The Washington Square Ensemble by Madison Smartt Bell

First published in 1983; digital edition published by Open Road Media on December 6, 2011

The Washington Square Ensemble starts with a few lyrics of a Tom Waits song but the novel is like an extended version of Tom Waits, a story of downtrodden life on the streets, of mislaid hopes and shattered dreams. The sections narrated by the central character, Johnny B., read like a prose version of beat poetry spoken with Waits' gravelly voice. There are, unfortunately, too few of those sections. If the entire book had been written in Johnny B.'s voice, it would have been a more successful venture. Still, Madison Smartt Bell's first novel provides an enjoyable glimpse of the writing ability that he refined later in his career.

The titular ensemble consists of several sketchy characters. Johnny B. Goode, a/k/a Gianni Dellacroce, a/k/a Enrico Spaghetti, is a drug dealer in New York City's Washington Square. His ex-friend Porco Miserio is an alcoholic musician and scam artist who recently acquired a Storytelling Stone. The other characters sell drugs for Johnny. Yusuf Ali is Johnny's muscle. Despite his drug dealing, Yusuf is trying to be a devout Muslim, a delicate balancing act made necessary by his belief that he must live in the world he can see, not in the realm of spirituality. Santa Barbara is a Puerto Rican who practices Santería. Holy Mother is an ex-con, a former mob member and current addict.

The novel is structured as a series of short chapters, each narrated by one of the central characters. Bell reveals each character piece by piece, building them into whole men, gritty and sad, by the end of part one. While Bell deserves credit for giving each character a distinctive voice, I wasn't always convinced that the voice was authentic. Santa Barbara, for instance, sounds more like a caricature of a Puerto Rican than an actual Puerto Rican, particularly not one who came to the United States at the age of five. I had a similar reaction to Yusuf, whose voice struck me as artificial, the voice of a cartoon Muslim.

Uneven storytelling is the other significant flaw in The Washington Square Ensemble. I was fascinated by Holy Mother's story, including his life in the mob and his accidental involvement in the 1971 Attica prison riot. Porco's story is almost as good; his attempts at philosophy add welcome humor to the darkness. The stories told by the other characters are less interesting.

About halfway in, the characters' backgrounds having been established, a plot begins to take shape. My affinity for all the characters (whether I believed them or not) grew as the story progressed. The plot -- and there isn't much of one -- has an unfortunate tendency to meander before fizzling out altogether. I thought more might be made of the Storytelling Stone, or of Santa Barbara's Santería, but the talking rock is just a device to get the story moving and Santa's witchcraft merely furnishes an excuse for an amusing examination of comparative religion.

Fortunately, rooted beneath the seemingly random events that occur during the course of the novel is a story of friendship. Even when they don't want to, even when they're not supposed to, even when there's no profit in it, the characters care about each other, help each other. Bell makes the oft-forgotten point that even the lowliest members of society, even those who live beyond the bounds of society, need (and are made better by) friends. Friendship is the plot thread (thin though it may be) that redeems the novel -- friendship and humor and enough solid writing to make the reading experience worthwhile.

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