The Zero

by Jess Walter

The Zero is a groundbreaking novel, a darkly comic snapshot of our times that is already being compared to the works of Franz Kafka and Joseph Heller.

From its opening pages—when hero cop Brian Remy wakes up to find he's shot himself in the head—novelist Jess Walter takes us on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of a devastating terrorist attack. As the smoke slowly clears, Remy finds that his memory is skipping, lurching between moments of lucidity and days when he doesn't seem to be living his own life at all. The landscape around him is at once fractured and oddly familiar: a world dominated by a Machiavellian mayor known as "The Boss," and peopled by gawking celebrities, anguished policemen peddling First Responder cereal, and pink real estate divas hyping the spoils of tragedy. Remy himself has a new girlfriend he doesn't know, a son who pretends he's dead, and an unsettling new job chasing a trail of paper scraps for a shadowy intelligence agency known as the Department of Documentation. Whether that trail will lead Remy to an elusive terror cell—or send him circling back to himself—is only one of the questions posed by this provocative yet deeply human novel.

From a novelist of astounding talent, The Zero is an extraordinary story of how our trials become our transgressions, of how we forgive ourselves and whether or not we should.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Novels, Thriller, Contemporary, Book Club, Suspense

368 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Jess Walter is the author of eight novels and one nonfiction book. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages and his essays, short fiction, criticism and journalism have been widely published, in Details, Playboy, Newsweek, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe among many others.

Walter also writes screenplays and was the co-author of Christopher Darden’s 1996 bestseller In Contempt. He lives with his wife Anne and children, Brooklyn, Ava and Alec in his childhood home of Spokane, Washington.

Reviews

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admired the Jess Walter books I’ve read previously (Citizen Vince, Beautiful Ruins, We All Live in Water, and especially The Financial Lives of Poets), but none of them prepared me for the level of gobsmacked I feel after reading The Zero, a nightmarish tale of a cop-turned-agent for a spooky government agency in the aftermath of 9/11.

As a New Yorker who dealt with 9/11 up close (even though I assiduously avoided the immediate area, the smell was inescapable, and one year after the event I found myself in a job in an office whose window looked out on Ground Zero, etc. etc.), I found the opening chapters almost unbearable—because they were so accurate and visceral. But that doesn’t begin to describe the bigger truths this book conveys about our reactions to 9/11—a kind of communal PTSD boiled in a liquid of delusion where value is gauged by the congealed chunks of celebrity-based nobility or villainy that float to the surface.

In Jess Walter’s story, protagonist Brian Remy suffers “gaps” in his consciousness. For the entire book, he suddenly comes to and recounts where he is, with no memory of how he got there. But what starts to jell is the sanity of this insanity in a culture where grief becomes a competitive sport with celebrities of selflessness and such a craving to vilify elusive demons that we actually create them. Things get so crazy that true grief and PTSD become ancillary; those who suffer in isolation become even crazier from a kind of cultural solitary confinement—what they suffer is not as sexy as the delusional fight between good and evil, so their pain really goes unaddressed.

This book blew my mind.

*******
Some thoughts the day after reading and reviewing--spoiler material, so if you have not read the book, you may want to skip this:

I cannot stop thinking about this book. It expressed things I've long wanted to but never could have articulated, let alone dramatized, the way Jess Walter did.

I've read a lot of reviews where people are confused about what happened, so I just wanted to add some explanation:

A common symptom of trauma is memory loss--the circuits are blown and there are big blank spots. (There are lots of people who have virtually no childhood memories; they were kids, then they were adults.) This is what happens to Brian Remy and it is consistent with medical knowledge about trauma. The root of his trauma is made very clear on pages 317-318: the text that is written in italics is a PTSD flashback where Brian runs into the first tower before it collapses, rushing upstairs as people push past him running down to escape. He then retreats back down, "(emerging into the empty plaza ... white paper and smoking pieces of steel and bodies ... and for the briefest moment he was alone, paper falling ... he'd never heard the city so quiet ... and then: a deep, low moan ... ) [Parentheses, ellipses, and italics are in the text.]

And the flashback ends before the collapse, but it is clear that Brian was there for the worst.

For further elucidation about symbols in the text, read Jason's review.

10/15/19 Update...because I can't hold myself back
This weekend the FX/Hulu series "The Weekly" did a phenomenally simple and informative half hour on Rudy Giuliani.

If you read Jess Walter's The Zero, then my review, and then the linked review by Jason , where he reveals Jess Walter's real-life experience (gleaned from a talk Walter did at his school) as a ghost writer for the infamous chief of NYPD Bernard Kerik, who later became a convicted felon, you may see a continuum between the insanity of Walter's fiction and real events now happening courtesy of the former mayor NYC. And you may experience a sudden aha that the psychology is perfectly clear in the middle of something that seems so muddled and confusing.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've actively avoided the 9/11 novel. I read a couple in the early years, I can't even tell you which they were (oh, if I thought about it, I'd come up with the titles, but that's not the point) but they pissed me off and so I vowed to make a wide berth around the ouevre. Ian McEwan's chilling and intense Saturday was an exception to my 9/11 Literature Moratorium, yet Saturday took place in London in 2003, tangentially related to the attacks in the United States two years before.

But the others I read tried too hard to intellectualize the horror, to make me think my way through the event. But none had the courage to take me into Ground Zero, into the physical nightmare, to drag me through the visceral aftermath.

Interestingly, Jess Walter published The Zero in 2006, the same year as Saturday, but I was living in New Zealand at the time, where no one had heard of Walter. The novel never made my radar. My book club in Christchurch read Saturday; had we known about Walter's, I know we would have read and loved it; it was that kind of a book club.

I had a raging bout of insomnia last night, so I'm kind of rambling. I feel a very particular kinship today to Brian Remy, the protagonist of The Zero; life is surreal and grainy, as if I've been dropped into the middle of movie and somehow I know my lines, even though I have no idea what happens next.

This book. It's brilliant. It's brilliant for the way it takes this horrific event and shoots the reader down a rabbit hole of the absurd, using an Alice in Wonderland approach to show how we, our collective American presence, took leave of our senses in the aftermath of our grief and anger.

Our Alice is policeman Brian Remy, who wakes up in his Manhattan apartment a few days after the attacks to find he has shot himself in the head. His aim was a bit off, because he's still alive. But he's not all there. Or at least his memory isn't. The narrative careers from one scene to the next, jumping over great gaps in Remy's memory. He eventually puts together that he's been assigned to a secret task force searching for those connected to the 9/11 attacks. His colleagues, a motley crew of cops and federal agents, embark upon a very dark comedy of errors and Remy realizes with horror that his blackouts may cover for violence he inflicts on suspects.

The gaps in Remy's memory eventually make for a hole-y plot and the subtext of a political thriller blows away like confetti in the wind, but hell. I had to stand back and admire Walter's audacity, originality, piercing sense of humor and the ache of horror and bewilderment that runs through the narrative, delivered by an author who arrived at Ground Zero five days after the attacks, as a journalist and ghost writer.

This is satire, but Jess Walter does what only Jess Walter can do: he imbues his characters with such humanity and tenderness that the arch meanness inherent in so much satire, the smug distance that I cannot abide, is mellowed under his touch until it all but disappears. He reserves his stings and barbs for systems and politics, for the shallowness of popular culture and the singular American need to commodify events and wrap them up with a bow of sparkly commercial optimism.

