Tobias Carroll’s fifth book, In the Sight, is a hip dystopian road novel. Farrier is the main character, and we follow his travels through roadside motels, eateries, gas stations, bars, retail locations, and secret reading rooms and societies across a futuristic American landscape. In the Sight was inspired by Destroyer’s 2002 album, This Night, and we trail after Farrier as he dispenses a mind-altering product which can change the trajectory of your life. A revision of life is what the product delivers. At first, I wondered if I was heading into Huxley’s Brave New World territory, or a new age reboot of Kerouac’s On the Road, but in a more nomadic picaresque journey. Rick Moody’s hilarious Hotels of North America even crossed my mind as well, early on, as I tried to figure out where Farrier was going and what he was aiming for in his journey. None of these truly fit what I found in this novel. We learn that Farrier and his friends Edwin Hollister, Lopez, and Erskine, all share a similar discontent about the lives they’re leading in university. Edwin names what they’re after: “Reincarnation…but without the death part.” The group experiments with DIY brain science alterations, which allow the recipient to begin a new life. Edwin partakes, revises himself, and sets off never to be heard from again, by Chapter 5. You wonder how many times Farrier has done the same.
I was fascinated by the mixture of danger and ennui in much of this novel. Threats of violence lurk in every corner, shadowing Farrier’s life on the road, from when a client named Calvin tells him that someone named Hal is after him, or when a huge man wrecks the Interstate United Reading Room while Farrier looks on frozen, or when he gets a note about a Blue Sweater in a hotel bar. Often, I felt Farrier was chasing Alice in Wonderland rabbit holes. So much of Farrier’s journey seems to be in flux, as he maneuvers from place to place, avoiding old clients, piecing things together, and staying a few steps ahead of potential entanglements. Carroll’s descriptions of the world and shifting landscapes in the novel are strong and fascinating, and I found myself tying scenes to songs in Destroyer’s This Night. Like from the song “This Night”: “You should have stayed a stranger/ You should have done the work/ But it’s too late now, school’s out.” I tied these lyrics to a striking depiction of campus life in In the Sight:
It was a gorgeous campus. Trees planted in symmetry and a neat cluster of red brick buildings and another neat cluster of new buildings built with glass and steel that rose several stories higher than their neighbors…In the autumn it was a gorgeous space in which to simply sit and absorb all those pastoral emotions. And in the spring and summer, the look of green leaves on the trees and the smell of the grass and the sounds of a hundred heated conversations lent the area a vibrance that never failed to energize Farrier. It was the last time in his life that he truly felt comfortable around that many people.
Farrier has left this campus world behind, and while there are slight hints of regret, there’s mainly a sense of freedom and acceptance of the endless solo possibilities of the road. As one of Destroyer’s lyrics from “Hey, Snow White” notes: “You’ve got to learn to love what you own.” For me, this is Farrier’s journey. We don’t see an epic standoff, or the hero riding off into the sunset with a new plan of self-discovery, or a new course of action. He rolls with the punches and carries on, from stop to stop, accepting where he’s at, looking out for danger on the horizon. Like the lyrics from “Students Carve Hearts Out of Coal”: “Students carve hearts out of coal/ I just thought I’d let you know/ In this town what goes around does not come around.” And that existential stance seems to be Farrier’s mode of living: “This was how it went, until it wasn’t.”
As Farrier nears the end of his journey in the novel, he assumes a role as a barman for someone who doesn’t show up for work. He slips right in without missing a beat: “He would call this place home. He would tend bar and have a hidden lair somewhere nearby and unlock the secrets of his mind and understand the nature of the self. Or he would do none of these things, and would simply grow old here…Any of these lives seemed acceptable to him.” As a reader, I was left wondering how many times Farrier has made this kind of seamless transition: a man of the road filling identities and pushing on from place to place in darkness, waiting to find his true self and purpose, or simply accepting his new role with a touch of his product anytime he needed a change of scenery. The lines of “Here Comes the Night” echo Farrier’s journey in the novel for me: “I couldn’t turn around. I couldn’t wrap my head around it/ Best to forget the things that change, hanging outside in the rain is OK…While we still had our sight, but don’t look now, people, here comes the Night.” Fitting words for our hero heading into the uncertainty of another night, another pitstop on the road, and accepting whatever crosses his sight.
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In the Sight
by Tobias Carroll
Whisk(e)y Tit; 140 p.
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