Vernon Downs

by Jaime Clarke

Charlie Martens is desperate for stability in an otherwise peripatetic life. An explosion that killed his parents when he was young robbed him of normalcy and he was shuttled from relative to relative, left alone to decipher the world he encountered in order to cobble together an answer as to how he would live. Ever the outcast, Charlie recognizes in Olivia, an international student from London, the sense of otherness he feels and their relationship seems to promise salvation. But when Olivia abandons him, his desperate mind fixates on her favorite writer, Vernon Downs, who becomes an emblem for reunion with Olivia. Charlie's quest takes him from Phoenix to New York City and when chance brings him into proximity to Vernon Downs, he quickly ingratiates himself into Downs's world. Proximity invites certain temptations, though, and it isn't long before Charlie moves dangerously from fandom to apprentice to outright possession.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

224 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2014

About the author

Jaime Clarke is a graduate of the University of Arizona and holds an MFA from Bennington College. He is a founding editor of the literary magazine Post Road, now published at Boston College, and co-owner, with his wife, of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like this was a book that had a lot of potential for being a fun look at celebrity author culture, but which sort of came apart and fizzled out.

The book's about a guy trying to impress a girl. The girls favorite author is Vernon Downs and when he is scheduled to read in their city he decides the best way to escalate things from friend zone with an obvious huge crush, to something more is to arrange for her to get to meet the famous author. Things don't work out, he promises her that they are scheduled to have lunch with Ellis, I mean Downs, even though he hasn't been able to successfully get in contact with the author or his agent. It doens't matter though because Downs cancels the reading because of security concerns and people sort of hating him for writing a book that relishes in gratuitous violence and mindless over-consumption / consumerism of the 80's NYC.

The girl goes back to her native England, and the boy not being able to accept that there will never be anything between them decides that the best way to impress her would be to meet Downs.

He proceeds to ingratiate himself into the author's life while having misadventures of someone moving to New York City without a realistic plan besides some grandiose scheme.

The book is pretty obviously about Bret Easton Ellis (look karen, I got his name right!). A wunderkid young novelist who published a best-seller while still attending a small liberal arts college in Vermont. Then becoming something of a pariah after publishing a novel about filled with graphic violence (the worst scene involving a rat), and chapters on things like Phil Collins and Huey Lewis. And his follow up novel to that is going to be about fashion models as terrorists. I don't think I'm making too big of a leap in who I'm figuring the book is about.

The main action of the book revolves around the Ellis character going away for the summer and leaving the main character, Charlie, to house sit and start organizing his archives. Slowly, Charlie starts assuming the identity of Downs. He accepts dinner invitations, answers emails, signs books and does lots of other little things that as if he was the famous author. Charlie is such a sort of lovable / good guy / doormat in the book that it doesn't come across as him taking over Downs life is creepy, rather a mixture of a guy seeking approval trying to be helpful and not wanting to tell anyone they are wrong.

Prior to this, like in American Psycho, there are moments where people will come up to Charlie thinking he is Downs. Like in Ellis's novel there is never an explanation given for all these incidents of mistaken identity. Here it's unclear why or how people would confuse the two. In American Psycho I always assumed it was either some basic interchangeability between all those finance guys making a ton of money, but were replaceable cogs. Or that everyone was so self-centered in the book that the people around them were ultimately too unimportant to care about except to be reflections of their own success.

My biggest problem with the book is I wanted their to be some kind repercussions or something from the ruse Charlie had been engaged in. It's been over 20 years since I've read any of Ellis's novel, so I don't know if the last chapter is some kind of nod to a book I've forgotten. If it is maybe this works in a way I just missed. Instead to me the last chapter felt out of place. Since I had read the jacket description I knew about about the protagonist, but it's not until very late in the book (mainly the last chapter) that the author decided to give a lot of the details about his back story. Instead of being something that illuminated the action in the book, it just sort of felt like information that should have been given earlier and not some Usual Suspects reveal that all of a sudden made everything that came before it change meaning and come into focus.