One of my favorite authors and this book, now ten years old, delivers yet another unforgettable read.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

my review: this book kicked ass.

my top five interesting bits learned from having jess walter come to my form & theory class to discuss "the zero":

1. nicole, the real estate boss, speaks in "bush-ism"s, and the bits you see in the book represent about a 70% reduction in those phrases from what earlier drafts contained

2. wasabi marinated duck = WMD, and zingers = "yellow cake" = enriched plutonium

3. some things in this book sprang from jess's experience as a ghost writer for bernard kerik, who is apparently a bigger #sshole that you can possibly imagine (and by extension, the ghost writer in "the zero" is actually the author)

4. brian remy is a stand-in for the crazy schizophrenia america took on after 9/11, and that's why the book opens with him shooting himself in the head and seeing birds/paper (i.e., bullet = planes)

5. march & april are named as such because the war in iraq started in march and april is when bush decided that we'd "won"


and maybe a spoiler, or possibly just a really good piece of advice:
instead of reading the parts where remy sees (1) his own handwriting on the postcard and (2) the "grow up" note, and thinking they were kinda weird/ambiguous and not being 100% sure what to do with them (like i did), you should hold onto those facts as perhaps the best pieces of evidence on how to read the nature/culpability of remy's character. just sayin'.

[Tom LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

As some other reviewes here, I absolutely love Jess Walter and I think he's one of the very best authors around (not only in Spokane, WA... in the world). This book has many layers, and - like other reviewers - I'm afraid I could fully understand these layers only after having read Walter's own comments about the book, or a goodreads review by a reader who attended an event where Walter explained this book. I'm not sure that is a very good thing.

I think the big challenge with novels based on a concept (the protagonist being the incarnation of the post-9/11 US, with all its schizofrenia and confusion) is that they have to work well not only as concepts, but also as novels. And unfortunately, while the concept is brilliant and the writing as superb as always, for me this novel just "doesn't work very well".

I also had problems relating to the point that is being made over and over, which is "but after all isn't life itself a bit like this? Experiencing fragments of reality and a lack of awareness about how and why you got there?". My awkward answer to that is: erm... no, sorry, that does not resonate with my experience.

After having read ALL of his works of fiction, I feel like there is "too little" Jess Walter in this novel. Solid structure, but too much confusion, too little of his trademark profundity and warmth, and too little of his trademark sense of humor.

Maybe I should have read the paperback. Certainly the fact that I listened to the audiobook and that the narrator kept screeching in my ears with absurdly nasal Donald-Duck voices every other paragraph didn't help one bit.

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't imagine there being anyone who doesn't remember where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, when they first became aware that the World Trade Centre had been struck by passenger jets being used as fuel-engorged missiles. I had emerged from my bedroom with one of those scotch hangovers that leave you functioning but sandpapery around the edges and stood there, rubbing my eyes and staring dumbly at a television displaying an eerily quiet shot of the southern tip of Manhattan island with a shockingly stark, smoking gap where those De Laurentiisian King Kong-clambering towers had long jutted up so proudly defiant of gravity—New York City's prominent underbite with its central, oversized teeth knocked out. When I asked my ex what the hell was going on, she said that the towers had come down after being struck by two airplanes, at which point I looked at her in disbelief, thinking that she was fucking with me for some boozy-retreat-at-dawn reason. And so I slowly made my way to the couch to sit down while a combination of her and the somber, pallid television anchor's voices filled me in on the gruesome details—even as I was then given my first taste of the awesome sequence of the South Tower coming down like a collapsing urban thunder cloud, a concrete and steel titan violently detonated into billions of flung-out pieces of leeched-gray dust crowned by a volcanic eruption of rippling smoke. This was followed by the similar death agonies of its murdered northern sibling—and it was as obvious as it was paralyzing that things had changed; that, as of that very day, a gap had been hewn between the United States of September 10th and its wide-eyed, wan, and wounded self aged by a matter of hours.

So, a profound, momentous, existentially pivotal event, the defining moment of a young new century and unmatched in its national and personal gravity and tragedy since the assassination of John F. Kennedy—Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and Watergate being at not quite that apex level on the hierarchy of American cicatricial wounding. In a similar fashion have these two seminal haymakers spawned a plethora of controversial opinion and belief, abutting upon and encroaching into the territory of conspiracy theory, possessed by a fluctuating percentage of the populace for a number of upheld reasons: the seeming implausibility of their accepted manner of unfolding; the suspicious activities determined to have been undertaken by the government and its agencies before, during, and after the crisis; the process of inquiry in the wake of the event wherein an unaccountably hasty, incomplete, and perfunctory examination of the facts is held to have taken place in lieu of a wide-ranging and exhaustive investigation that examined every angle and avenue in depth and with competence, regardless of the controversial or uncomfortable truths they might have laid bare; and the belief, strongly held, that the existing administration, through these horrific occurrences, achieved in one stroke that which may have required many legislative and political battles, financial expenditures, and popular exertions to have been brought to fruition. And to set aside these sprawling undercurrents of suspicion, paranoia, skepticism, and cynicism we have the daytime of history in viewing the response of the nation to what transpired: in the case of the terrorist strikes, the military invasions of Afghanistan and, more controversially, Iraq, with their disastrous lack of long-term and post-battlefield planning and structure; an acute awareness by a previously apathetic America of the existence in the world of billions of Muslims of various ethnicity, branches, orthodoxy, and historical connexion to their nation; a ramped-up enlargement of the security apparatus of the republic, as well as the subsuming of the State Department to the Pentagon; the grabbing by the Executive of a wide array of powers and responsibilities from the two houses of Congress; the implementation of a shadowy, legally-tenuous system of rendition and imprisonment without formal charge for suspected terrorists; and so forth.

Hence, there are rich veins of literary ore to be mined in the September attacks, inherently constituted to be approached, utilized, and explored from a wide variety of angles—and yet, prior to The Zero, I'd yet to partake of a fictional work with 9/11 as its theme. In the years since that day I've purchased around three thousand novels, and apart from Jess Walter's darkly satirical tale, I can only hold-up Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close with any confidence as being one that explicitly uses the terrorist attack as a driving force in the narrative. I can't quite explain this state of affairs; bearing in mind that the vast majority of my collection was acquired second hand and that I don't particularly endeavor to keep myself abreast of the subject matter of new fictional releases—and leaving aside the fact that the attacks are approached elliptically, allegorically, metaphorically, and/or symbolically in a spread of recent works—I have rejected out-of-hand the few tomes that I have come across that claim the Attacks for their primary fuel after being less than moved by a brief look-over and flip-through. If and when I find a copy of Falling Man, I'll buy it and read it; but that's about the only one for which I can so aver. What's perhaps more to my point, the number of books I've found that are derived from that day could probably be counted on one hand, absolutely using the pair—this seems to me to represent a curious void, one which might suggest that, for whatever reason, the subject remains sufficiently traumatic and difficult and elusive to have steered a large number of authors away from deciding to tap that vast maelstrom of visceral emotionality in order to channel and shape what bursts forth into the framework upon which to loom their story.

This rather lengthy and blathering digression leads me to The Zero, of which I possess an aesthetically appealing edition from the Harper Perennial imprint. Jess Walter has here gamely charged the barriers of 9/11 fiction, breeching them with his intelligent creativity and gathering what he found inside—considerably augmented by his own personal experience dealing with the Ground Zero cleanup as a member of the Mayoral entourage—into a satirical mystery centered upon a police officer named Brian Remy, who barely escaped from the collapse of the South Tower with his life, and who awakens on the opening page having survived shooting himself in the head at his apartment shortly after the terrible business of planes and towers transpired. Walter aligns himself to the darkly humorous and enigmatic styles of Kafka, Heller, Céline and Vonnegut, borrowing from these illustrious forebears while mixing in select postmodern abstractions from DeLillo; the entirety is blended and then distilled through Walter's own talented imagination to craft what, in my opinion, proved to be about as satisfactory a Nine-Eleven novel as could be desired, all within a brisk, amusing, puzzling, and moving three hundred and twenty-six pages. Possessed of a nicely-attuned ear for dialogue, a prose that is pleasing and intelligent without drawing attention to itself, and the ability to deftly recover when his comedic stylings fall flat—which isn't often, but enough to have led me to a grimace or three—the author has offered here an episodic unfolding, a Sammy Jankis policeman-turned-intelligence-consultant who spurns the tattoos to stimulate and rekindle his memories of what has transpired in the blank periods of his life—for, perhaps, Remy does not actually want to discover what he is doing when the lights of his consciousness flicker out.

