Book Review : Mall as Millstone on American Dream

In the Heart of the Whole World by John Rolfe Gardiner (Knopf: $17.95; 214 pages)

Another book betrayed by its own stunning title. The “whole world” here is simply a shopping mall, albeit one with some pretty fancy trimmings. The mall carries--as consumer items--everything available in our present time: It is a cathedral to capitalism and our contemporary visions of ourselves. (And in plot terms, the mall is far more than that, as we’ll see.) To get to this glittering three-story “cathedral,” topped with a translucent, hand-painted ceiling as ambitious in some ways as Michelangelo’s, a lot of past history has had to bite the dust. . . .

Ray Sykes once had a family, who once had a house, now sold and demolished so that the mall might rise. Sykes is a local history teacher; living, as he does, in a suburb of Washington, D.C., in a small world circumscribed neatly by a beltway. He has written a history of his own precious “native district” and teaches this local history in his own local high school--obviously a thankless task.

When Sykes is young, he’s cute and popular. The female students idolize him, and it’s easier enough for him to start a daring affair with a nubile, but not terribly bright, young beauty named Sarah Rengert. It could be moral-turpitude time; Sarah is seriously pregnant and Ray is worried sick, but it turns out that Sarah has had her eye on a torpid classmate of hers--a certain Richard Pless--and she marries him instead and has the baby. Life goes on, in the town, in the high school, within the beltway.

Teaching Rigors Close In

The rigors of teaching gradually close in on Ray Sykes. His troubles are threefold: (1) He’s teaching the importance of the past to kids who don’t give a cat’s whisker about it. (2) He’s getting older every day, while his students are staying the same age. The apathetic youths in his class grow to despise Sykes’ years and his enthusiasms. Soon, in grunts and whispers, he hears the name “Chalk Man” sailing across the classroom to him. He tries both to curb his enthusiasm and his use of chalk across the board, but he is what he is, and soon becomes fair game for his ungrateful students. (3) Sykes’ world is small. He won’t move from it, nor will his old girlfriend, Sarah, or her uncomprehending husband, or the devilishly beautiful little girl, Sonia, who is, of course, Sykes’ child.

The middle of the book is taken up with Sonia’s high school years. She’s a holy terror. Her putative parents think she’s dumb; Sykes insists she’s intelligent. The mall has been built by now; an illegal alien is painting (or composing) the glass ceiling. Sonia has become a model for him, but in the most unexpected way.

All of us in malls have wondered what goes on behind the shut-down businesses with their blank, noncommittal walls facing the mall walkways. All of us in changing rooms with signs warning us that we are being watched--so that we won’t shoplift--have wondered, with a shudder, just who’s doing the watching, and with what degree of prurient interest.

Sonia and some girlfriends have found a group of deserted changing rooms and have started a sex club with six enthusiastic male high school classmates. The mall artist sees all this and makes Sonia his main nude model. (He’s not alone. Murderous makers of snuff movies prowl the mall looking for victims.) The community is piqued and outraged when it spies depicted sexual acts in its communal marketplace. But Sykes is driven almost mad; it’s his daughter up there, stark naked!

More characters are introduced: a lady named Laurinette who runs the most implausible radio show; the artist himself, and Sonia, who petulantly sasses poor old Sykes, manages to get him fired from his job, beaten up and almost killed. Still, at the end, Sonia’s loyalty to “Chalk Man,” her implicit recognition of him as her real father, her explicit recognition of him on a radio show as a wonderful teacher, are--I suppose--the high points of the novel.

To simply summarize a novel is a low sort of review. But although the ideas behind “In the Heart of the Whole World” are fine, the realistic underpinnings of it seem shaky.