Complaints aside, I did have fun reading this book, and the disappointments weren't great enough that I felt like I had just wasted my time.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for choosing me.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect out of this book, but I know I enjoyed the time I spent with Charlie. I'm sure losing his parents at a young age affected him in ways that most can't understand. Knowing that he was shuffled from place to place and never really fit in anywhere broke my heart for him. His obsession with Olivia and getting her to love him and choose him was borderline insane. When he basically takes over Vernon's life that was insanity cloaked in an identity crisis. I don't even think he realized it until the end when he looks inwards. His journey was interesting and definitely one I will not forget.

I was lucky enough to receive the entire trilogy from the author/publisher and I am looking forward to reading the other two books in the series.

[GailW · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to work so hard to finish this book. And it's the main character, Charlie's, fault. At first he bored the daylights out of me and I thought it would take forever to finish the book. Then I couldn't stand him. What a leech. Then I felt sorry for him. What a way to grow up. And then I had hope for him. A lot of emotion in a 164 page story. So is this what the author was striving for? If so - 5 stars to you. But I'm taking back 1 for the "bored and then hated" him parts. Fair? (P.S. I read it in less than a day...)

[Myfanwy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the title this story is really Charlie's story about how he nearly allows his obsession, his sense of isolation, and his ability to compartmentalize to rob him of his own identity. In the end, he has not so much grown as he has acknowledged who he is, thereby coming into self-awareness. It is both a funny and sad book leaving the reader feeling both akin to Charlie and also at a distance from him. Thus experiencing the world in much the same way Charlie does for he feels both a part of society and outside it. He is both splendidly aware of himself of in the world and also living a grand illusion. A great read.

[Nicole · Rating 2 out of 5]

I prefer books with an interesting plot. I feel like I got through the whole book and nothing happened. I thought it was going in a direction where Charlie would do something crazy or interesting but he didn't. He just pined over a girl, casually stalked an author and then decided to move on. Meh.

[Darren Cormier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I obtained a copy of Vernon Downs at the Boston Book Festival a few years back at a sale at one of the book tables after a reading. I didn't read it until recently: it sat on my bookshelf along with many other titles that I knew I would get to sooner or later.
Who are we? How do we define ourselves?
Jaime Clark explores the questions of self-identity and hidden motivations through the lens of Charlie Martens, trying to ingratiate himself to his ex-girlfriend's favorite author in a convoluted and emotionally evasive plot to win her back.
Charlie has had a lifetime of recreating himself. His parents died in a house fire when he was a child. For the rest of his life he bounced around from relative to relative, new location to new location, never staying anywhere more than a few years. In this way, Charlie's life has been a chameleon, a lifetime of recreation, of uprootedness.
At first glance it reads like a simple, uncomfortable thriller, a non-sociopathic Tom Ripley for the New York literary set. By sticking with the reactions of Charlie after events and not the events themselves, Clark creates what could have been a well-written thriller and cautionary tale of identity theft and accountability gone wrong into something much more philosophical, existential, and a treatise into what defines us as a person: Do we ever rid ourselves of the idea of redefining ourselves, or are we cursed to never knowing who we really are? Can we ever know who we really are?
"The mechanism he had so heavily relied on throughout his life--his innate ability to box his experiences--occurred to him as an impediment against making connections that allow for personal growth."
If we never have a chance to define ourselves, if we're constantly adapting ourselves to our new surroundings, can we ever know what isn't an adaptation? If there is no original, does it matter if we're practicing a masquerade?

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book drew me in on many different levels and creeped me out more! The writing hooks you into the story of Charlie, who lost his parents when his home mysteriously exploded, and then he was handed off from one set of relatives to another. I wanted to know about his life with his parents before they died, but that was not touched on.

His story reminded me of a boy who was adopted by a neighbor who didn't have any children. He was shuffled from one family to another, and never stayed long. Like Charlie, he had no stable connections, and he never became a solid part of a group or family. He was always an outsider.

