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Living Section of the San Bernardino SUN February 9, 2003 Issue 
The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter 
A Mystery, a Masterpiece "The Emperor of Ocean Park" by Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter, currently on most bestseller lists, is a luminous novel rich with lessons from the trials and tribulations of everyday life. I had read much about "The Emperor of Ocean Park" and its literary wonders and dismissed it as just another lawyer book possibly riding on the coattails of Scott Turow's and John Grisham's legal mysteries. But then I thought that I should write about it for Black History Month because, by all accounts, it was about the life of upper middle class black America. Little did I know that I would find myself totally consumed by it. On the surface "The Emperor of Ocean Park" is an elegant mystery constructed like a chess game by a brilliant chess player. In fact, chess plays a pivotal role in the solving of the mystery. On other levels, the book is very much like any of the great classics of literature, imparting on us timeless and timely life lessons and insights. Talcott Garland, also called Misha, a black professor of law, narrates the story that starts with the death of his father, a famous, if ultra conservative judge. Talcott's beautiful sister, married to an adoring white multi-millionaire investor, suspects their father was murdered. There is also an elusive older brother, a famous radio talk show host still enamored with the splintered civil rights movement. Talcott has been married for nearly a decade to the brilliant, beautiful and fickle Kimmer (a nick name for Kimberly), a partner in a prestigious law firm and a candidate for a federal appeals court judgeship. They have a three year-old son. He suspects his wife of having an affair. But his life has the appearance of being full and satisfying in the manner of full and satisfying preppie and yuppie WASP lives. However, it begins to unravel with the death of his father whom he often calls the Judge. The Judge's body is hardly cold and in the grave before various people begin to harass Talcott for some "arrangements" made by his father. Yet, no one would tell him what "the arrangements" pertain to even as the search for them takes on a sinister tone. Obsessed by the notion of finding "the arrangements" Talcott digs deep into family history and in particular, into the guarded life of his father. Talcott's as well as his wife's families are members of an elite class of black Americans - educated, moneyed, classy professional blacks, dim reflections of the corresponding white class, imitating the life of that white class yet segregated in their golden black ghettos. Talcott's sister was a straight-A sorority girl at Stanford, his wife graduated from Miss Porter's School and Mt. Holyoke College. The Judge's family summered in a Victorian house, now inherited by Talcott, on Martha's Vineyard. They have the same lives, the same joys and torments as all other Americans of that class. But those other Americans of the same class would not let them forget the difference in color. There had been a fourth child in Talcott's family, a lovely and spirited girl named Abigail. Abby had been killed at the age of fifteen by a hit-and -run driver. The driver had never been caught, never brought to justice, this being a time when finding the killer of a black girl, even if the daughter of a renowned judge, was not a priority or even a concern. The Judge drowns his pain and anguish in drinking and descends into hidden madness. The investigations and hearings around the nomination of the Judge to the Supreme Court of the United States uncover vague contacts and perhaps even dealings with the underworld. The Judge withdraws his name from the nominations and sinks deeper into his private hell. As Talcott unravels the secrets of his father's soul and his wife's infidelity, he also learns more about himself and the ethics his parents have instilled in him and his siblings. But the search for "the arrangements" also jeopardizes his position on the faculty of the law school. A black professor has to be more careful than a Caucasian one. "Color," writes Carter, "even on the most liberal of campuses, contrives a hierarchy of its own." In addition to being a riveting mystery, "The Emperor of Ocean Park" is also a social and cultural commentary. No matter how much we are advised today by self-styled therapists to "forget the past and move forward with life" or "to get a life", a philosophy the Judge himself preached, we realize as Talcott does, that we can't escape our past, that all of us - black, white, chartreuse or fuchsia - are the product of the sum total of our past. Our mentality and the perspective from which we view the present and the future are shaped by our past experiences and our past cultural and social milieu. Some nemesis of the past is always pursuing each one of us and we would never be free of the past until we come to terms with it. Talcott's introspection and discoveries about his father show us today's world - one devoid of those intangible and nebulous old fashioned ethics - loyalty, fidelity, trust, responsibility, service. Talcott remembers the Judge telling him: "Promises are the bricks of life and trust is the mortar. We build nothing in life if we make no promises, and we tear down what others have built if we make them and break them." Ultimately this is a book about the choices we make in life and their consequences. "Choices have consequences," a mafia friend of his father's tells Talcott. "We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction." Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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