In Review: November 19, 1997
Biological warfare and death in New York City RICHARD PRESTON HAS WRITTEN a deliberately alarming (not to mention filmable) first novel. As with his bestselling nonfiction book, The Hot Zone, on the Ebola virus, The Cobra Event concerns a medical threat to society. Its focus is black biology, which Preston defines succinctly as "the creation of advanced biological weapons using methods of genetic engineering and biotechnology." It is an issue which Preston takes seriously. The question is, why has he, a veteran of John McPhee '53's Literature of Fact course and an accomplished nonfiction writer, chosen a fictional approach to this weighty subject? One can well imagine that the greater leeway afforded by fiction and the relative freedom of being bolstered, but not bound, by facts could be particularly liberating when writing about such sensitive, technical material. Because fiction enables the author to create characters and events, it can allow him to protect his sources and classified information. Also, a contrived plot might garner a wider audience and a more exciting movie option. Then again, perhaps Preston was drawn to the new challenges fiction presents for him, or its potential for fun. In any event, the question is whether The Cobra Event succeeds as entertainment or enlightenment--or, as Preston no doubt hopes, as both. The Cobra Event is a hot book. What makes it hot has nothing to do with its literary merits, for neither Preston's medical sleuth characters nor his serviceable hardboiled detective story prose are in any way extraordinary. The Cobra Event is enormously readable, and engineered as carefully as the bioweapons it discusses. It is filled with graphic descriptions of autopsies and of people eating themselves that are almost camp in their goriness, and high-tech computerized virus detectors that are like fabulous magical toys. There is an understated romantic subplot that is essentially superfluous, and a nod to Preston's degree in English literature in the names of his characters--Austen, Pascal, Hopkins. But High Art it is not. What makes The Cobra Event hot is its subject matter, which is extraordinary, as is Preston's mastery and clear communication of this complicated field. Wisely, he prefaces his story with an explanation of "The Reality Behind the Cobra Event." He is well aware that his novel gains weight from its basis in fact, and is in effect a vehicle for those facts. He writes, "The nonfiction roots of this book run deep. . . . The characters and story developed here are fictional, not based on any real person or contemporary events, but the historical background is real, the government structures are real, and the science is real or based on what is possible." He warns ominously, "The dark apple hangs on the tree." Here's the situation: two strange, unaccountable deaths occur in New York City. The first victim is a homeless person known as Harmonica Man who lives in the subway. The second case, with which Preston opens his narrative, is that of Kate Moran, a 17- year-old student at an Upper East Side girls' school. Within hours of her first cold symptoms, she is chomping her own tongue and lips and writhing in a fatal seizure on the floor of her school bathroom. Enter Alice Austen, M.D., the 29- year-old daughter of a retired police officer from New Hampshire who grew up reading Nancy Drew stories. She flies up from the Epidemic Intelligence Service's headquarters in Atlanta to investigate. It is somewhat fantastic that two apparently unrelated deaths would be enough to trigger an investigation with the Centers for Disease Control, and that a connection between them would be made so quickly--but that is how Preston's book works. At the autopsy of Kate Moran, described in lurid detail, Austen finds the girl's brain turned to jelly. She spends the next 24 hours following every possible lead in the case--exploring Kate's collection of boxes in her room in her parents' upscale loft and creeping under Houston Street to Harmonica Man's fetid subway home. (Preston conveys just how smelly medical detective work can be.) A third death, of an antique-dealer on Staten Island, provides a missing link. Somewhat unbelievably, there are no dead ends in Austen's whirlwind initial investigation. It doesn't take her long to conclude that a murderer with a precise mind is behind this strange outbreak of autocannibalistic seizures. She sounds an alarm, and with miraculous speed, she is backed up by an amazing special forensic unit of the FBI which Preston calls Reachdeep. The assembled team of scientists and agents sets up headquarters on Governors Island, with helicopters and unlimited high-tech gadgetry at its disposal. The rest, as they say, is just details. We suspect that eventually Austen and her cohorts will track the killer, though we don't know exactly how. Their route seems too direct, which may be why Preston throws in the somewhat ridiculous--but filmable--chase scene through the subway tunnels of the Lower East Side at the climax. Thriller devotees accustomed to more convoluted plots may find Preston's too straightforward. At its best, The Cobra Event evokes the real-life medical mysteries in Berton Roueche's The Medical Detectives. The predominantly nonfiction "Invisible History" sections, which provide reports on the development and stockpiling of catastrophic quantities of bioweapons (including nontreatable smallpox) in Iraq and Russia, among other countries, are every bit as disturbing as Preston intends them to be. They are also more compelling than his fiction. Entertainment or enlightenment? Fiction or fact? Take your choice. --Heller McAlpin '77 Heller McAlpin is a novelist and freelance critic whose reviews appear regularly in The Los Angeles Times and Newsday.