That switching on and off determines the book's structure: it's a work comprised of narrative panels, for Remy quickly discovers that he will awaken, as if from a dreamless sleep, to find himself amidst the scenarios and actions and dialogues to which an alternate version of himself—a Remy of whose thoughts, feelings, and deeds he is completely ignorant and unable to access from the void of his memory—has led him. By means of these boxy, jumped processions Remy discovers that his son has decided to grieve as if his father had actually died in the tower collapse; that he has retired from the police force, under the pretension of suffering from back ailments, in order to join the newly-minted Department of Documentation, a nebulous agency tasked to recover and file the immensity of paperwork expelled into the atmosphere when the World Trade Centre went down; that his degenerative eye disease is rapidly progressing, to the degree that flaring streamers continually wriggle ablaze across his vision, impairing his ability to see the world; and that his new intelligence persona is performing morally questionable actions in a strenuous effort to penetrate a cryptically-alluded-to terrorist cell. In addition, Remy's former police partner has become a well-remunerated heroic figurehead, adorning cereal boxes and attending boat shows, while Remy himself is pleased to realize that he has found a new love in the person of April Kraft, a beautiful young woman who lost both her husband and her younger sister to the aerial-wrought destruction. Alas, it just might be that while this awareness of Remy is falling for April, his unknown half may be intimately insinuating himself into her life for a more sinister purpose.

With a novel written in this fashion, one of in-and-out, stop-and-go mini-narratives in which the reader is left to piece together, along with Remy, just what exactly should be filled into the missing details, there is a potential for the story to lose momentum, confound or bore, and there are more than a few reviews, here and elsewhere, in which this seems to have been what happened. In my opinion, Walter handled this difficult process wonderfully, with even the less enjoyable segments, or the connected ones that the author himself seemed to eventually have decided to allow to slip to the most remote back-burner, adding to the whole. There are also complaints the Walter has fashioned herein cardboard characters—and while this has some legitimacy, it fits itself comfortably and workably into the structure of the story as a satire on the American reaction to this tragic event—these individuals serve as representations of the nation as a whole. What's more, in April Kraft Walter produced his strongest realization, a vulnerable, grieving, and perspicacious woman, bearing her own crippling secrets that limn the horrifying events of that day into her own more finely-tuned nightmare. Her interactions with Remy were my favorite parts of the book, her desperate need for a connexion to comfort and cleanse the most emotionally compelling of the whole.

As to the satire itself, it always pulls back before taking anything to extremes—save perhaps Walter's withering portrayal of Giuliani as The Boss, a man with an eye only to the media spotlight, his rehearsed, inspirational mantras, and how to turn a profit from his sudden stardom—while continually amusing in its absurdity and surreality. As Walter sees it, in the wake of the attacks grief and anger became competitive sports; in America's almost crazed requirement to return things to normal, to retreat to the lulling security of the previous era, an opportunity to regroup, rethink, and rework the country's covenant with itself in the face of a deranged assault by religious fanatics was wasted; instead, like a tepid therapy administered via cash register chimes, the populace was urged to resume spending, to keep the mall doors revolving, to keep the inventory flowing, while any in-depth or cathartic efforts to deal with the emotions wrenched so brutally by loss and dismay and shock were anathematized by the superficiality of the approach that was not only pushed upon the public—manipulations for political and commercial gains—but embraced by a majority. In Remy, Walter has crafted the average American, a decent person with warts, faults, and flaws to their character but well-intentioned and capable of great acts of kindness, generosity, and self-sacrifice; however, like the gaps in Remy's memory of his quotidian routine, the country seemingly allowed itself to turn away from the actions being committed in its name—ones that would have aroused universal abhorrence not long before—and to desperately wish it could return to the way it was, even as it came to accept this new situation of treading water, of stutter-stepping, of accepting the reality that one finds oneself in as best as one can, without worrying too much about either how one got in or how to extricate oneself if it's not to one's liking. As April murmurs to Remy whilst abed Maybe we're all like people in dreams now, aware that something isn't right, but unable to shake the illusion.

There are approaches that Walter opted not to take—mostly from the terrorist end—that would ease the blame apportioned to America; but, really, he isn't composing a tract to present to an audience or compiling a person's history, but a satirical mystery to point out errors of commission and omission while entertaining and drawing the reader into a puzzle that holds with growing force right up until the final moment. I did not anticipate the ending Walter fashioned at all; did not find his option sitting all that well with me upon reaching that final page, though, with time to think things through, I've come to appreciate it more, especially in the fact that other reviewers seem to have interpreted it in quite divergent fashion. If this represents the standard of quality of the Nine-Eleven work being produced for literary consumption, I will definitely be making an active effort to seek more of them out—assuming, that is, that they exist. DeLillo, I'm coming.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be perverse, but part of the appeal of this book was in trying to figure out what makes it worthwhile despite seeming to be so ungrounded. As a benchmark for contrast, Walter’s award winner from a few years before, Citizen Vince, was unambiguously good —- and good in a straightforward way. It had a fully fleshed out, likable main character, a colorful supporting cast, and a plot that strode on with cocky assurance. The Zero did not. Brian Remy, in the lead role, was a NY cop in the aftermath of 9/11. Even though the images were vivid, they were purposely fragmented. We never really got to know what made Remy tick. This was due, in no small part, to prolonged gaps in Remy’s memory. If you’re like me, you may read much of the book looking for explanations. Was there a medical reason for these lapses? Had he been drugged? Was he repressing terrible acts? I won’t give anything away, but I will say that allegorical satires are usually not meant to be taken literally. In fact, you may get more out of it if you imagine looking through Gregor Samsa's big bug eyes (as Walter’s nod to Kafka might have it).

So what was Walter’s point then, if not a straight narrative? To be honest, the biggest hints came in the interview included at the end of the book (in my edition, at least) -- there and in the appended pages from Walter’s journal entries. He had evidently been disturbed not only by the heinous, unprovoked acts of terrorism themselves, but by the US reactions that saw us invading Iraq, torturing prisoners, quashing civil rights, etc. Beyond that, he was disappointed by how quickly we wanted to forget about the whole thing: “like we watched terrorism on TV for a while, got bored and turned back to American Idol.” You can see some of these themes brought out in the story, even if only elliptically. There was a bit of comic relief, too, with 9/11 heroes shilling cereal and The Boss (a thinly veiled reference to Giuliani) advancing the art of the photo op. The dominant theme, though, was the surrealism. Snippets of Remy’s reality would come through, but many were dreamlike, unconnected, and even cryptic for having been suppressed. (I looked down and saw blood on my shoes. How did that happen?) We’re left to wonder what Walter meant by it all. What does Remy represent?

The confusion was often a riff on a standard –- some of it droned or atonal. There was a romance, but it was hard to appreciate since we knew so little about the characters. Other parts read more like a thriller, or were they actually more like a farce? We were often off-balance or in the dark. Was that part of the point? The more I write, the more tempted I am to downgrade this effort. But then I remember two things. 1) There’s a right way to read this that isn’t so concerned with the story on the surface, and 2) the NY Times blurb makes a valid point: “Walter is a ridiculously talented writer.” Four stars seems fair if you read it the way it was intended (though I don’t think I did until late).

[Lynne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many people have been turned off by my description of this book when I recommend it to them. If you want to read a sort of darkly comic noir-ish thriller about a cop who was at Ground Zero and who now may or may not be working for a covert government agency but can't tell because he has all these strange memory gaps, then you will like this book.

[Nigeyb · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Zero (2006) by Jess Walter was chosen by my book group. Once again I am in their debt as it's unlikely I'd have come across this otherwise.

