I have to confess; I read Jim Arnold's Benediction mostly on BART. The fact that most scenes are set in familiar San Francisco locales, including on BART in one chapter, made the tale of a wayward office administrator who moonlights as a short film director seem like an overheard cell phone call. At first, it's mildly annoying to hear a one-sided tale of pleasure, woe, and occasional banality.
But then, things get interesting. After getting a diagnosis of prostate cancer, Ben, our narrator, reacts at first with calm. His life, already on a delicate balance, gradually unhinges.
Between flights to business conventions, film festivals, and doctor visits, Ben finds himself falling off the AA wagon, seeing ghost of his dead friends, even his dead dog, and reacts by diving further down the rabbit hole of cheap sex wherever he can get it. That he continues this self-destructive path despite post-operation adult diapers makes this the oddest confessional story ever.
Arnold's writing style is straightforward with occasional bursts of dry wit, through post-operative appointments with a hunky doctor whom he eventually beds, and even when Ben ends up locked in a cell post-blackout at a police station. His various encounters with backstabbing coworkers, flirtatious festival presenters, and perhaps the novel's largest symbolic object, his bulging apartment wall, gradually build to a breaking point.
But since Ben is determined, it seems, to screw up his own life in every possible way, it's difficult to empathize with such a fool. You're fascinated by his casual attitude about park sex while wearing Depends, ecstasy nightclub binges with a coworker, and the persistence of his family of ghosts.
Exported via a sperm bank donation, and taken before his cancer eliminates fertility, it is only when part of himself takes on a new life that he finds the will to survive. By the end, it heartening to see a frustrated adult finally facing himself and his demons.
Benediction by Jim Arnold. $13.99. Eureka Street Press. Arnold reads from his novel Saturday, November 21, at 7:30pm. 489 Castro St. 431-0891. www.adleventscastro.blogspot.com