Review of “Mount Chicago”: On Love, Loss, and Meeting Your Heroes (and Their Birds)
By Sophie Allen
For the past few years, when people asked me what I thought of something I didn’t like, I’d try to say “it’s not for me.” I don’t feel comfortable labeling the goodness or badness of a piece of media, both because I’m not an expert and because I have preferences. There are great movies I’ll never watch because I don’t like horror, and books I won’t read because I’ve had my fill of accounts of the Holocaust. I think Bill Burr is a sharp and talented comic, but his delivery has always rubbed me the wrong way. I know his jokes are excellent, but I can’t get past the whatever-it-is about the way he tells them. Like all comics, Burr’s joke-telling style is a crucial part of his stage persona, and thus his work.
All this to say that are things I don’t like about Adam Levin’s Mount Chicago, and I point them out not because I think they reflect an objective badness of the work, but because I think they reflect that Mount Chicago is a book that invites readers to think about the choices the author made. I think the book could have been shorter, but I understand that the meandering way some of Levin’s characters unspool their thoughts is intentional and part of their voices, and there were times that I enjoyed the journey on which I was being taken. Levin has a knack for writing characters I would despise if I met them at a party but whose pursuits in this novel I followed attentively. Perhaps it is a sign of great work that this novel kept me reading it almost in spite of itself.
Levin is the one telling you this story, and he’s going to tell it his way. If you don’t like it, he seems to be saying, put this novel down and kindly go fuck yourself.
Levin inserts himself as sort of author-character in the novel by addressing the reader directly at intervals and updating them on his writing process. He kibbitzes about his characters, acknowledging them as his creations and inviting you to engage with them as products of his own life and imagination. Levin almost explicitly asks the reader to engage with Mount Chicago through the lens of Levin’s authorship rather than doing so tacitly through his characters and prose. Levin is the one telling you this story, and he’s going to tell it his way. If you don’t like it, he seems to be saying, put this novel down and kindly go fuck yourself.
The events of the novel revolve around a “terrestrial anomaly,” which seems like a cross between an earthquake and a sinkhole in downtown Chicago and which kills thousands of people, including the entire family of the protagonist, a neurotic writer, and bird owner named Solomon Gladman. Apter Schutz, who Levin describes as “more than just a foil” to Gladman, works for the mayor who has to handle the fallout of the event. This mayor and the bird, a Quaker parrot named Gogol, also have portions of the book written in their perspectives. Gladman used to perform stand-up as an over-the-top Jewish character named Bernie Pollaco, of whom Apter Schutz remained a fan throughout his life, to such a degree that he modeled his education and career after Gladman’s. But the relationship between Apter and Gladman is more complex than that of a fan and idol or even mentor and protege. Their paths cross when Apter asks Gladman to perform at a post-anomaly fundraiser on behalf of the mayor’s office.
Mount Chicago is a very Jewish novel. I took a course in college called “Jewish Humor” about the way Jews shaped stand-up comedy, and many experts on the subject posited that Jews have a unique voice because they are, uniquely, always outsiders, even when they’re physically on the inside. Perhaps the novel feels Jewish to me because it’s written by a Jewish author about mostly Jewish characters. Maybe I’m projecting because I’m Jewish.
Even in an Apter or Gladman chapter, the parts about Gogol are less inhibited by authorial pretense. These are the least cynical parts of the novel, which made them a pleasure to read.
Apter struck me as an outsider who used that position to his advantage, whether for profit or to advance in his career. He was able to observe people and see what made them tick without involving himself in their affairs. Levin makes it clear that this is a combination of Apter’s Jewishness and something inherent to Apter, some way that he’s wired.
The Jewishness that is central to Mount Chicago is not represented as strongly in the chapters from the mayor’s point of view. When I first read them, I found his voice a little annoying, maybe too conversational, and full of (usually pretty funny but too frequent) malapropisms, upon revisiting these sections it almost feels like Levin is putting on a deliberately excessive goyishe diction. It’s all just too much to be funny, and I found these sections almost difficult to get through. If you’ve ever had to tell someone that they’d dragged a joke past its use-by date, you know how I felt in these moments. On the other hand, it is possible that this is an accurate portrayal of some politicians. I’ve never worked in a political office, but from the testimonials I’ve read, Levin could be on to something.
By contrast, Gogol’s portions were deeply interesting and moving. I get the feeling that this could have been deliberate— Gogol shows and is shown more regard than some human characters. Here, as in Gladman and Apter’s parts, the conversational tone is more manageable, and the voice, even though Gogol is the only nonhuman character, feels less forced. Even in an Apter or Gladman chapter, the parts about Gogol are less inhibited by authorial pretense. These are the least cynical parts of the novel, which made them a pleasure to read.
The framing of cancel culture and political correctness in Mount Chicago at turns frustrated and compelled me. Do liberals squabble over surface-level issues that don’t matter while the right racks up votes and profits? Sure. Is college a farce of pronouns and sensitivity discourse? I don’t think so, and I grow frustrated at the suggestion that nonbinary social justice crusaders are making Normal Americans feel afraid to express themselves in public. People have always censored themselves in public, or what some might refer to as “mixed company.” Public figures and celebrities have always been lambasted in the press for remarks ranging from clumsy to outright hateful. The difference now is all down to framing. Levin is clever in the way he lays out a lot of real societal ills, but the specter of cancel culture took me out of things. At one point, Levin writes about America, “Donald Trump is still president. The comedian Louis CK is still canceled.” Let’s dig into that a little. In his video essay on the subject, Michael Hobbes uses Fox News’s definition: “When individuals or groups are removed from platforms or lose their livelihoods because their opinions are deemed offensive.”
But is that what happened to Louis CK? He was ‘canceled’ after confirming that sexual assault allegations made against him were true, writing in November 2017, “These stories are true.” The comedian then made his return to stand-up comedy less than a year later with a surprise performance in August of 2018. Levin’s remark comes in an interlude which he says he wrote in February 2019. Is a year a long enough cooldown period after someone admits to (and apologizes for) sexual misconduct? Is losing professional opportunities because you admitted to (and apologized for) sexual misconduct the same thing as being ‘canceled’? This metric for where we are as a country— who’s the president and who’s ‘still canceled’— strikes me as distractingly narrow in an otherwise shrewd novel. I also think it’s pretty disingenuous to refer to CK as merely ‘canceled,’ when it might be fairer to say that he admitted to repeated sexual misconduct and his career was impacted (for less than a year!).
Mount Chicago is a decent novel that I might have called great if it was about a hundred pages shorter. Levin acknowledges that his writing gets away from him and accepts it as part of his artistic voice, which I respect but don’t have to like. I think the segments of the novel fretting about cancel culture could have been cut entirely, but I think I can guess what Levin would have to say about that.
MOUNT CHICAGO
By Adam Levin
592 pp. Doubleday Books. $30.00
Order here.
Sophie Allen studies English and Spanish at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work has been awarded by the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and the Empire State Scholastic Press Association. She grew up on the beach and still prefers to read there.
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