The Zero is a powerful novel about 9/11, and specifically the period immediately afterwards. Brian Remy, hero cop and first responder, is our guide through the aftermath of the attacks. His consciousness is totally shattered and he lurchs between lucidity and "the gaps" - moments when it appears someone else is leading his life leaving him to play catch up when he consciously returns to the fray.

In a Q&A at the back of the book Jess Walter explains how he wanted Brian Remy to be an unwilling hero, blinded in every way to his own acts and to the motivations of others. Most of all, Jess Walter wanted him to feel how most people felt: confused and frightened, a helpless man of the very best intentions.

For Remy, the would-be American hero, nothing makes sense as he finds himself in situations he cannot comprehend: torturing suspects, conversing with his ex-wife, sleeping with his girlfriend's boss, wandering a vast warehouse for processing scraps of paper at the crime scene, mysterious figures handing him envelopes etc. This is just the tip of the iceberg. There's so much to marvel at and ponder in this novel. Much of it is blackly comic, specifically how his baffled questions are interpretted as humorous, wise or merely rhetorical. This reminded me of Peter Sellers in the film Being There in which a simple minded gardener becomes an unlikely trusted advisor and Washington insider. There are also shades of the films Memento and Fight Club as the viewer, or reader, is left to interpret the disjointed plot based on mostly faulty evidence.

Jess Walter manages to pull this off and, in doing so, has created a mesmeric, harrowing, funny, provocative, and brilliant tour de force. If his other work is up to this standard then I have discovered a new favourite author.

5/5

[J.M. Fraser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Political satire isn’t Jess Walter’s strong suit. The characters in this story are cartoonish mayors, police investigators and spies, none of whom are believable. In addition, Walter pokes fun at the post-911 authorities while ignoring that every one of us had become swept up in rampant patriotism and paranoia at the time. Remember being inspired by some of Bush’s overly simplistic speeches? Remember using gloves to open your mail? I suppose by the time Walter wrote this novel, we had all calmed down and started realizing the country was run by idiotic zealots, so he aimed his satire in the direction we were all beginning to point rather than at the American population at large. Still, I thought his shots at Giuliani were unfair (the mayor is never mentioned by name or even referred to as mayor, but the identity of The Boss is obvious). Rudy is presented as a publicity hound, whore monger, buffoon and advocate of the goofy idea that all the paper strewn from the collapsing towers must be gathered and organized for things to be set right. Some or all of that may be true, but one must remember the strength we all drew from Giuliani’s calming, self-assured personage during the terrible days after the attacks.

A second flaw I had with this novel is the recurring joke that becomes overused and tiresome. Brian Remy, the hero, suffers memory gaps and often asks questions such as why am I here? or what does this mean? These questions are always misinterpreted by those around him as words of wisdom or challenges to strive more steadfastly toward some goal. We’re not talking about just one or two instances, either. This happens dozens of times throughout the book, reminding me of an eight-year old who tells the same funny story over and over again until long after the humor has been wrung out of it.

Okay, so why would I give such a flawed presentation three stars? The writing is brilliant, and I was completely drawn in by the POV of a man suffering from a split personality. We only see one of the two people sharing his brain – the man who is confused and trying to piece together the damage done by his other half. This POV allows Walter to tease the reader with mystery throughout the book. Also, although most characters in the story are one-dimensional parodies, I fell in love with the portrait of Remy’s girlfriend April who struggles to hold herself together after losing a husband and sister to the carnage. Finally, being somewhat of a conspiracy theorist, the subplot about a woman possibly receiving advance warning of the attacks heightened my enjoyment of the novel.

[Sara Habein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not in recent memory have I read a book so enthralling, heartbreaking and with such deadpan humor. In what he calls his "9/12" novel, Jess Walter’s The Zero follows "hero cop" Brian Remy, who is trying to make sense of the world while also suffering from memory lapses. His journey is at once bewildering and mournful, and though I’m not one to go on about perfect first lines, Walter had me at the outset:

They burst into the sky, every bird in creation, angry and agitated, awakened by the same primary thought, erupting in a white feathered cloudburst, anxious and graceful, angling in ever-tightening circles toward the ground, drifting close enough to touch, and then close enough to see that it wasn’t a flock of birds at all — it was paper.

Is it a long first sentence? Yes. Does it matter? Absolutely not.

Part existential crisis, part satire, The Zero also presents some of the ridiculousness of government during this time. There’s talk of “evildoers” and an entire agency dedicated to collecting all those scraps of paper, The Department of Documentation. “Things will be better when all the paper has been cleaned up.” Cops and firefighters are getting agents and their faces on cereal boxes; tourists pose for photos by the wreckage. Even in the event of a national tragedy, capitalism and consumerism worm their way into the larger discussion.

(Full review can be found at The Rumpus.)

[Nick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Walter's fever-dream of a novel is unhinged, literally, from the "reality" that America experiences after 9/11, a tragedy never named in this strange disjointed meditation on our national psychology of paranoia and self-obsession in the face of horrible tragedy. The central character and narrator is a NY cop named Brian Remy who is having trouble with "gaps" in his memory, as he stumbles through encounters with a string of characters and incidents that may or may not be what they seem to be. Walter is such a great satirist, and many of the set-ups are chillingly on-point, but the conceit wears a bit thin, at least it did for me. Long after I cared one way or the other, the plot tumbled along, all the while Remy protesting that he doesn't really know what's going on. Or why. Which is, presumably, a point to be made, but with a bit more economy.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guterak looked over. "Hey, you got your hair cut."
"Yeah." Remy put the cap back on.
"What made you do that?"
"I shot myself in the head last night."
"Well." Paul drove quietly for a moment, staring straight ahead. "It looks good."
—p.15

This is, as it says right there on the back cover, "a novel of September 12th." That on its own should be fair warning. Jess Walter does not shy away from disturbing ground in his 2006 novel The Zero—and so, perforce, neither will this review. Infectiously fragmented; contagiously disconnected—The Zero is an amazing work, containing some of the bleakest, most bitter humor you'll ever encounter.

Edgar {Brian Remy's son} wasn't finished. "Ask yourself this: what separates me from some kid whose father actually died that day?"
"The fact that I'm alive?" Remy asked. Even to him, his voice sounded like it was coming from another room.
"Fair enough," Edgar said, without meeting Remy's eyes. "Okay, now let's take that kid, the one who actually lost his father, but is somehow coping by getting consolation from his girlfriend or from drinking or from writing poems. Are you going to tell him he isn't grieving enough? Are you gonna tell some poor kid doing his best that he should feel worse about the death of his father?"
"No..." Carla {Remy's ex-wife} shook her head. "No. Of course not."
"Then don't tell me I shouldn't be devastated by the death of my father just because he isn't dead!"
—p.35

The Zero in question is, of course, Ground Zero—where the twin towers of the World Trade Center used to stand in New York City, until September 11, 2001, when those crazy assholes flew our own planes into our own buildings and—as the Onion had already presciently reported in January of that year—"our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity" was finally over.

Brian Remy, the protagonist of The Zero, and his partner Paul Guterak were first responders—some of the closest police officers to survive the towers' collapse, though not without great personal cost. Remy has memory problems—gaps, he calls them, during which the things he says and does don't seem to be much like what he'd do when he's aware of himself.

"But while he may never know if he did the right thing... I'll tell you this: He generally knows when he's doing the wrong thing."
—Gerald Addich, p.299

Remy's eyes are giving him trouble as well—something which connected this book inextricably in my mind with the one I read just before this one, Oliver Sacks' The Mind's Eye—especially this passage:

"The body views eye surgery as such a severe violation,"{...}"a unique shock on every level. The eye is not designed to be cut into, like the skin; the central nervous system doesn't know what to make of it when someone goes poking around on the top floors."
—p.265

Even so, Remy seems to be coping better than a lot of people...