Charlie, in this story, wanted to impress his girlfriend and thought he could find a way to win her back. She was a fan of a writer, Vernon Downs. He thought if he could impress her with his connection to this writer he had never met, his life would be complete. That baffled me. Why did he think this? He barges into Vernon Down's life. He learns about Vernon Downs' life, friends, and habits, and then I am lost. Why did Charlie do what he did for the rest of the book?

The writing was partly engaging, a little confusing. I wanted to knock some sense into Charlie, but I couldn't get into the book to do it!

[Gayle Slagle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vernon Downs by Jaime Clarke is the story of Charlie Martens, a man whose parents died in an accident when he was seven and who was passed around from family to family. As an adult, he is a man without his own identity who feels an otherness with the world. While in college, he falls in love with Olivia, who soon abandons him, leaving him without a center. Hoping to win Olivia back, he becomes obsessed with meeting Olivia's favorite author, Vernon Downs and goes on a quest to meet him. He not only meets Downs, he ingratiates himself with him, is invited to stay in his home and when Downs leaves town, pretends to be Vernon Downs himself. What follows is a sometimes disturbing look at the dark side of celebrity adoration. This is a novel of longing for love and family and a search for identity. It is well-written with interesting characters and an intriguing plot.

[Leanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a goodreads giveaway. So thank you! I am going to give this book three stars because I thought the writing style was good and I didn't get bored or annoyed by the writing. The story left a little bit to be desired for me, though. It was about a guy who takes on the likes and dislikes of people around him and ends up becoming obsessed with the favorite author of a girl he is in love with. The issues weren't relatable for me and the story wasn't compelling enough to get me to care much about it.

[Threasa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won this book on goodreads. The book is about a man whose parents were killed when he was very young. He is passed from relative to relative as a young child. He grows up and falls in love with Olivia. However, Olivia doesn't love him. She moves back to London, and Charlie Martens ingratiates himself with Olivia's favorite author, Vernon Downs. He's hoping to win Olivia back. Read how Charlie moves through that relationship and his relationship with others.

[Carole Knoles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am happy to say that the positive words about this novel by Tom Perrota, an author that I like, encouraged me in a bid to win a copy from Goodreads and I am happy to say that he did not steer me wrong. Most of us at one time or another have had an imaginary conversation with a celebrity that we admire and that is as far as it goes. In the case of Charlie our protagonist, he is willing to go much farther than a passing fancy of imagination making this an interesting (and well written) journey.

[Anusha · Rating 3 out of 5]

i thought the story fell flat at parts but it was an interesting concept! it starts with the main character having a troubled and unstable childhood, then falling into a unrequited romantic relationship with Olivia. since she doesn't reciprocate his feelings, he obsesses over her and more specifically, her favorite author, Vernon Downs. i enjoyed reading it because of how Charlie's thought process worked. thank you to Jaime Clarke, Roundabout Press and NetGalley for this ARC!

[Jaclyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

*I won a copy of this book for free*

I thought the story concept sounded interesting: boy falls in love, girl starts pulling away, boy will do anything to keep her affection, including stalking his girlfriend's favorite author and eventually taking on his persona. However, the book really didn't hold my interest after Charlie meets Vernon Downs; I found it kind of depressing.

[Lorie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charlie wants to meet Vernon Downs in the hopes that it will impress his girlfriend, Olivia. After Olivia moves back to London, Charlie moves to New York and eventually house sits Vernon's apartment and pretends he is him. The story didn't seem to go anywhere.

[Shayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting view of the thoughts of a man obsessed, and lost. I was pulled into the story wondering just how far he would go.

[Irene Marston · Rating 3 out of 5]

had a hard time connecting with this book

[E]

Just won this book through the GoodReads giveaway page- thanks for selecting me!

