Jim Provenzano wryly refers to his new novel Monkey Suits as a “Marxist beach read”, a tongue-in-cheek description I couldn’t agree with more. Taken as just ‘beach reading’, it’s a thoroughly entertaining and well written story filled with well defined characters, clever plot twists and subtle humor. It’s loaded with all the standards of a good story with the right type of characters and on-target situations, using light-handed irony and a sharp eye for dark humor around the edges to keep us interested. There are few (if any) loose ends in this story and nothing that stretches the bounds of credibility.

The characters themselves sound routine enough; five young men, four gay and one mostly not. Ritchie Hurst, 95% percent hetero (the remaining 5% being his crotch… on occasion) and artist wannabe; Brian Burns, with his relaxed definitions of  morality, relationships and honesty; his long-suffering partner Ed Seabrook; party boy Marcos Tierra; and finally at their center Lee Wyndham, the innocent wanderer uniting the story, who's learning the way of the Big City but still hoping for love. They work as cater waiters –- silent, efficient and faceless in front of their ‘social betters’ –-  five men scratching out their livelihood as best they can, exploring themselves and finding their goals, each coming to a unique decision that will define finally their lives. In this regard, Monkey Suits is well packaged and slick –- and don’t take that as a put down. If all you want is light reading, that’s part of what you have here.

Then there’s that unsettling ‘Marxist’ aspect Provenzano refers to, those satiric little edges he’s given every situation that sets Monkey Suits apart from a hundred other books. We have the backdrop of the late eighties, where George the First (the Bush that showed up for his military service) has swept into the White House, picking up where Ronald Reagan left off: government continues giving billions in tax and business breaks designed to help the wealthiest ten percent, insisting the overflow will trickle down to everyone else... sort of the way the waiter gets his dinner after serving, using the leftovers. And if there's not enough leftovers to go around - oh well. Life is hard, true?  In this not-so-distant era, the rich and famous picked the ‘right’ causes to champion – hosting $1000 a plate dinners (a fraction of which might actually go to the causes after expenses), dressed in clothing and jewelry worth twenty times that... just more trickle down, so be happy with what you got. And government back then had no place in the private sector, even for research. Public charity was better than government hand-outs. Among many causes seen this way was AIDS.

Well, that sort of worked... if you had the right cause. But back then AIDS wasn’t popular or even polite to mention, although it had been around for eight years. Sure, the elite could pick out a cause like AIDS babies to champion and donate for hospice care –- they were innocent, unknowing victims, after all. But to those who are chosen to lead, aside from the inconvenience of the disappearance of designers and the sudden scarcity of good florists, AIDS wasn’t a popular cause because of the target of the disease. Polite society –- all the right people –-  couldn’t be expected to deal with Them. Hadn't gays and drug addicts brought their troubles on themselves? Provenzano reminds us of that time when almost nothing –- governmental or charitable –- was put into research for cure or treatment.

Exposing these attitudes is where Jim Provenzano makes his activist's commentaries –- about hypocrisy on levels individual,  social and governmental. Sure, it's well worn territory… except Provenzano does it without grandstanding or screaming on a soap box out of the blue, marring the structure of his story like so many other almost good novels I've seen with social commentary. He makes his points cleanly in the context of the story itself, with a wit that equals Maupin at his best, using the figure of the Cater Waiter as his Everyman. The clatter of a dropped fork at dinner on a marble floor  is likened to Act-Up, an organization once known for its confrontational tactics. The single fork is an embarrassment; several is a deplorable inconvenience… but flinging the entire tray of flatware to forces attention. Voices are like that too… and it takes a lot of raised voices to gain the attention of these ‘better people’ and force them to take serious action. It’s up to us to raise the noise level to keep that attention.

Hmm. Does any of this sound familiar?

Give yourself a reader's treat -- pick up a copy of Monkey Suits.

© 2003 by Keith Morrisette