Baxter Questions 'Soul'

The best friends are those who can finish your sentences and predict when you’ll need a shoulder to cry on. But there is a fine line between being a good friend and becoming a burden who doesn’t understand personal boundaries. In “The Soul Thief,” an eerily provocative and creative work of fiction, Charles Baxter explores the nature of relationships and identity while commenting on the modern American experience.

Ambiguity and contingency mediate the relationships in “The Soul Thief,” making it difficult to separate one character from another. An unidentified narrator opens the book with a disembodied portrait of Jerome Coolberg, a mysterious genius who pervades every page of Baxter’s work without ever becoming familiar. Early on, Nathanial Mason, the uninspired and confused protagonist, encounters fellow graduate student Theresa on a park bench, where they share an awkward interlude with a homeless man before meeting the infamous Coolberg at a party. Nathanial immediately senses an uncommon and uncomfortable connection with Coolberg, who seems to know facts about Nathanial’s life that Nathanial himself has forgotten.

“The Soul Thief” traces the incestuous and turbulent bonds that form as the three spend time together over the following months and that eventually drive Nathanial insane. When Jamie, a lesbian sculptor and Nathanial’s lover, is raped, Nathanial is convinced that Coolberg is involved. Caught up in the paranoia, Nathanial retreats back to the rich and stable relationships that he has with his loving stepfather and mute sister.

Baxter’s characters are obliquely formed through third-party description, and their identities are further confused by paranoid and erratic actions that the reader can’t understand. In “The Soul Thief,” the gaze of others constitutes one’s self-conception.

The narration and structure reflect the confused identities of each character. From the opening paragraph there is an uneasy tension between third-person and first-person narration. At times we are looking at the world through Nathanial’s eyes; at others we look down on him and his actions from above.

Baxter’s strident authorial voice is present throughout “The Soul Thief.” He frequently calls our assumptions of modern life into question by inserting quotations from Gertrude Stein, references to Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” and existentialist sound-bites into the narrative. However, Baxter’s selection of somewhat inaccessible sources interferes with the ability of a lay reader to understand the significance of these allusions. In other passages, Baxter’s authorial voice antagonizes the reader, directly criticizing him for not catching onto the author’s hidden agenda until it was too late. But Baxter’s abrasiveness is unnecessary: even the most oblivious reader will realize the twist at the end of “The Soul Thief.”

The reader realizes that Nathanial has been duped at the same time that the character does and that it must be more painful for Nathanial than it is for us. (To avoid spoiling the book I will not disclose what this trick may be but it completely alters Nathanial’s life and the reading experience). It’s hard to imagine that, as the reader flips through the pages of “The Soul Thief” once again, trying to come to grips with the author’s ploy, Nathanial is not similarly replaying his life in his head. After both the reader and Nathanial regain their composure, it is possible to appreciate Baxter’s last chapter, which describes Nathanial’s current life as a husband and a father. Though Baxter answers some of the most sensitive questions about how Nathanial has coped with the latest shock to his psyche and offers the reader a sense of peace, he does not resolve all the conflicts. Baxter is careful to leave many questions unanswered and many avenues still open for exploration, allowing the reader to sort out Nathanial’s complicated existence without his well-written guidance.

—Staff Writer Eric M. Sefton can be reached at esefton@fas.harvard.edu.