[Josefine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well i won this book in a goodreads giveaway and was astonished when i had to collect it from cstomes (living here for two years but never have i gone to costumes but oh well learned something new that day didn't i). So when i started reading, it seemed to be a straight forward story. Boy meets girl and falls in love. Girl has to move back to England and boy tries to reconnect with girl. BUT THATS WHERE IT GETS COMPLICATED. the story is told from Charlies point of view. In fact charlie tells the story... so we only learn what Charlie wants us to know. Which provides a lot of twists and"are you kidding me" moments. The whole literary community discribed here, is disturbing and never the less fascinating. It was like finding out that, there is a Santa but he likes to spank woman and does drugs all the time. But thats only the background environment of this book. The main storyline follows charlie obsessing over Olivia (at first) and consequentally Vernon Downs, Olivias favorite author and Charlie´s in with her. It gets kind of" the talented mr ripley"lly after the initial phase. The ending got me confussed and i think i have to sleep over it but i liked the monologing at the end. It cleared some things up and others are just in my head. There is enough room for my own interpretation.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I enjoyed Vernon Downs, I did not find it as "gripping, hypnotically written and unnerving" as Tom Perrotta did (according to the cover blurb). Perhaps that is because, unlike Perrotta, I am not a well-known author. I can understand why an author might be unnerved by Jaime Clarke's tale of an overzealous student who stalks, befriends, and ultimately masquerades as his former girlfriend's favorite writer, purportedly in order to woo her back. I say "purportedly" because, although Charlie says that his efforts to connect with Vernon Downs are intended to lure Olivia back to him, his actions in fact seem to be driven by his own desire for success and fame, no matter how vicarious. However, I never really connected with either Charlie or Vernon, so at the end it all just seemed much ado about nothing.

The best part of the novel for me was Charlie's unintended public reading of a particularly violent passage from Vernon's most recent (and controversial) book, to an audience at a summer writing conference to which he has not actually been invited. His reading causes an outraged feminist protest and, ultimately, a book burning by women equating Vernon's book with "carv[ing] his initials into [them] like the trunks of trees." This episode was both amusing and frightening, given the ongoing debate about "trigger warnings" on college campuses. I practically stood up and applauded the lone female dissent:

The material of Vernon David Downs is strong, unpleasant, and to my mind, not very important, which is why I chose not to attend. But should what is presented here be shaped to the most vulnerable among us? With all respect for the sensitivities of those who find the material offensive, as a woman I find it ironic that we seem on the verge of returning to the time when someone else decided, "The material is a big rough. Perhaps the ladies would like to step outside," or even worse, to a time when in the back rooms others would say, "This material is something that might be important to hear, but in deference to the ladies, we can't even consider it."

I didn't come here to be protected, thank you.

Having raised this fascinating issue, Clarke unfortunately reduces it to a sop to Charlie's ego, a "twinning of his narrative with Vernon's." It was this shallowness of character which led to my simply not caring about Charlie.

I received a free copy of Vernon Downs through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Tom Waters · Rating 3 out of 5]

The version I read was a correction proof that pre-dated publication that had been sitting on my desktop for 10 years. Clearly (by the page count and the Goodreads synopsis), more was added/changed before publication. I liked the style of the writing but not the abrupt ending. It furthered the Bret Easton Ellis myth. My takeaway is that I should buy the finished version to compare and contrast. I'm interested to see what Clarke will do next.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlie and Olivia meet at a California community college in a creative writing class. She's
an International student from London.

Charlie likes Olivia -- he wants to know everything about her and seems to think having a relationship with her is 'everything' he's been looking for in life. His own parents died when he was a young child and he grew up with different relatives - being shuttled from one home to another. So, he craves love, intimacy, and a type of promising commitment: stability.

It doesn't take long until Charlie's attachment.. Fixation- with Olivia is all he can think about. She ends up abandoning him... which only drives Charlie into a spin wheel of distorted ideas of how to get Olivia to love him.

Vernon Downs is Olivia's favorite author, --so Charlie wants to learn everything he can about the him with the purpose of having her in his life. And begins his fixation on Vernon Downs, too.
Charlie doesn't think twice about violating boundaries. He travels to New York to seek out the author...elbowing his way into community of the author and his friends.
At times it feels as if there is something unnervingly selfish about Charlie's and his obsession
becomes almost intolerable. Yet, we feel so sad for this guy...
He didn't come from a strong family foundation-- and he's going about finding love from a place of 'not-feeling-whole' with himself.