"...don't you wonder if they're all crazy? With their stone pilgrims, and their marble soldiers, with their virgins in paradise and their demons in smoke? Sometimes I think I'm the last sane person on Earth."
—Jaguar, p.291

The book jacket looks burned, dusty, like a piece of paper blown from one of a collapsing office tower's many windows. That part I got pretty quickly. But... while the book's designers could reproduce the look of debris... they could not reproduce the smell. Or the sound...

"People always ask the same question," Guterak said. "When everyone is around, it's all respect and bravery and what-a-fuggin'-hero and thanks for your sacrifice, but the minute someone gets me alone, or the minute they have a drink in 'em, they get this creepy look and they ask me what the bodies sounded like when they hit the sidewalk. They ever ask you that?"
Remy couldn't say. "What do you tell 'em?"
"I say to clap their hands as hard as they can, so hard that it really hurts. Then they clap, and I say: No. Harder than that. And they clap again, and I say, No, really fuggin' hard. And then they clap so hard their faces get all twisted up, and I say, No, really hard! And then, when their hands are red and sore, they say, 'So that's that what it sounded like?' And I say, 'No. It didn't sound like that at all.'"
—p.85

Too soon? It may always be too soon, for some things—but that doesn't mean those things should never be said.

"When I saw those lunatics in the Middle East on TV... jumping up and down celebrating because some nut jobs had murdered three thousand people, you know what I thought?"
Remy shook his head.
"I thought, Fuck you. We used to kill that many ourselves in a good year. This city, it doesn't care about you. Or me. Or them. Or Russell Givens. This city cares about garbage pickup. And trains. That's the secret... what the crazy assholes will never get. You can't tear this place apart. Not this city. We've been doing it ourselves for three hundred years. The goddamn thing always grows back."
—Gerald Addich, p.303

Indeed it does. A theme-park plaza filled with trees now takes in tourists to the site at $24 a head (for adults) (although Brian Remy could still get in for free). Where those towers once stood, water falls endlessly into two slightly-offset square vacancies—voids in the landscape much like the squares on the jacket of The Zero.

It took me awhile to get that.

This is a novel of September 12th, 2001—and what happened afterward. Walter even seemed to have a presentiment that the real-estate bubble was going to pop:

In police work, there had only been decline; in real estate, there was only ascension. He found himself drifting happily as Nicole described a world in which the wealthy selflessly tried to save the city, maybe the whole country, maybe the whole world, one neighborhood at a time, cleansing blocks and doubling property values.
—pp.186-187

The Zero eventually rises to an angry crescendo, as Remy comes closer to understanding what's going on within his "gaps," and as our post-9/11 landscape becomes ever more absurd. Apropos of that, Walter's novel also includes an interesting meditation on the stages of (literary) grief, ending with "Nostalgia" (and profit!), that prefigures the 9/11 gift shop which recently opened at the site.

I don't think Jess Walter predicted that development, specifically... but it fits. It fits.

[Jenny Shank · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2006/...
'Zero' sum game
9/11 satire is one of year's best novels

By Jenny Shank, For the Camera
Sunday, December 10, 2006

The Zero by Jess Walter. Regan, 336 pp. $25.95.

This year saw the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the publication of several novels addressing them. Jay McInerney's "The Good Life" took a love-amid-the-ruins approach with its story of an adulterous affair between two volunteers at a Ground Zero soup kitchen. Wendy Wasserstein's posthumous debut novel, "Elements of Style," featured post-9/11 panic among New York socialites. But the best of the bunch is unquestionably Jess Walter's "The Zero," which was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Although Walter doesn't name the city in which "The Zero" is set, it's clear he drew on his experiences working as a ghostwriter for a memoir by New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik in the days immediately following the attack.

The protagonist, Brian Remy, is a cop who was a first responder to the terrorist attacks. He's in bad shape physically and mentally, and as the book opens, he wakes up in his apartment, bleeding, his head grazed by a bullet from his own gun. He doesn't know if he was trying to kill himself or not — a nearby note says only "etc." He's boozing heavily, has streaks and floaters in his vision that doctors tell him are the precursor to a detached retina, and has been experiencing mental "gaps" that cause him to suddenly come to his senses in the middle of doing something — talking to informants, eating, sleeping with a woman, or even participating in a man's torture — with absolutely no idea how he got there.

This effect is brilliant on several levels: It conveys Remy's scattered mental state in the bewildering days following the attacks; and it provides for a lot of comedy, as Remy frequently turns up in a situation the "bad" version of himself must have gotten him into, such as cheating on his girlfriend with her scary Realtor boss. But it also makes "The Zero" action packed from start to finish — the reader is dropped into scene after scene without any exposition, and the reader is in the same position as Remy, trying to figure out what is going on.

Although the bewildering gaps in his consciousness make it difficult for Remy to piece together his life, it gradually becomes clear he has retired from the force due to chronic back pain (even though he experiences no such trouble) and has taken a job working directly for The Boss, a Kerik-like figure prone to delivering patriotic pep talks: "These bastards hate our freedoms. ... They hate our tapas bars and our sashimi restaurants, and our all-night pita joints." A federal agent gives Remy an assignment to investigate whether a woman named March Selios, whom they suspect had terrorist ties, truly perished when the buildings collapsed. If she's dead, the agent says, "then everything is copacetic."

As Remy trails Selios, a variety of absurdities ensue. His son, who lives with Remy's ex-wife, tells people his father died in the terrorist attacks, and concocts a performance piece for a school assembly based on his make-believe grief. Remy ends up at a monster truck rally where the starring vehicle "was painted red and blue, airbrushed with American flags fluttering in an unseen wind, with an angry-looking eagle perched on the hood and on the doors a long list of familiar names, cops and firefighters, Italian, Irish, and Latin, like the roster of a Catholic school football league." Remy discovers he's some sort of double agent trying to infiltrate a terrorist cell, sending a signal to other agents whenever he goes to a restaurant and orders wasabi-marinated duck.

Walter's irreverent take on the 9/11 attacks ultimately renders "The Zero" more moving and honest than any of the books bursting with patriotism and pieties on the subject. As Joseph Heller did for World War II with "Catch-22," Walter expertly captures the absurdities that ensued from the tragedy of the terrorist attacks, and in doing so has written one of the best books of 2006.

[Ensiform · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the days after 9/11, New York police officer Brian Remy tries to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head, but succeeds only in causing a sort of temporal brain damage, in which he flits in and out of awareness of his own life as though through staccato, disconnected snippets of film. Apparently recruited for some black ops anti-terrorist unit, he sporadically comes to his senses to find that he has gotten involved in some unpleasant and untenable situations – taking mysterious packages, going through citizens’ correspondence, beating and intimidating Arabic suspects, sleeping with women he doesn’t know whether he loves or is just using for information. He has no idea what the reason for it all is – his genuinely confused questions about what he’s doing inevitably taken as kidding or rhetorical musing – and as the black ops sting heads toward an insane, disastrous conclusion, he is helpless to stop it.

It’s written with more of a satirical black humor than this plot summary implies, a sort of modern Catch-22 as written by Don Delillo, with the typical distant lens he views humanity through to make it seem foreign and alien. There are, indeed, a couple of scenes that pay almost direct homage to Joseph Heller’s masterwork, such as when Remy’s high school son pretends that Remy is dead, and he, his wife, and son have a straight-faced, absurd conversation about honoring grief and having respect for the son’s wishes. Or another scene where some intelligence officers looking at some evidence, including a photo of a man eating in a restaurant, begin an earnest, utterly irrelevant discussion of how to properly cook his dish, and what wine might go best with it. But the mordant humor gives way to a spooky noir feel in the second half of the book, and although the botched terrorist sting is clearly political satire, it lacks the deadpan absurdity of the earlier half, and comes to a comparatively predictable ending. Altogether, this a tense, readable, original political satire, the work of a major modern talent.

