The Vices: A Novel

The Vices: A Novel

by Lawrence Douglas
The Vices: A Novel

The Vices: A Novel

by Lawrence Douglas

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Overview

Oliver Vice, forty-one, prominent philosopher, scholar, and art collector, is missing and presumed dead, over the side of Queen Mary 2.Troubled by his friend’s possible suicide, the unnamed narrator of Lawrence Douglas’ new novel launches an all-consuming investigation into Vice’s life history. Douglas, moving backward through time, tells a mordantly humorous story of fascination turned obsession, as his narrator peels back the layers of the Vice family’s rich and bizarre history. At the heart of the family are Francizka, Oliver’s handsome, overbearing, vaguely anti-Semitic Hungarian mother, and his fraternal twin brother, Bartholomew, a gigantic and troubled young man with a morbid interest in Europe’s great tyrants. As the narrator finds himself drawn into a battle over the family’s money and art, he comes to sense that someone—or perhaps the entire family—is hiding an unsavory past. Pursuing the truth from New York to London, from Budapest to Portugal, he remains oblivious to the irony of the search: that in his need to understand Vice’s life, he is really grappling with ambivalence about his own.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781590514153
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
Publication date: 08/16/2011
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 8.02(w) x 5.64(h) x 0.74(d)

About the Author

Lawrence Douglas teaches at Amherst College. He is the author of the novel The Catastrophist (Other Press, 2006), a Kirkus Best Book of the Year, The Memory of Judgment (Yale University Press, 2001), a widely acclaimed study of war crimes trials; and coauthor of a book of humor, Sense and Nonsensibility (Simon & Schuster, 2004). His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, The Hudson Review, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, and Harper’s. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement, Douglas lives in Sunderland, Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

By the time we made it to the parking lot, we’d taken tentative strides toward sobriety. Winter in the past day had snuck up on us. I squinted into the sunlight, dagger sharp and empty of heat. A wicked wind made swirls and eddies of dust and cigarette butts. Oliver thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and bunched his shoulders, but his coat remained unzipped. He looked at me; his eyes, behind the formidable newscaster’s glasses, were tearing from the cold. A blast of wind made him nearly swallow his words. “Did I tell you that I was recently dumped by my therapist?”
   I shook my head, suppressing a shiver.
   “I started seeing him about two years ago, when Sophia and I got involved. He’s really an excellent therapist, smart and insightful, a dead ringer for Gene Wilder. But gradually he became so fed up with my endless frantic rehashing of the same problems, so dispirited by my compulsive tendency to seek advice which I then ignore or declare myself incapable of implementing, so perplexed by my penchant for self-examination without profitable end, and so alarmed by my inability or refusal to restrain my thoughts, which overheat and go nowhere, like bats flapping around a closed attic, that he recently began a session with the simple declaration, ‘I don’t think I’m helping you. I don’t think I’m capable of helping you.’ He apologized and we shook hands; I even tried to cheer him up—he did as good as job as anybody could have…”
Oliver smiled wanly and pointed a single finger toward his temple, not pistol-like, but as one might to a curious artifact in a museum: “Sick.”

Reading Group Guide

1. In the opening chapter, the narrator confesses his initial aversion to Oliver Vice; “I’d met Oliver a dozen years earlier, and took an immediate dislike to him.” (p 17) Does this original opinion ever make you doubt his reliability as a narrator? As the story progresses, how would you characterize the narrator’s complicated relationship with Oliver?

2. The circumstances of both Sophia Baum’s death and Oliver’s disappearance from the Queen Mary 2 are ambiguous. How does the narrator’s inability to pinpoint the precise circumstances of these two losses affect his assessment of their lives? What conjectures does he make?

3. A common theme in The Vices is the act of appropriating true stories for literary creation. The narrator admits that his first novel is modeled on an acquaintance who, upon reading it, declared the book “an act of theft.” (p 165) The narrator concludes in retrospect that “writing about someone dear…is always part homage, part predation.” (p 165) Discuss this connection between art and reality, and the narrator’s decision to continue to use Oliver Vice’s story for his next book.

4. Authenticity is another motif in the novel. Why does the narrator initially suspect the Vice family’s art collection to be counterfeit? See Oliver’s letter to the narrator detailing the Pascin forgery—why does he decide to keep the painting, knowing it’s a fake? (p 217)

5. Look at specific passages in the book that describe Francizka. What kind of mother is she? What are her reasons for hiding the past from her children? Do these motivations make her a redeemable character?

6. The narrator hints from the beginning that he and Mel will eventually separate. What did you think of the scene when Oliver was staying at their house after Sophia’s death? (p 240) Were you surprised by Oliver’s behavior? Is Oliver the direct reason for their separation? What other factors play a part in the breakup?

7. The narrator can’t believe that Oliver is ambivalent about his biological father, and calls him “The philosopher of identity who has no idea who he is!” (p 181) When Olivia shares the story of Oliver’s father’s Holocaust survival and reveals their Jewish ancestry, a part of Oliver’s identity is revealed. (p 298) Examine this relationship between history and identity. Do you think Oliver knew that Francizka was hiding the past from him?

8. Mel says to the narrator, referring to Oliver: “You don’t want to write about him, you want to be him.” (p 245) Is there truth to Mel’s statement? Find passages that confirm or refute this observation.

9. After losing his mother and brother, Bartholomew seems to thrive, losing weight and even finding a girlfriend. The narrator observes, “I assumed her death would leave him undone, but Bart had undergone a remarkable change since I’d last seen him. At the funeral he carried himself with strength.” (p 329) What is the cause of this unexpected personality change? Was Bartholomew jealous of Oliver? Was his outward devotion to Francizka merely an act?

10. When the narrator travels to London, he observes Oliver and Jean’s unconventional arrangement firsthand, finally understanding the Oliver’s cryptic remark at their first outing: “Have you ever fallen in love with someone you’re not attracted to?” (p 27) Does Jean seem to accept the limits of their relationship? What do you think makes Oliver so desperate to stay with her, despite sabotaging his other relationships?

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