A novel, spiced with good sex scenes, illuminates the history of the Balkans
AUBERON HARWELL IS AN UNLIKELY SPY for an ambitious English peer, who sends
him to Montenegro before World War I to find out the Austrian Empire's
intentions in the Balkans. As cover, Harwell plans to collect botanical specimens.
The Bible train
Finding God on the Train: A Journey Into Prayer
AMID THE SPECTACLE that's the New York
City subway, Rick Hamlin '77 makes
time every day on the A train to practice his faith: he reads from the Bible on the stretch from the 181st Street station to 125th Street, then on the train's five-minute express hurtle to 59th Street, he closes his eyes for his "time for God." Verse from John Koethe '67's Falling Water
I think about the way our visions locked together
From the title poem of Falling Water, a volume of poetry by John Koethe '67 (HarperCollins, $22). Koethe is a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They fished paradise The Striped Bass Chronicles: The Saga of America's Great Game Fish by George Reiger '60 Lyons & Burford, $22.95
Beautiful maps to ponder and peruse AN ATLAS OF RARE CITY MAPS: Comparative Urban Design, 1830-1842, by Melville C. Branch '34 *36, has been republished by Princeton Architectural Press. This lavish and engrossing book, originally issued by Arno Press in 1977, includes 40 detailed, hand-colored maps, many of which had been commissioned in the 19th century by the quaint-sounding Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, in England. All but four of the maps are of major European cities; the exceptions are Calcutta, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. In each map's accompanying text, Branch delivers a concise history of the city, focusing on growth and its effects on building and planning. Branch, a pioneer in the field of urban planning--he was the first to receive a Ph.D. in planning (from Harvard in 1949) and helped establish Princeton's Bureau of Urban Research --is a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. Books Received DANTE'S EPISTLE TO CANGRANDE, by Robert Hollander '55 (University of Michigan Press, $34.50)--one in a series titled "Recentiores: Later Latin Texts and Contexts." In the book, Hollander makes a case for the authenticity of Dante Alighieri's epistle to Cangrande which has been debated among Dante scholars the last few years. BOCCACCIO'S DANTE AND THE SHAPING FORCE OF SATIRE, by Robert Hollander '55 (University of Michigan Press, $42.50)--a collection of essays that examines Dante's influence on the creator of the Decameron. Hollander is a professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton. ISLAM IN THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE, by Richard Brent Turner *86 (Indiana University Press, $39.95 cloth, $18.95 paper)--an exploration of the religious experiences of black Muslims in America. Turner is an assistant professor of theology at Xavier University in New Orleans. IN YOUR DREAMS: FALLING, FLYING AND OTHER DREAM THEMES, by Gayle Delaney '72 (HarperCollins, $13)--a dream dictionary in which Delaney offers tools to analyze dreams. Delaney is codirector of the Delaney and Flowers Dream Center in San Francisco. HOW THE FARMERS CHANGED CHINA: POWER OF THE PEOPLE, by Kate Xiao Zhou *94 (Westview Press, $69.50 cloth, $22 paper)--an argument that claims the Chinese farmers, rather than the communist leaders, spurred China's recent economic growth. Zhou, who was persecuted in China during the Cultural Revolution, is an assistant professor of Chinese politics and comparative politics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her insights are based on firsthand observation of farmers and their initiative in producing and selling excess goods. |