[Kathy Piper · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, here’s my dilemma. Jess Walter is one of my favorite contemporary authors. This is based on “Citizen Vince” and “The Financial Lives of the Poets”, which I read and devoured with glee. His wickedly dark humor resonates with me and therefore I greatly anticipated reading this book. Sadly, “The Zero” did not live up to my expectations. The protagonist, Brian Remy, has these “gaps” of memory, possibly due to his having shot himself in the head in the beginning of the book. He forgets how he got where he is, forgets what he’s supposed to do, forgets who he’s working for. And these gaps don’t really get filled in for the reader. So we, too, are left wondering what the heck is going on here!

The Zero is about Ground Zero and the aftermath of the 9/11 disaster. Remy was there that day; he went into the building just before it collapsed. It’s not clear how he got out, because the story is told in Remy’s voice, and he doesn’t remember much about it. So neither do we. Remy’s initial assignment seems to be to track down one of the victims, who his bosses seem to think escaped just before the attack and may have been complicit with the terrorists. He goes down a lot of blind alleys (both figurative and literal), forms a romantic relationship with the victim’s sister, then inexplicably sleeps with the sister’s boss, even though he cannot figure out how he got into the boss’ bedroom. There are some seemingly shady Middle Eastern characters whose intentions seem contradictory, thus confusing this reader even more.

Remy doesn’t know who the “good guys” are and who the “bad guys” are. So neither do we. Everyone has seemingly conflicting agendas and the lines between “good” and “bad” are disappearing rapidly. And maybe this infernal confusion about right vs wrong is the message here.

[Denny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read Jess Walter's first four books in rapid succession in 2016 and loved them. He instantly became one of my favorite authors, especially after reading his 2 Detective Caroline Mabry novels and Citizen Vince. I don't know why I didn't go on and finish reading the rest of his work that year. There must've been something that distracted me. In any case, I decided to pick up where I left off, and I'm glad I did.

The Zero is the best book I've read so far this year. It's a darkly comic, absurdist masterpiece that manages to be a page-turner as well. If you haven't read Jess Walter yet, you really owe it to yourself to do so. And it doesn't matter which novel you start with. He hasn't let me down yet.

[John Warner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brian Remy is the unreliable narrator in this farce set shortly after 9/11 and the collapse of NYC's Twin Towers. One of this event's first responders, he is searching for a suspect who may have been one of the terrorists involved in this tragedy. However, the investigation isn't without its problems. Remy is recovering from a head wound, possibly a self-inflicted gunshot. Recently, Remy has been living life in the "fits and starts" of dissociative episodes. He has been living the effects without remembering the causes for much of his current behavior.

Although Remy is troubled by the lapses of memory, it does create some humorous moments such as when he wakes up in the post-coital bed of his girlfriend's boss. As the protagonist is following leads, the novel is difficult to follow at times possibly the intention of the author so the reader can be as confused as the protagonist. A surprise ending makes this a rewarding novel to read.

[Cristian Tomescu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Impossible to finish, despite all my efforts. Also, it didn't help that I chose the romanian translation. At times, you can clearly see the Google Translate portions in it.

[Maren Showkeir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tapping into my intellectual observer, I found much to admire about his writing, the rich and complex way he told the story, and his insight into the experience of a post-terrorism world. His characters were interesting and the wit piercing. The plot twist of the sisters were poignant (though kinda obvious.) Some of the ways he "painted the scenes" with his words were phenomenal.

While his story-telling device was unique and I can see why he chose it, I had a hard time following the story. I'm still not sure I understand what happened, or the ending. Maybe that was the point, but it did not make for a satisfying experience. I want to "get it" even if I have to wait for the pay off. Some books leave me simmering with trying to figure it out, and I don't mind chewing on it until I do. But I still can't suss out what really happened or what the hell was going onwith the character because he was memory impaired or drunk in every scene. For awhile, I thought maybe he was dead and seeing all these people through that perspective, ala "Sixth Sense." (Maybe he was.)

But what REALLY made me uncomfortable was that it struck too close a chord with my own worries about memory, and not being crisp, not recalling who was what, the disjointedness of piecing together my own life. It was like a bad dream that was constantly shifting, vague and unsettling, then waking up in a fog. It was like Menopause Mind on steroids. I think the whole thing made me a little fearful. Maybe that was the point. But I didn't like it.

But considering the rave reviews and the National Book Award, maybe I'll give it another read some day and see if I can see what other have.

[Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is just good enough to make people think it's great because it contains so many gaps and twists and many and occasionally clever references to the events of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath to make you feel like there MUST be something IMPORTANT written on its pages, even though you can't figure out exactly what it is. Perhaps it is in the same genre as books by Kafka and Heller (I think closer to Vonnegut than to either), but in terms of quality, it's not in the same ballpark.

The book's biggest fault is that it lacks a plot. The author attempts to fill this void with oddball characters and bumbling bureaucracies bouncing off of each other and off of Brian Remy, a man who is inexplicably experiencing memory problems in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Oh, and Remy has macular degeneration, too, allowing the author to throw in some descriptive paragraphs of visual disorientation. The gaps in the narrative that represent the gaps in Remy's memory often come at convenient times when the author doesn't seem to know how otherwise to bring the chapter gracefully or succinctly to a close.

If not for some mildly entertaining madcap antics by competing intelligence agencies, a couple of interesting character studies, and some nice descriptive passages about New York City and the physical consequences of 9/11, I wouldn't have reached the last page. Now that I think about it, the book is aptly named.

[Ted · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ludicrous. That generally covers my take on this book. Some describe it as a dark satire. No, it’s not humorous in any way. Stunning and provocative? I can't give it that much credit. It is tiresome at best — such a tedious experience to be dragged from one scenario to the next in which the lead character has no idea what is happening.

I gave it 100 pages before throwing in the towel. Save yourself. Run away.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one has stuck with me like no other book this year. That’s Jess Walter for ya.

[Camille · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oof, this was at times an excruciating read. I wasn't quite prepared for how harrowing the story is.

[Necdet Yücel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kahramanın zihnindeki boşlukları okuyucuya hiç göstermemiş olması çok güzel. Filmi veya daha iyisi dizisi yapılsa eminim çok severek izlerdim.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guterak looked over. “Hey, you got your hair cut.” “Yeah.” Remy put the cap back on. “What made you do that?” “I shot myself in the head last night.” “Well.” Paul drove quietly for a moment, staring straight ahead. “It looks good.”

General grief is a lie. What are people in Wyoming really grieving? A loss of safety? Some shattered illusion that a lifetime of purchases and television programs had meaning? The emptiness of their Palm Pilots and SUVs and baggy jeans? Look around, Mom. Generalized grief is a fleeting emotion, like lust. It’s a trend, just some weak shared moment in the culture, like the final episode of some TV show everybody watches. It’s weightless. You wake up the next day and wonder when the next disaster is scheduled. “But real grief… oh, God.” He cocked his head and stared at his mother. “Real grief weighs on you like you can’t imagine. The death of a father… is the most profound thing I’ve ever experienced.” Edgar’s eyes seemed to be tearing up. “It’s hard to get out of bed. And you want me to take a test? Play softball? Are you kidding? There are times when I can barely breathe. I can’t… get over it. And I don’t want to. The only way to comprehend something like this is to go through it. Otherwise, it’s just a number. Three thousand? Four thousand? How do you grieve a number?” His voice was a whisper. “So… yes… I have chosen to focus my grief on one individual. On the death of my father.” He shrugged and looked down at the carpet. “And you know, frankly, I guess I expected a little more support from you.”

These were the most common gaps that Remy had been suffering, holes not so much in his memory but in the string of events, the causes of certain effects. He found himself wet but didn’t remember rain. He felt full but couldn’t recall eating. It wasn’t important, he supposed, how he came to know that The Boss wanted to see him, except that he should be able to remember whether it was a phone call or someone telling him. Instead, it was as if he’d always known that he had a three o’clock meeting tomorrow afternoon, a one-on-one, and that Paul was nervous about it.