What makes this story stand strong, is Jaime Clarke's dazzling engaging page-turning writing
prowess. I'm left wanting to read more by this author.

..... I plan to read his next book called, "World Gone Water"..., right after this!

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlie Martens has had a peripatetic childhood and youth, being shunted from family to family after the death of his parents. Constantly having to reinvent himself has made it easy to pretend to be what he is not. When he meets Olivia on a creative writing course, he thinks up a plan to impress her and win her affection – he tells her he has arranged a lunch date with her favourite author Vernon Downs. When this doesn’t come off, and Olivia then returns to England, he is still fixated on meeting Vernon Downs and thereby having a way of bringing Olivia back to him. He bluffs his way into Downs’ life and is soon caught up in an increasingly complicated game.
Charlie Martens is a troubled soul, searching for stability, unable to see the consequences of his actions, and with a curious lack of affect. He manipulates people and situations to his own benefit, but shows little awareness of their needs and wishes. As such he is a truly intriguing character, and if he doesn’t arouse the reader’s sympathy, he certainly arouses their interest. I found this a really compelling and entertaining book, and if the plot is not always credible, the verve and conviction with which it is told carries the reader along. Thought-provoking, with much to say about the cult of celebrity and the desire to be someone else, the book is both original and well-written. Vernon Downs himself is based on Brett Easton Ellis, whom the author knew and this adds credibility to the tale. I very much enjoyed the book and recommend it.

[Vel Veeter]

A truly strange little novel about a character who becomes more and more obsessed with a enfants terribles type novelist. It begins with a young man, who is taking writing classes at Glendale Community College follows a girl to a conference at an East Coast liberal arts university for a summer writing program. While there, there’s a bit of a shadow in their connection in the shape of the college’s most recently famous alum, a novelist who has become a controversial figure. It’s the mid 1990s so if you guessed the novelist was either David Foster Wallace, Bret Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland, or Jay McInerney, you’d be right. Well specifically, it’s so clearly Bret Easton Ellis even if the references are very very very slightly veiled. They’re so thinly veiled they’re not even oblique.

Anyway, what ends up happening is that the girl goes away but the obsession with the writer remains and turns real when he meets him, convinces him he’s an up and coming writer (kind of true) and even begins impersonating him at times. If you see some mirroring with American Psycho, well, you’re wrong, because that novel is called “The Vegetable King” in this one. Regardless, this book often reads like a kind of multi-verse version of real life with alternate titles and other details changed. This book has some good writing at times and an interesting, if bizarre plotline and actually might have been pretty good, had Bret Easton Ellis written it instead. I assume he didn’t.

[Ace Boggess · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm torn about this short novel. I enjoyed reading it. It's beautifully written, and parts of it are quite compelling. The book seems a sort of literary marriage between Bright Lights, Big City and The Talented Mr. Ripley. A conflicted man with identity issues seeks out a reclusive author, becomes him for a while, and then mayhem ensues. However, that mayhem never quite materializes. The narrator, Charlie, alludes to many things that remain elusive in the end. The story skips along, seeming to jump over genuine conflicts while ignoring promised possibilities. So, I'm glad I read the book--at no point did I want to STOP reading the book--but when it was over, I felt that it let me down.

[Jody Spencer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still not sure how I feel about this one other than lost.

The story started off decent with a well-meaning student trying hard to impress his girlfriend by getting in touch with her favourite author. This turned into an obsession to win her back through the author.

The general feel I got from the book was depressing. Seeing the main character on such a downward spiral was hard to sit back and watch.

Such and abrupt ending also made me feel like not much was accomplished in the story.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid look at the obsession of fandom and celebrity.

[Vahan]

Held my interest and was a very good read. I could not wait to find out how it would end.