Reading Brat, I couldn’t escape the feeling that the ghost of publisher Giancarlo DiTrapano was following me. On the back cover of the book, Gabriel Smith declares that he “was mentored by the late Giancarlo DiTrapano.” I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a mentor credited on a book’s front or back cover, not even Gordon Lish, the notorious writing teacher whose course DiTrapano took, and whose son’s first novel was published by DiTrapano. A few years ago, The Wall Street Journal asked me to review Fuccboi, by Sean Thor Conroe, another mentee of DiTrapano. And then there was the very long late night I spent with the man himself a decade ago, discussing, among several thousand other things, the 2018 autobiographical novel Cherry, by Nico Walker, an Iraq War veteran, bank robber, and drug addict, which DiTrapano edited.
DiTrapano, who died under mysterious circumstances in 2021, at 47, was the publisher of Tyrant Books, where he supported writers whom, as he said, “the big publishing houses wouldn’t touch.” (Full disclosure: my friend Matthew Johnson, proprietor of Fat Possum Records, became a co-owner in 2013.) Brat, though, is published with plenty of fanfare by Penguin Press, which definitely counts as a “big house.” Brat, along with several other of Tyrant’s unpublished titles, was acquired by big publishing houses after DiTrapano died.
The narrator, like the author, is a British writer named Gabriel who is still in his 20s. Some of the early reviews and the publisher’s notes have used the term “autofiction,” which Smith despises. That genre belongs to the generation before him, of Tao Lin, a novelist, poet, online publisher, and another DiTrapano fan.
The book loops back on itself, ending with the protagonist sitting down to begin a novel that commences with the first two sentences of the very book we are reading. But in between beginning and ending, things get pretty damn weird. Until the last few chapters, that is, when order is restored almost as neatly as in an Elizabethan comedy.
Set in the English countryside, it begins with the funeral of Gabriel’s father, an event that accelerates his mental and physical deterioration. His girlfriend has left him, and he hasn’t written a word of the new book for which he is under contract. He is charged by his older brother, a plastic surgeon, with getting the house in which he grew up ready for sale, but as soon as he’s alone there he starts to drink heavily, eats nothing but Xanax, and shuffles through manuscripts left behind by his parents, which change each time he reads them. His skin begins to lift off, vast sheets at a time, and the house begins to shed as well, dropping roof tiles and plaster, growing mold and vines, which seems to mirror his own decline. He meets a young brother and sister who soon inhabit his dreams, as well as the manuscript of a novel his mother left behind.
Some of the early reviews and the publisher’s notes have used the term “autofiction,” which Gabriel Smith despises.
These shifting narratives eventually merge, to a certain extent, although we never learn why they keep shifting—not that I felt the author owed us an explanation. This indeterminacy is deliberate and effectively mysterious. The man in the deer costume is eventually explained; the ghostly brother and sister are not. As a reader of a book like this, you don’t want to be a rube, like Gabriel’s brother, and ask that everything make sense. This is hip gothic.
Gabriel’s thoroughly conventional brother and his wife call repeatedly to ask about his progress in preparing the house for sale. His evasive answers are almost as comically ridiculous as his reports to his agent about progress on the nonexistent novel. Equally comical are the fights Gabriel starts and loses with his young nephew, an elderly neighbor lady, and a real-estate agent. Violence takes place in the chapter breaks, and we only realize that Gabriel has been beaten up—but not too seriously—when he is questioned by others about his wounds. “You should see the other guy” is his response.
There are many moments of deadpan humor here. Deadpan is the predominant affect; the prose is almost absurdly minimalist. “The television was on. It was set to the History Channel. It was showing a program about the various deaths of Nelson Mandela. I turned it off.” That’s an entire paragraph. Smith’s prose makes mid-period Raymond Carver’s seem positively baroque. But it effectively conveys the narrator’s state of mind.
Eventually, and somewhat predictably, the brothers’ brewing animosity is resolved by a fistfight, in the immediate aftermath of which his older brother becomes friendly and helpful, teaching him to drive, making his coffee, and offering him the use of the house for six months to write his novel. The father’s ashes are disposed of. Many questions remain unanswered, but the ending is surprisingly tidy, resolving the major relationships in the novel.
I’m not sure that DiTrapano would have approved. It will be interesting to see if Brat finds a general readership, achieving the kind of breakout status that the advance buzz seems to predict.
Jay McInerney is the author of 12 books, including Bright Lights, Big City, and is also the wine critic at Town & Country
