Book Review: "The Spectators" by Jennifer DuBois
“The Spectators” by Jennifer DuBois
Synopsis: Talk show host Matthew Miller has made his fame by shining a spotlight on the most unlikely and bizarre secrets of society, exposing them on live television in front of millions of gawking viewers. However, the man behind The Mattie M Show remains a mystery—both to his enormous audience and to those who work alongside him every day. But when the high school students responsible for a mass shooting are found to be devoted fans, Mattie is thrust into the glare of public scrutiny, seen as the wry, detached herald of a culture going downhill and going way too far. Soon, the secrets of Mattie’s past as a brilliant young politician in a crime-ridden New York City begin to push their way to the surface.
In her most daring and multidimensional novel yet, Jennifer duBois vividly portrays the heyday of gay liberation in the seventies and the grip of the AIDS crisis in the eighties, alongside a backstage view of nineties television in an age of moral panic. DuBois explores an enigmatic man’s downfall through the perspectives of two spectators—Cel, Mattie’s skeptical publicist, and Semi, the disillusioned lover from his past.
With wit, heart, and crackling intelligence, The Spectators examines the human capacity for reinvention—and forces us to ask ourselves what we choose to look at, and why.
Rating (out of 5): 4.25
Review: A recent SFOL recurrent theme has been great literary novels about NYC and AIDS in the 1980s. While this novel doesn’t pack the emotional wallop of “The Great Believers,” it makes the reader think deeply about human behavior and motivations, and how they’re often inexplicable even to the ones we love the most.
Told from two perspectives, the “Spectators,” Cel, Mattie’s inexperienced publicist, and Semi, Mattie’s ex-lover, now a successful playwright, we see different angles of Mattie Miller. Miller, whom we can probably compare most closely to Jerry Springer (as a brief aside, learn more about his life prior to the show—he is utterly fascinating), is as enigmatic and intellectual as his show is crass and base. Through Cel, we learn of Mattie’s present, and through Semi, we gain some insight into what brought him here.
Mattie, an erstwhile public defender and once-contender for public office, kept his sexuality secret as did so many men of his generation. Semi, bravely out and living in the West Village with a group of other young gay men, becomes Mattie’s punch-up writer and soon, lover. Their affair spirals into a threat to Mattie’s career, and ends in a way that, while making perfect sense, adds to the sense that Mattie is all too smooth a customer.
Cel, whose impoverished and tragic lifestyle we learn about in dribs and drabs, falls into her role as Mattie’s publicist—always trying to remain a few steps ahead of the poverty she’s afraid will once again consume her. When a Columbine-style shooting occurs, whose perpetrators claimed to be inspired by Mattie’s show, Cel is thrown into the deep end.
The book unfolds slowly and then speeds up quite a bit toward the end. Semi’s touching sections about the friends he loses to AIDS are worth reading the book for in and of themselves. DuBois does lean a little heavily on her (very impressive) vocabulary, but all in all, this was a compelling read that demands quite a bit of introspection from its audience.
TL;DR: Literary fiction best read with a nearby thesaurus. An affecting and honest book about the facades we put up, and whom we allow to see past them.
If you liked this, try:
“The Great Believers” by Rebecca Makkai (a perennial SFOL fave)