“Chronic back pain?” “What?” Remy asked. “Just to get the paperwork flowing,” the tall woman said. “A formality. We just have to check a box.” The man asked, “Chronic back pain?” Remy looked around the room. There was a poster on the wall behind him showing a cartoon man with a push broom through his head like an arrow and the caption: Industrial Accidents Are Nothing To Laugh At. Remy leaned forward. “My back is fine,” he said. “I mean, if I need anything, I guess it’s some kind of counselor. See, I’m having some trouble… focusing. There are these gaps. I lose track of things.” They stared at him. “And my eyes… my eyes are flaking apart. Macular degeneration and vitreous detachment. I see flashers and floaters.” A few seconds passed. Remy laughed nervously. “My son’s been telling everyone that I’m dead.” They stared. “And I… I drink a lot. Most days, I think. And… uh…” He rubbed his eyes. “I shot myself in the head. But I think that was an accident. Or… maybe a joke.” They stared. “But… you know… I’m fine.” They stared. “Well… except for the gaps, obviously.” After a moment, the man chewed his pen and looked down at the file, running his finger down a list of some kind. “Chronic back pain,” he said.

“We miss Communism,” the man said. “Not as a form of government, or economics—obviously that was a failure, as rife with corruption and disincentives as any other system. But the ideal, the childlike optimism—without it the world grows into cynicism. Sometimes I think we need another way, a political or economic route to morality and generosity. When I was a young man I believed that my faith was a path through the violent thicket of modernity, but honestly, I just don’t know anymore. Maybe we all have to be dragged through, huh?”

Edgar brought out his other knight. “My father was a police officer, but he always wanted to be more, so he went to law school at night. But he dropped out before he could finish. He worked for a while as a liaison between the police and city. I asked him once what a liaison was and he said it was the person who was halfway between things. That’s how I thought of my dad. As someone who only got halfway to the places he wanted to go. He told me once that he’d always wanted to see the West Coast, but the farthest he’d ever made it was Chicago. I remember thinking, if that’s your dream, how hard could that be, to go to the West Coast? It’s not like he wanted to go to Tibet, right?”

“Don’t you think deer are kind of sexy? For an animal?” “I… I couldn’t say,” Remy said. “I do. Not… you know, for me, specifically. I’m not saying I’d necessarily want to have sex with a deer. But just the way they’re put together, big asses and long legs, they’re kind of like people. And those cute little faces. Shoot, I’d do a deer. I mean, if I was a deer. You know? I can’t say that about every animal. If I was a hippo? Nope. Or a raccoon or something? I’d just be celibate. Or a cat? No way. You’d think we’d be more attracted to gorillas or other primates, but other than those little spider monkeys, I just don’t see it. But deer… I don’t know, I find it kind of evocative, the idea of all these bucks nailing those leggy does once a year and then just running off into the woods.”

“It just surprises me, I guess. Afterward, I really thought that everything would change… I don’t know… that we would be different. Stores would never open again… businesses shut down… lawyers quit their practices and run into the woods.” She smiled wistfully. “I just assumed the newspaper would stop coming out. Instead…” She chewed a thumbnail. “This whole thing… it just became another section in the paper. Like movie reviews. Or the bridge column.”

“Remember, the first morning, the flatbed trucks were already there? They took a hundred-some trucks to Fresh Kills. On the second fuggin’ day, Bri! From the beginning they were already cleaning up the mess… before they even knew for sure what it was. I mean… what is that? Is that right?” “I don’t know,” Remy said. “You wanna know what I think?” He looked over his shoulder, and then leaned in closer to Remy. “I think the bosses knew all along that we weren’t gonna find anyone. I don’t think they cared. They wanted to clean it up fast, but they had to pretend that they expected us to find people. Right? All along they’re saying, We will not rest until blah-fuggin’-blah and There is still fuggin’ hope, and all the time what they’re really thinking is we gotta move a million tons of shit before we can rent this fugger out. I mean, how do you move a million tons? You should see it. It’s like a strip mine down there. Like we’re digging for something.”

Remy looked down at the barbecue tool in his hand and he knew to lift the cover on the little charcoal grill. There were three thick steaks and a veggie burger, all sizzling above ash-white coals. He didn’t question it, just flipped them. Perfect: black lines like prison bars across the steaks. The smell was so precise, so not-Zero that he simply stood there, inhaling. Right. This is what cooking steaks are supposed to smell like. Maybe this was not some condition he had, but a life, and maybe every life is lived moment to moment. Doesn’t everyone react to the world as it presents itself? Who really knows more than the moment he’s in? What do you trust? Memory? History? No, these are just stories, and whichever ones we choose to tell ourselves—the one about our marriage, the one about the Berlin Wall—there are always gaps. There must be countless men all over the country crouched in front of barbecues, just like him, wondering how their lives got to that point.

How had April described her grief—as a fever dream? A dream—that would help explain the gaps, and the general incongruity of life now—the cyclic repetition of events on cable news, waves of natural disasters, scientists announcing the same discoveries over and over (Planet X, dinosaur birds, cloning, certain genetic codes), the random daily shift of national allegiances, wildly famous people who no one could recall becoming famous, the sudden emergence and disappearance of epidemics, the declaration and dissolution of governments, cycles of scandal, confession, and rehabilitation, heated elections in which losers claimed victory and races were rerun in the same sequence, events that catapulted wildly out of control, like plagues of illogic… as if some faulty math had been introduced to all the equations, corrupting computer programs and causing specious arguments to build upon themselves, and sequential skips—snippets of songs sampled before their original release, movies remade before they came out the first time, victories claimed before wars were fought, drastic fluctuations in the security markets (panic giving way to calm giving way to panic giving way to calm giving way to panic), all of it narrated by fragments of speeches over staged photo ops accompanied by color-coded warnings and yellow ribbons on trees.

“These guys… are our enemies. These guys have all engaged at one time in anti-American actions or thoughts or they wouldn’t be where they are,” The Boss said. “These guys hate our freedoms. You didn’t cause the seditious letters these men wrote or the conversations they had. We owe it to the people who died in this city to find animals like this, animals capable of this kind of barbarism, and stop them before they even think of it.” He seemed to be searching for a way to make Remy understand. “Look, a hunter can’t flush birds without sending a dog into the brush. My firm was hired to flush the birds. We provided a dog. A dog doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t worry about causes. He runs where he’s told. He barks. And then…” The Boss pulled on his coat. “He waits for ducks to start falling.” The Boss shook his head as he buttoned his coat. “You want to know what caused this, Brian? All of this? I’ll tell you.” He looked around the ornate office, as if noticing it for the first time. “Ask yourself this: What causes hunger?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Hunger.”

[Lia · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5

[Greg Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian Remy is a New York City cop. He was on the scene when the towers collapsed on 9/11, narrowly escaping himself (even though his son is telling people he died). And Remy has just shot himself in the head — but he can't remember whether he did it on purpose, or accidentally. Indeed, he can't remember much of anything — he sort of "wakes up" between gaps in his memory and has to piece together what he's been up to. Conscious Remy is good, "unconscious," off-the-page Remy is bad.

So the story revolves around the fact that he's in a constant struggle to figure out what he's up to — helping a government agency infiltrate a terrorist cell? tracking down a woman who may or may not have died in the attacks? — and we're as much in the dark as Good Remyis. "...and Remy found that he was smiling, not exactly remembering, but wanting to, and thinking there's not much difference, that the best memories might be those you don't remember."

Much, much more than just a study of a fascinating character, though, Jess Walter's novel The Zero looks at the absurdity of the culture and paranoia in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and how frequently the focus was removed from the victims and their families — for selfish gain, for politics, or for any other reason. Remy's affable partner Paul explains, even though he knows he shouldn't mention it, how awesome it is that 9/11 happened because he is treated as a hero and gets to show celebrities around Ground Zero. Paul even gets to appear on a box of cereal — "My agent says I was lucky to get the marshmallows," he tells Remy.

