“Stone Arabia” is a fascinating enigma of a novel, unflinching in its portrayal of a brother and sister: he the small-time rock ‘n roller and she the supplier of adulation, and their dynamic built up over the years, amplified as the music eventually winds down. Nik Kranis is an inscrutable musician who not only composes and records music but writes fake reviews of his albums, designs his own album artwork, and simulates basically every part of a commercially successful piece of art. In his solipsism, he is a kind of distorted representation of the DIY artist of today, but takes this further by also providing the reception of his work through reviews, obituaries, and announcements of upcoming releases, all documenting his quasi-inauthentic life.
The bulk of the story is narrated by Denise, the younger sister of Nik. She is unmarried, in her 40s, struggles with her memory, has a one-way relationship, if you could call it that, with a man obsessed with old James Mason movies, and an adult daughter, Ada, who is a film student and adamant about making a documentary on her uncle. There is also a mother in progressive decline that Denise has the responsibility of attending to, as Nik barely ever gives her the time of day. Who has the time when you are curator of your own fictional world?
Throughout, the story intercuts Nik’s dialogue about his sister and events in their lives in his “Chronicles” supplemented by Denise’s own take on what he has written. As you discover more and more about their interconnection, Nik elicits scant sympathy. His sister maxes out credit cards, paying for her brother’s rent and debt. Giving more than you’re getting in a relationship seems to be a theme in this book. Will she ever resolve the imbalance not only with her brother but also her daughter, mother, and boyfriend?
As Nik Worth (his stage name), he was on the fringes of celebrity and often the sharpest musician on the LA scene. The Fakes were supposed to be a side project to his regular band, the Demonics, but were actually the band with the better chance at a larger audience. But Nik is undeniably a man not quite ready for the moment into which he has been thrust. It doesn’t help that he resists or rejects advice from anyone who endeavours to advance his career, for his benefit or theirs.
After his period of minor fame ended, he retreated into his chronicles, which he actually started in childhood, defining the brother-sister kinship relation: “Nik’s main occupations had been reading Mad magazine and making elaborate ink drawings of dogs and cats behaving like far-out hipsters. He had characters: Mickey the shaggy mutt who smoked weed and rode motorcycles; Linda the sluttish Afghan who wore her hair hanging over one eye; and Nik Kat, his little alter ego, a cool cat who played pranks and escaped many close calls. Denise appeared as Little Kit Kat, the wonder tot. She had a cape and followed all the orders Nik Kat gave her.”
Nik made a full book out of each episode, then had several copies made with some expense at the print shop. Each of the covers was created by hand and was unique, drawn with magic markers and collated in pieces of colored paper cut from magazines. As a teenager, the zines became more complex. Denise still had them in a box somewhere. He always gave one copy to her and his mother (they had to share), one to his girlfriend of the moment, one went to their father, who lived in San Francisco, and one was put in a plastic sleeve and filed in his fledgling archives.
The absent dad would show up (sometimes) for birthdays. Though Denise adored her father, it was obvious Nik was the favourite. His sister always said it started, or became apparent to her, when their father brought Nik a guitar for his tenth birthday. “Nik unbuckled the case, and the lacquered rosewood gleamed in the sun. Their father reached down and pulled the guitar up with one hand on the neck and the other hand under the body. Mother-of-pearl was inlaid on the fingerboard between the frets, and there was matching inlay trim along the edge of the body and an inlay rosette around the sound hole. He handed it over to Nik, who pulled it to his chest. Nik stared down at it. He finally spoke in a reverent whisper. ‘Thank you.’ And that was it.”
When the author explores Nik and Denise’s relationship, the book is at its strongest because so many of us can identify with the way people slip into the same roles when dealing with their loved ones. Spiotta is remarkable in this respect, finding the subtle details in this fractured family’s individual lives. Stone Arabia is really about people acting against their own best interests for personal reasons. Whatever you end up thinking about Denise and how the relationship to her brother defines her, she arranges her life out of loyalty to Nik above all else.
What will become of Nik is, of course, the macro issue here, but Denise eventually has to deal with her own reckoning. Nik continues to have a field day satirising the music business, as rudderless as ever, yet the painful insecurity hidden under his bombastic personality has a grip on his life. Denise takes out a loan for seed money for Ada’s documentary. Nik is averse to the idea, but he grudgingly agrees to go forward. He doesn’t act like the unfun uncle towards Ada, however, though you often want to cuddle and strangle him at the same time.
As Nik gets exponentially more delusional – in a less charming way – even he believes he probably took his sister for granted, but that doesn’t prevent him from cementing all her concerns for him. Ada’s filming opens everyone up to anxiety about truth, art, fact, and fiction, and Denise realises, for the first time, that everything isn’t headed in the right direction.
Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth offered a quote for the book jacket: “Stone Arabia is a rock n’ roll novel like no other. Where desire for legacy tangles with fantasy. And identity and memory are in and out of control. A loser’s game of conceit, deceit, passion, love and the raw mystery of superstar desire.”
From kids playing make-believe to teenagers hanging out in the burgeoning LA punk scene, to Nik’s isolation and Denise’s role of caretaker, the book explores the creative process, especially in the music world, and Stone Arabia is a compelling look at the obsession with art, creativity and fame. It aspires to examine postmodern culture’s impact on our ability, or lack thereof, to connect with each other in emotionally meaningful ways. Spiotta’s reflections on the precarious nature of modern life are witty until they’re really unsettling.
