Mouth to Mouth: Antoine Wilson

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It is a book that plays with the reader a little, which I always appreciate, the narration from Jeff being undercut regularly by our actual narrator, who comes to the forefront and then retreats again many times. It knows what it wants to say, it's efficient, and if it maybe hits the nail on the head a bit more than is my personal preference, it was never really going for subtlety anyway.

The character of Francis emerges powerfully and he isn’t one that’s easy to like but we’ve only got Jeff’s word for that especially as you see it’s a sort of the King is dead, Long live the King kind of story. The twist at the end is excellent and one which you don’t see coming. I’ll keep weighing that up! I've seen a fair bit of buzz about Mouth to Mouth and noticed that it received a positive review from Kirkus, but having read it now, I really don't understand why. He is a contributing editor of the literary journal A Public Space as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications. At first I wasn’t sure about this book. It was interesting enough to keep my attention, but nothing really blew me away until the ending. That alone in my opinion is worth the read. Why yes, I did just include a masturbatory gif on a former President’s book choice. Keepin’ it classy!)The narrator turns up at JFK for a flight that is now delayed. There, he runs into an old acquaintance from university called Jeff. Jeff then proceeds to tell him what's happened in his life in the twenty or so years in which they haven't seen each other, beginning with how he saved the life of a drowning man and this action sent his life spiralling off in a direction he never predicted (or did he?).

A flight delay from JFK to Berlin was perfect for passing the time conversing with a fellow passenger. They were barely acquainted as college students at UCLA, 20 years prior. Jeff Cook, smartly dressed for success, asked our narrator to join him in the first class lounge to await the Berlin flight announcement. Jeff was a successful art dealer. The narrator would be traveling to Berlin, at his own expense, to drum up interest in his writing.

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A] taut, compulsive chamber piece of a novel, which you’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting… Mouth to Mouth is an elegantly told and supremely gripping tale of serendipity and deception—and delivers a brilliant ending that will leave you guessing about everything that came before.” — Vogue all good old Jeff does is to keep going on about "Was it fate?" "He never really thanked me." and blabla. he's not even good at story telling. i wanted to be on the edge of my seat, instead i fell asleep listening to the audiobook

Francis doesn’t seem to recognize Jeff, however, he sees something in Jeff that makes him become sort of a mentor for him. Francis shows him the ropes of the art world, and Jeff seems to flourish. We hadn’t been friends, exactly, barely acquaintances, but Jeff was one of those minor players from the past who claimed for himself an outsize role in my memories. Dealers do fool around w artists...yes, but only w the "good" ones; sometimes, so do art critics. (The NYT--for years--had a critic who "made" a young woman a Star.) ~ However, I've never ever been to an art opening that played canned music, which is done at the Arsenault Gallery in LA. Jeff, starting at the gallery on the lowest level, would be getting minimum pay. This doesnt bother him as he's house-sitting for Brad Pitt. His job is, frankly, the most boring in the world. At another opening he meets the great minimalist Agnes Martin. He doesnt "get" her work. But Arsenault believes Jeff has "an eye."

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By the end of the slim volume Antoine Wilson has made sure to wallop the reader with the realization that the story has been eerier than they ever realized." — Entertainment Weekly The novel opens, in a neat framing device, with an airport encounter between an unnamed narrator and an estranged friend, Jeff Cook, from the narrator’s college days at UCLA. Twenty years after graduation, the two men couldn’t be more different. The narrator is flying economy and accepts the invitation to join his old acquaintance in a first-class lounge, where Jeff begins to spin a circuitous tale about the time he saved a man’s life on a Santa Monica beach using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Revived, the man doesn’t thank him, and Jeff wants to understand why. As Cook talked the writer took on the role of confessor, his responses sympathetic and occasionally prompting. Not that Cook needed much prompting, he’s on a roll and seems determined to provide an unexpurgated version. The start point, and the key to all that follows, is his intervention one morning when spots a man in severe difficulty off Santa Monica beach. Without further thought, he launches himself into the water and swims out to the man. Having rescued him from certain drowning others arrive on the scene and eventually he’s left alone, with no knowledge of the identity of the man he saved. Initially this doesn’t bother him, he’s done a good deed and that’s all that matters. But after stewing in his own juices for a while his curiosity gets the better of him – he needs to know more. Stars — What an odd-story indeed. With its short and sharp chapters that leave you wanting more more more, the unnamed character, and audience at the centre of this story is — for me — it’s finest asset though as he acts on our behalf in a quizzical and comical way only to somehow simultaneously also not want us to know quite as much as he does.. fascinating stuff. It’s the kind of writing and prose that you enjoy literally sentence by sentence. Sharp, unnerving and unsettling yet subtle!

I didn’t mention that I was traveling on my own dime, hoping to capitalize on a German magazine’s labeling me a “cult author.” Or that I was also taking a much-needed break from family obligations, carving out a week from carpools and grocery shopping to live the life readers picture writers live full-time. Perhaps it will be more engaging to those readers who enjoy reading about art curators and art galleries. I like a pretty picture as much as the next person, but the business side of this world does not really interest me. I kept reading and reading to get to the promised twist that everyone has been raving about, but, honestly, the biggest surprise for me is that the ending surprised anyone. It seemed like the most obvious conclusion. From where I sat near the gate, I could examine this Jeff Cook closely, in profile. I had all but determined that he wasn’t the Jeff Cook I’d known and was going to turn my attention elsewhere, when he looked in my direction. I knew those high, broad cheekbones and that penetrating gaze. Joan Didion, who died Thursday, left a seismic impact on the literary world and her home state of California.Mouth to Mouth is that rarity, a perfect narrative machine, working by its own laws. The cool nervous clarity of the prose enmeshes the reader in a trap of complicity, one snapping shut on narrator and reader at the same instant. Bravo.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude The unnamed narrator of this story runs into Jeff Cook, an old classmate whom he hasn't seen in a long time, at the airport. Both are flying to Berlin and when their flight is delayed they sit in the first-class lounge and get caught up. Jeff is obsessed with his perceived goodness, and he provides few details that make Francis out to be anything other than an asshole. Do you think the novel makes a case for what makes a moral or corrupt person? How does it comment on the human condition? Jeff’s story seems to have many endings: when he leaves Francis on the mountain, the immediate aftermath of the man’s death and its consequences in Jeff’s life, and the novel’s final line. Knowing all this information, what do you think really happened? What does it mean for your reading experience that the reveal is left ambiguous?