Remy and his struggle with his fractured memory are really a symbol of the underlying post-9/11 fractured culture (even though 9/11 appeared on the surface to be a unifying event). "Maybe this was not some condition he had, but a life, and maybe every life is lived moment to moment. Doesn't everyone react to the world as it presents itself?"

Remy's enduring memory from the day — described bone-chillingly in the opening paragraph — is of paper, fluttering to the ground. And it's an image Walter returns to frequently. Example: "He remembered smoke and he remembered standing alone while a billion sheets of paper fluttered to the ground. Like notes without bottles on the ocean, a billion pleas and wishes sent out on the wind."

But for all that seriousness, the novel's often cleverly and subtly funny. At one point, Remy writes himself a note that says "Don't hurt anybody." But then bad self responds, "Grow up." A scene near the beginning of the novel in which Walter has Remy's son Edgar explain why he's telling people Remy's dead is, in a word, genius. And other details are so sad they're funny — like lawyers for 9/11 victims' families charging an increased fee in the settlement negotiations with the government, because "these are difficult cases...emotionally" for the lawyers.

I loved this novel — for its imagery, its comedy (and ability to toe the line between funny and appropriately respectful), and its inventiveness. It's alternately chill-inducing and laugh-out-loud funny. And it's only when you get to the end, that you realize just how smart and well-put-together this novel is. Highly, highly recommended!

(The Zero was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award, the year Richard Powers' The Echo Maker won. I've read that book. It's solid, but this MUCH better.)

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Walter's first book (Citizen Vince), so I picked up this, his second, knowing absolutely nothing about it. The story revolves around New York City police officer Brian Remy, who must deal with his newly unstable memory in the weeks after 9/11. It seems that while he physically survived being at Ground Zero, the mental trauma has done all kinds of interesting things to Remy's judgment -- including leading him to possibly shoot himself in the head.

His head injury leads to irregular blackouts: Remy is in the midst of doing something and then minutes or hours later snaps to in a new situation, with no recollection of what happened during his blackout (shades of Memento). As a result, the book is told in a series of flashes -- a scene will start conventionally, unfold conventionally, and somewhere along the way just stop, as Remy has another of his blackouts. This is awfully daring storytelling, as it withholds resolution over and over and over, which can get very frustrating if you aren't prepared to simply go with the choppy flow. The main narrative problem this causes is that it makes Remy into a purely reactive character, never able to drive the story -- and this will frustrate many readers (like those in my book club). My personal suspicion/rationalization is that Remy's condition is meant to represent post 9/11 America: a country stuck in a pure reactive mode, with little ability to contextualize, influenced by secret government agencies.

Indeed, Remy's weeks following 9/11 are a kaleidoscopic satire of post-9/11 America and its response to that dark day. The main plotline concerns Remy's assignment to work for the DoD (here, the Department of Documentation), which is an obscure arm of an NSA-like government entity. The belief is that by restoring and filing every scrap of paper from Ground Zero, the terrorists will have been defeated. At the same time, some of the half-burnt scraps collected from the streets may be clues in identifying a terror cell. Remy is assigned to this potential mystery, which leads him into confusing conversations with competing FBI and CIA agents running their own operations. However, his inability to convince anyone that he's having blackouts allows for a whole line of "idiot savant" comedy, as everyone around Remy thinks he's being tougher/wiser/cannier than he is (shades of the great film Being There).

There's are a plenty of targets for Walter's satire: a Giuliani-like mayor, a national security apparatus that will invent plots if it can't find any actual ones (shades of reality there), over-the-top hero-worship of firemen and police, New York City real-estate madness, the one-upsmanship of connection to 9/11 (Remy's son tells his classmates that Remy died at Ground Zero), belief in technology, and more. Remy remains at the core of it all, swept up by larger forces, confused, literally going blind (here, the metaphor is a little too blunt), panicked, and unable to make sense of it all. He is we.

[Kerfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just wanted to add some Leonard Cohen; it sets the tone better really than any review could:
And who by fire, who by water,
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time...
Who by avalanche, who by powder,
Who for his greed, who for his hunger...
And who shall I say is calling?
...and who by brave assent, who by accident,
Who in solitude, who in this mirror...
and who
shall I say
is calling?


I read a review of this book, put it on reserve in the library; months later, there it is, I don't have a clue.

So I really didn't expect, even with a title like "The Zero", to find myself in another 9/11 book, or to find myself so merged into Brian Remy's disconnect with the world. His broken perceptions got into my head; the result was both eerie and disquieting.

The first 2/3 of the book is like the world of a Leonard Cohen song: "First We Take Manhattan", "Who By Fire", "Dress Rehearsal Rag", "Everybody Knows"...keep going down the list and take your pick.

It's a zero-sum game, as one of the more enigmatic characters observes late in the book. Full of loss and longing, Remy inhabits a world with no winners and no way to tell right from wrong; of aching and inevitable beauty and sadness; cynical, yet not bitter. Vision is never more than partial; memories are deceptive, fleeting and false. There are no directions, no maps; the meaning is always cryptic and just out of reach.

Which is why the last 1/3, where the ends get semi-tied and the narrative becomes more linear and starts to make some sense, was such a disappointment to me. Of course, I do have my troubles with the ways authors end their books.

But despite my unhappiness with Part Three, it contained one of the book's most memorable scenes, one I still think a lot about.

Remy returns to Ground Zero and finds an alien place, one that no longer contains his memories and feelings. The construction site is "...like any other place now, like the site of a future business park, or a mall parking lot."

He thinks of Gettysburg, the bones of the dead merging with the soil, the "gristle and bravery" making it Holy, a true memorial.

At The Zero he finds...nothing. "They scraped it all away...what's left of a place when you take the ground all away? Is the place even there anymore?"

Really: what does another large ugly office building prove to those that hate our materialism and vulgarity?

Suppose we could have put money and political posturing aside and let it be, let time, not commerce and competing agendas, be the arbiter of what remained?

An idea I never considered, but it will now always accompany my jumble of thoughts about that time and space.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm intrigued. I began reading this last night, and it is described as a dark, comic satire on 9/11. The other book I read by Jess Walter, "The Financial Lives of the Poets," was very sweet -- funny, poignant, well-written. It reminded me of Nick Hornby and Tom Perotta, but a bit deeper. So, I'm intrigued by this book because it's definitely much darker. And it's a thriller. Different genre, very different tone. And so far so good...

--

Eh. It's hard to say what I thought of this book. I finished it, which says something. But I didn't love it. However, I would describe the book as "ambitious," and I think that perhaps readers from NYC might find more resonance with the book.

As mentioned above, the book is a dark, comic satire on post-9/11 America. The author takes shots at the president, the mayor, law enforcement, lawyers, and commercial enterprises -- basically anyone who capitalized on the event in some way. That's a cynical view of this country's reaction to 9/11 and not one that I actually share. But perhaps someone more directly and deeply affected by 9/11 would find resonance in this theme.

The book has been compared to works of Joseph Heller and Franz Kafka, and there is a clear element of absurdism, as well as a sort of abstract man-against-the-system (or is he?) theme. The most difficult aspect of the book for me was that the protagonist suffers from "gaps" of memory, and so, the book is told in episodes that last a couple of pages at most. For example, the protagonist regains awareness of his surroundings while having a drink at a bar, and you spend a few paragraphs at that bar with him, and then it fades out... and he finds himself holding a gun in an alley, wondering what he's doing there. These brief snapshots grew tedious to me quickly, as did the fact that he was such a hapless and uncompelling narrator -- unaware of what he was doing, how he got anywhere, etc.

That said, I did keep reading, and so, there was something interesting about the book. Not highly recommended, but again, perhaps for someone else it would be a good read.