WOLF IN WHITE VAN - John Darnielle - Fiction

The best way I can explain to you how to think about this book is to ask you to remember a time when you did something terrible as a teenager--a bad decision you made, or a bad set of mind that you hardly recognize now as your own. A short survey of my own mind suggests that these instances jump readily to hand. And imagine that you had to live, and are still currently living, with a reminder of that time and that mindset and that decision. Not just a tattoo of a star that you got when you were drunk and now find meaningless and a little embarrassing, but a big, inescapable reminder that indicates to everyone who meets you now who you once were. A tattoo that blatantly identifies you as part of a gang. Keloid scars on your arms from where you used to cut yourself. Sean Phillips, the narrator of WOLF IN WHITE VAN, carries an unavoidable reminder of the worst day of his life, but doesn't seem to remember, or be able to explain, what his mind was like on that day. The majority of the novel hints at what happened to Sean, explaining it in piecemeal up until the last chapter, but I don't think it's necessary to keep it a secret--Sean shot himself, attempting to kill himself, but didn't succeed. Instead, he destroyed most of his face, went through an extensive surgical reconstruction, and now lives alone on insurance payouts and a small amount of income he makes from running roleplaying games through the mail.

Sean can't really explain why he did what he did, and even the narrative of events from his day illustrates the inexplicable nature of some teenage suicides. He talked with friends, did some homework, listened to music, and then at night took a gun out from under his bed and walked to his parents' room, thinking of shooting them, before shooting himself. I didn't know why Sean thought about killing his parents--nothing about him made him seem like that kind of kid, to me--but then, he doesn't seem to understand it now himself, and feels remorse for the way his actions affected his parents. His parents hadn't really done anything to upset him. He hadn't really done anything to upset himself. It was as though an idea just slipped into his mind, and stayed there, until it was the only one left.

Subliminal messages pop up multiple places in the novel; the title is a reference to lyrics people thought they heard when they played rock and roll tapes backwards, and throughout Sean's role-playing game, characters are supposed to pick up on subtle clues to propel them toward the center of the game, a partially underground fortress in the midwest called the Trace Italian. As someone who has never gotten into role-playing games, and certainly without the patience to play one by mail, I found the conceit of Trace Italian a little mystifying. It's maybe a less social version of Dungeons and Dragons, in that you can play it by yourself, without speaking to anyone else? The idea that two players, also teenagers, would start to believe the game was real, to the extent that they traveled to the midwest and tried to literally perform their most recent move, was implausible to me. I guess the kids could have been on hallucinogens, they could have been a bit mentally unstable. I get the feeling we're supposed to view their accident (one freezes to death, the other is seriously injured) as analogous to Sean's. It wasn't the fault of the metal music Sean listened to,  or the role-playing game the kids played; it was just an idea in their still-forming teenage brains that wasn't fully evaluated. Their responsibility circuits weren't entirely on yet, and while some of us rode out that part of adolescence saying stupid things to boys, or writing terrible fan fiction on the internet, or drinking illicit beers, or shoplifting chapstick, these kids made a decision that could have cost them all their lives. We're not supposed to really feel sorry for Sean; the accident and its outcome transformed his obsession with mythical fights and quests and Conan into a detailed creative undertaking and a mildly successful entrepreneurial venture. Sean survived, and is as much of an adult as his circumstances allow him to be. In a transparent nod to the habits of childhood, he still eats candy, but is embarrassed by it and hides it from his assistant. He has empathy for people who remind him of his old self, both the kids who freeze themselves trying to follow the map of his game and the stoners outside the liquor store who ask him about his face, but he is never going to be that person again, and won't pretend to be.

WOLF IN WHITE VAN might be a morose type of coming-of-age story; rather than getting through a sadistic boarding school, or running away, or moving to a new country, Sean physically transforms himself. He destroys his present trajectory for one a lot darker, but in doing so crosses permanently over a barrier into adulthood. In his game, you can't go back to a save point to replay your turns, and you wouldn't necessarily want to; many roads lead to the Trace Italian, and you don't have to win your first battle to get there.