December 2002

This "Emperor" Has No Clothes

Reviewed by Judith A. Endejan

By the time I reached page 300 of law professor Stephen L. Carter's tedious 650-plus-page The Emperor of Ocean Park, I no longer wanted to find out if, and how, former Judge Oliver Garland was killed. I simply wanted the tedious, self-pitying voice of his son, narrator Talcott Garland, to stop! This book is supposed to be a suspense-filled, "gripping" thriller — selected for the Today show book club and well-received in some circles. Instead, it is a pedantic bore with a disconnected, jerky plotline and a deus ex machina ending involving a teddy bear.

Talcott is a black law professor at a prestigious, fictitious Eastern law school. His father, the former Judge Garland, is found dead in his Washington, D.C., home. The judge is "former" because he resigned from the U.S. Court of Appeals after he failed to be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court due to his connections with a supposed denizen of the underworld, Jack Zeigler — "Uncle Jack" to the judge's kids. (Why Jack and the judge are such buddies is never well-explained.)

Indeed, the judge, who is the "Emperor of Ocean Park," comes across as nothing but a cardboard figure, rather than the tragic Shakespearian figure the author apparently intended. The author tries to portray him as a man possessing virtually every honorable human trait possible, but who nonetheless is the perpetrator of incredibly stupid, cruel and preposterous acts to his family and others. James Earl Jones as Darth Vader in "Star Wars" was a more believable (and more interesting) father than the judge. The dear dead judge leaves behind some "arrangements" without telling Talcott, intermittently referred to as "Misha" by his intimates. "Others" want to find those "arrangements," and generally make poor Talcott/Misha's life miserable for the next year, in which his marriage unravels and his career flounders. Talcott/Misha ultimately succeeds after hundreds of pages that could have been written only by a law professor.

The plot advances in fits and starts by obscure references to complicated chess problems. Clues are dropped in rambling conversations with Garland relatives — some significant, some not; it's hard to tell. Characters get introduced and then vanish with no reason or explanation. The book fails to tie loose plot threads together in its predictable conclusion. Any cynical attorney/reader will have figured out what's in those nasty "arrangements" long before the book's end.

All the characters in this book are unpleasant, and most are unbelievable. The one exception is the protagonist's four-year-old son, who is portrayed as an object of the other characters' affections. Talcott/Misha is a morose, whiny, humorless creature. He always seems to be wrestling with the questions of morality and God. The product of an upper-middle-class upbringing, Talcott/Misha divides the world repeatedly into the "paler nation" and the "darker nation." He seems equally bitter toward both races for no apparent reason, given his affluent background.

His wife, Kimmer, is equally despicable — a mere caricature of a successful woman attorney. She is a powerful character, up for an appointment to the U.S. District Court of Appeals. She is (a) beautiful beyond belief; (b) sensual beyond belief; (c) brilliant beyond belief; (d) ambitious beyond belief; (e) emotionless beyond belief; and (f) selfish beyond belief. In sum, she's beyond belief. Why Talcott/Misha loves her is as much a mystery as why this book ever got published in the first place. The author should have stuck to nonfiction expositions on topics like constitutional or Brandeisian theory (which creep into the book anyway).

In need of a good, tight edit, The Emperor of Ocean Park is about as dissatisfying a book as I've read in a long time. What a waste of good summer reading time.