Happy Baby

Rating:
Summary: Hand over face
Review: I found this book on top of a garbage can in the French Quarter, looked it over from cover to title and placed it in my bag. From the illustration on the cover to the quote by J.T. Leroy, I dove into it with a small idea of what to expect. After spending a day in bed with Theo and the people tangled up with his story, I stumbled out from my apt. and into a thunderstorm that had been raging all day, not aware of the rain and forgetting why I was on the street.
This reaction to Happy Baby, the result of being subjected to a work of art that slams into my solar plexus, kept me under its spell for several hours, the world of Theo spinning around my head, leaving me an amnesiac zombie.
The easy delivery, the immediacy of every line and every device used in such a way as to hide its presence has me enrapt. Brilliant!

Rating:
Summary: The agonizing death of innocence
Review: Theo is a young man of 36 years, returning from the West Coast to his roots in Chicago. These are not the same roots we normally think of, those of us who have known the security of family, parents, siblings, various eccentric relatives. But Theo's roots are misshapen, deeply twisted from the horrors of the child welfare system, the agonizing childhood of the dispossessed who are not visible in everyday society, except perhaps to one another.

Working backwards, Theo begins his story in the present, tortured days where his energy is absorbed by the need for the release of physical pain. His only safety is in familiarity and ritual, so he seeks those of similar needs, where days are measured by degradation and emotional anguish so deep it can only be temporarily expunged.

Growing up in the child welfare system in Illinois, Theo is thrown into a murky, indifferent world, one where soul-dead predators rule. The social workers, too over-burdened to be effective, have their enthusiasm crushed early on in this game, where the only way to survive is to ignore the chaos and violence. Good intentions are quickly reduced to a belief that these children cannot be saved, left at the mercy of their caretakers, who feed freely on the defenseless.

The power of Happy Baby is in its structure: Elliott throws the netherworld of sexual deviance in your face. If you don't like it, don't look at it...there is no lack of customers. The author peels away Theo's psyche like the skin of an onion, exposing each tender layer in the systematic destruction of an innocence most people take for granted.

Society doesn't like to examine its failures, let alone acknowledge them. Take a long, hard look at Theo's evolution into a tortured, barely-functional fringe-dweller whose sense of self is virtually non-existent, clinging to life by its lowest common denominator.

After reading this book, what I find absolutely stunning is the enormity of this self-perpetuating social issue that continues to deform and destroy the unfortunate children it purports to protect. Happy Baby is a painful read. While the story is neither comfortable nor entertaining, this author refuses to be intimidated by taboo or socially-unacceptable topics; rather, Elliott adds his powerful voice to the rising howl of outrage at the abused, disenfranchised and ignored wards of society. (...)

Rating:
Summary: raw, honest and utterly unflinching prose.
Review: Written by Katherine Darnell, of small spiral notebook

Happy Baby by Stephen Elliott is a piercing novel, unflinchingly narrated by a young man named Theo, a former Ward of the Court in the state of Illinois. Theo's life is one of continual movement and instability. He travels from bad group homes to abusive detention centers to dangerous schools; everywhere he goes, slipping through another crack, forsaken by another figure of authority. Guards both abuse and protect Theo, and caseworkers ask, "So how are they treating you?" without really caring to hear the answer. Despite an astoundingly complicated superstructure of State bureaucracy, Theo is resoundingly alone in the world. Elliott creates an overwhelmingly bleak world, but with his brilliant, achingly sparse brushstrokes, he is able to portray this world without resorting to over-effect. Theo and his compatriots' emotions and surroundings are written evocatively, without any sense of having been overwritten or belabored.

The strength of Elliott's language coupled with his clear affection for Theo makes the story soar. Elliott's tale is Dickensian in its themes of wayward childhood horror, abandonment, and artful darkness. Elliott has constructed a narrative that travels from the present into the past; each chapter (which is somewhat akin to a self-contained story) slips gently into the period of time just before that of the previous one. Elliott's genius lies in his ability to convey enough information in the preceding chapters so that the story flows gracefully, with everything coming together neatly. It would be very easy for Elliott to rely on the cleverness of the technique rather than forcing the story to stand on its own merits. But fortunately Elliott is a writer with enough talent that he completely avoids this type of literary laxity, and he creates something altogether original and incredibly powerful with the reverse-narrative technique. The effect of moving backwards in time makes the novel all the more resonant; as the reader travels into Theo's formative years, we know all too clearly the emotional havoc that was wreaked in their wake.

Theo's youth inside the bureaucracy of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services is a disaster. The facilities are grim, the employees are either negligent or sadistic, and the rare caring adult never lasts very long. His parents are both dead, which leaves him no other option. Theo finds love with a girl named Maria who arrives on the scene wearing innocent pink, initially possessing a charming, furtive naivety. Yet soon Theo realizes that Maria is overwhelmingly haunted by past abuses, and she craves a measure of pain and mistreatment that Theo refuses to deliver. After Maria sinks into the dark recesses of Chicago with a brutal man named Joe, Theo marries a woman named Zahava who cheats on him. Theo is aware of her infidelities, yet because of his neediness and familiarity with mistreatment, he does little to confront this situation. He lives in Amsterdam for a while, working as a barker for a sex show. Theo remains above all of the cities in which he lives, never tethered closely to any one place, never sure where he might stay, always meekly hungering for abuse, always courting some small measure of disaster and punishment. After moving to San Francisco, a woman named Ambellina becomes his companion, and Theo finds her rigorous, titillating punishments a cleansing relief. He answers her ad: "East Bay Woman looking for a toy to abuse. Must be full time. No equivocating." She slaps him, pulls his hair, and scratches him, while simultaneously promising protection and screaming abuse. It is inside this whirlwind that Theo feels safe. The first chapter of the book depicts Theo's returning to Chicago, visiting with Maria, who appears to have found serenity and peace with the birth of her charming baby boy.

Elliott has created a work of great art. After reading the final chapter, which manages to read as both completely heartbreaking, and also as a comfortingly uplifting coda, it is clear that Stephen Elliott is a writer of incomparable talent. The effect of reading this book is akin to having the wind knocked out of you - painful, shocking, and thrilling at the same time.