12th Canadian Challenge - 5th Review - How Insensitive

I started with one of Russell Smith's later short story collections (Confidence) and am finally circling around to his first novels, when he was very much the enfant terrible of the Toronto's literary scene.  His more recent work focuses on the artists who never grow up and just look ridiculous trying to hang with the younger crowd, whereas his first works just plunge into the lives of these 20 somethings trying to make it in Toronto.  The humour is more about the pretentiousness of the scene, and the transitory nature of trendiness, rather than middle aged men (and it is always men) trying to reclaim their youth.

I'll review Noise separately, but it strikes me as that novel is about someone who has succeeded in riding the trends and is a successful critic with a number of side hustles and gigs.  It is far less clear whether the main characters in How Insensitive will succeed in breaking into Toronto's arts community.  While the plot is a bit different, it is reminiscent of The Out-of-Towners.  There will be minor SPOILERS that follow, though it is worth noting that plot is secondary in this satire.

SPOILERS

How Insensitive begins with Ted coming to Toronto on a train from the East.  He runs across Max, who was once a big mover and shaker in the Toronto club/restaurant/happening scene.  Max has a slightly ambiguous role in the novel.  He strikes me just a bit like the demonic double in Hogg's Private Memoirs in the sense that Max keeps stringing Ted along with offers of starting up a new magazine, but he can't follow through on any of them.*  (I guess the fact that he now lives in Oshawa is supposed to tip off the reader that Max has truly fallen from grace...)

Ted is going to stay with John, a college friend who has recently dropped out of a mainstream career and is now following "the scene" and waiting to make a killing in some unspecified way with his uncle.  The house is full of youngsters on the make -- bike couriers, actors,** models, and one quasi-hermit who is into computers.  Ted takes over a room when a model takes an assignment in Japan.  Basically, Ted tries to fit into this new scene, going to new trendy restaurants and trying to get a job in the arts (while living off his parents' money).  He eventually decides that he can't really keep chasing after one young woman because he can't keep paying cover at all the ritzy clubs she goes to.  It wouldn't be a coming-of-age story without some additional romantic entanglements and disentanglements...

Eventually, John decides he needs to go back to work, and lands a job in Ottawa of all places.  Ted briefly takes a job as a technical writer (for IBM or a firm like that), though he ditches that after a few soul-killing weeks.  He is all but set on going back home when he runs into Max one more time, ending up in another wild goose chase.  Despite everything, it seems that Ted will try to stick it out in Toronto for a bit longer, and he breaks in a new housemate.

This is definitely an amusing novel, but one written for readers who consider Toronto the centre of the universe.  I can't imagine anyone from Montreal really relating to the novel, for instance.  It also is a bit of its time (early 90s Toronto) when there were loft conversions and crazy art openings all over the place.  While there is a bit of that here and there in today's Toronto, it is a lot rarer in a very gentrified city.  I only experienced a small bit of this when I was in Toronto in 1993-94 (for instance, going to a theatre event held under the Gardiner) but just enough that How Insensitive does speak to me and invokes some nostalgic feelings.  I can't guarantee it will work for you.

* It's a little puzzling trying to work out Max's motivations (like leaving phone numbers that don't connect), though he may just want to pretend he is still in the game, when he may just be too burnt out to pull off another big happening or magazine or club, and who better to try to impress but an out-of-town rube?

** I had forgotten one of the more interesting parts of the book where Ted writes a play for a struggling theatre company, and the actor changes it into a multimedia production.  Ted is initially horrified but realizes that the actor really knows what the arts community is into.  The success of this piece as reviewed in Next (presumably a pseudonym for Now) leads Ted into some other strange adventures.