hard work they put in? Social norms tell me that I should. Social expectations tell me that I should. War is meant to distinguish boys from men and men from heroes. I am an eighteen-year-old man. I should love “Apocalypse Now”.

            I reach towards my metal nightstand and pick up a copy of Citizen Vince. The used and rented pages curve up in a wave about a third from the bottom and the paperback cover is peeled and scratched. As we’re introduced to Jess Walter’s unordinary Vince Camden and his oblique thinking, I can’t help but wonder if this is the way the novel was intended to be enjoyed.

            The novel is introduced with, “One day you know more dead people than live ones” (Walter 1). As Vince Camden describes stories upon stories of his deceased family and friends, numbering each one in turn, I’m shocked by the individuality and undignified nature of each fallen man or woman. One man chokes on a coin, another hangs himself, a third is beaten to death with a pipe. Beyond the astounding diversity of these endings, it is difficult to underestimate the effect these deaths can have on a man. After all this pain and loss, Vince should be a hard man. Societal norms say he shouldn’t be emotional or friendly. Societal expectations say this scarred and damaged character wouldn’t mind killing a few people himself. My mind naturally drifts towards my own memories as I begin counting the dead people I know. One particular experience refuses to leave my mind.

            In the 5^th grade, my basketball coach and friend’s father, Mr. Miller, was diagnosed with lung cancer. The team held a fundraiser to help pay his medical bills. We sold hats. Dozens of bins, tubs, and tables held baseball caps, beanies, berets, bucket hats, and even a couple cowboy hats and fedoras. There were more hats than could possibly be sold by a legion of trained professionals, let alone a scrap of goofy kids, but I’d be damned if we weren’t going to try. Leaving that afternoon, talking to my friends and waving around my brand-new cap, everything seemed alright for the first time. He died within the month. A sensitive child, I took time recovering from the shock. As long as I knew his son Luke, he never did.

            The impact of a dead loved one tends to change a man. As Vince’s deceased count drifts into the dozens, we see very clearly how he has taken deaths in stride throughout his life. The effects these may have held on his psyche are remarkable. But despite the constant stream of untimely deaths, Vince is still willing to open up. He wants a relationship with Beth, even if he is originally unsure about becoming an adoptive father. He never once considers violence even in a world that is constantly violent. Vince’s character is clearly very difficult to pin down. He creates complex schemes to steal money, but hardly uses the money he takes. He reads scores of novels but pointedly avoids reading the conclusions. He has the confidence and charisma to command a room full of hustlers and gamblers, but still questions the sanity of every action he makes. However, Vince sees this same duality in the people around him:

[…]in Vince’s estimation, the world is made of only such people, pot-smoking cops, thieves who tithe 10 percent, society women who wear garters, tramps who sleep with stuffed bears, criminal donut makers, real estate hookers. He remembers a firefighter in the old neighborhood named Alvin Dunphy who was claustrophobic. Died when a burning building collapsed on him. Thirty-eight. (Walter 9-10)

I wonder if I hold this same duality. I’m a good Catholic. I go to church every Sunday, occasionally firing profanity as I trip over a rogue pew. I’m incredibly generous, but paranoid I’ll be taken advantage of. I’ve even recently begun focusing on humility. I may well be the best at it. Perhaps, this Vince guy is on to something.

            But what is duality if not a refusal to submit to the societal role assigned to you? There are no laws declaring that tramps are not allowed teddy bears or that thieves can’t tithe. This “duality” is simply a reminder that people tend to defy the stereotypes assigned to them.

            While caught up in my theories of duality, I brushed over an aspect of Vince’s character that surely deserved more attention; Vince stoutly refuses to finish novels. Yet, he will pick them up and begin new ones with a fury. Who does that? Books have a beginning, middle, and end. That’s the way it’s supposed to be. How do you read each book with a strong enough detachment that you aren’t pulled in to the concluding pages and words, desperately wishing the author had written just a few more?  Why doesn’t Vince finish his books?

            Sparing me from any shaky speculation, Walter answers this question himself. “[Vince] is afraid of being disappointed by the endings. He’d read Great Expectations at Rikers and had loved it […] until the jail librarian pointed out that Dickens had written two endings […] A book, like a life, should only have one ending” (Walter 50). Vince doesn’t like to think of a novel as some abstract creation of an omnipotent author. If each character is as developed and real as they appear, the plot should occur naturally. Each character ought to act out of personality, background, and circumstance. If Lois Lane were kidnapped, Superman would save her. He would save her because he has superpowers, he fights for truth and justice, and maybe just because he loves her. But what if the writer changed his mind? What if the writer decided that Superman wouldn’t save Lois Lane? He’s a pretty busy guy. Maybe he’d like to take the day off: go golfing or read a novel. This would change not only the end of the plot, but also our understanding of Superman as a whole. He certainly still has superpowers, but does he fight for truth and justice? Does he love Lois Lane?

            And so, Vince doesn’t read the endings. He still seems more than content with the earlier sections. After all, avoiding the conclusions of books is one of the lightest social conventions Vince ignores. While being arrested for the first time, Vince avoids the usual struggle and yelling. He instead attempts to start a casual conversation on the architecture of the Municipal Building with his arresting officer. I don’t imagine it got very far.

            While this exchange did slide a bit farther towards comical, Vince truly did not seem to have the same understanding of social norms that most people do. He recognizes this difference as he sits in Washington Square after the death of his mother, “Vince sat in the square and watched the college kids, trying to figure out what they had that he didn’t” (Walter 119). All the college students seemed to be walking somewhere. They had a purpose. They finished books. Why was he so different?

            I would venture that Vince is so different because he is free. He can choose to finish the book, or he can just read the start. He can sell marijuana and scam credit cards, or he can just make donuts and picnic meals. He doesn’t rule out options just because they’re unpopular, unordinary, or even illegal. And this is the part of Vince that I relate to the most. I believe that life is a series of choices. Some options may be less viable or even plain odd, but they remain options nonetheless. This freedom is terrifying to most. It is unforgiving and harsh, forcing us to always do our most and to take responsibility when we do not. But if we embrace this petrifying virtue, we may eventually get what we never thought we could have. At the end of the novel, Vince finally gained the confidence to fully embrace all his options and become a true existentialist. He had wanted to settle down with Beth but had worried that he might not be able to. According to society, he was a criminal. He wasn’t supposed to wish for a morning paper and a cup of coffee next to the woman that he loved. He was supposed to be driven by greed and lust and other dark desires. For a man used to being cast as the villain, it can be pretty terrifying to try for anything better.

            However, because Vince was able to ignore the societal expectations around him, and truly open himself up to all of the options, even the ones that seemed too good to be true, he finished the novel happy. He was with Beth and was finally content with the man that he had become. Many people believe that existentialism is extremely complicated. Sometimes existentialism is as simple as accepting something you don’t think you deserve.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give (life) a meaning”

- Jean-Paul Sartre.