Magazine writers who compose extended nonfiction narratives about human beings devoted to extreme activity are not exactly rare. But such writers who compose memorable narratives are rare indeed. That is why I felt a positive tinge of anticipation when I learned that publisher Simon & Schuster had decided to offer “American Voyeur: Dispatches From the Far Reaches of Modern Life”
($15.00), a collection of 16 magazine pieces by Benoit Denizet-Lewis between covers, bolstered by an introduction he wrote to explain his choice of subjects.
In that introduction, Denizet-Lewis, a Boston-based writer who grew up in San Francisco and travels a lot, says a friend once asked him, “Why don’t you ever write about normal people?” At the time, Denizet-Lewis thought, “Normal people? Good luck finding those. As the saying goes, the only normal people are the ones you don’t know very well.”
I was familiar with Denizet-Lewis’ narratives from The New York Times Sunday Magazine, from which five feature stories can be found in this collection. I had not read his stories in other locales, including Boston magazine, the Boston Globe magazine, Spin, Jane, SF Weekly, Salon.com, Slate.com, and Out. (Denizet-Lewis is openly gay, but that orientation is not always a big deal in his features.)
The collected features are divided into two sections: “Youth” and “Sex.” The pieces in the “Youth” section demonstrate the author’s remarkable access to teenage and adolescent culture. He remarks, “I spent a good part of my twenties writing about teenagers—and occasionally being mistaken for one. A dear friend of mine once remarked that my natural dress approximates that of an adolescent.”
Looks do not by themselves yield memorable nonfiction narratives, however. Denizet-Lewis possesses a talent for finding productive locales, and the virtue of patience while he connects with potential sources. As he notes, “I’ve looked in churches, motels, back alleys, retirement communities, nightclubs, schools, Internet chat rooms, skate parks, malls, community centers, fraternity houses and suburban mansions. I’ve felt at home in some of these places and astoundingly out of place in others. Either way, once I found people I wanted to write about, I usually hung around for a while, because people are likely to do any number of revealing things when they let their guard down. My job, then, is to wait around for people to be themselves.”
Denizet-Lewis tries to act like himself, too. Usually, that means maintaining a modicum of emotional distance. One of the stories, though, causes him nearly uncontrollable emotional pain, a feature about two teenaged brothers from New Hampshire. They were athletic and popular, yet committed suicide a year apart. That is sad in itself; for Denizet-Lewis, the sadness deepened as he thought about the suicides of his maternal grandfather plus three of his mother’s siblings.
A story about a transgender middle-school student in California has received the most attention from readers, according to Denizet-Lewis. Readers ask him about that student—the story appeared in print eight years ago, and about the state of “kids today.” Sometimes, Denizet-Lewis tells his inquirers that he’s more concerned about the adults. “I can’t tell you,” he remarks, “how many teens I’ve met during the last decade who have suffered neglect or emotional abuse at the hands of their poorly equipped parents. Lonely, disconnected and desperate for validation and connection, a generation of kids is busy medicating themselves with prescription drugs, video games, Internet chat rooms, pornography and meaningless hookups.”
One of Denizet-Lewis’ features explains the hookup scene, in which teenagers shun romantic dating for casual sex. I would quibble with his description of the hookups as “meaningless.” His story, to me, shows that the hookups are indeed meaningful—just not always in a positive way.
That said, some of the narratives in the book convey signs of hope. At one juncture, Denizet-Lewis notes all the teenagers (and sometimes older folks) “who overwhelm me with their kindness, humor, talent, passion, integrity, and loyalty to their friends and family.” As I write this review, I prefer to feel hopeful—at least for today. So let’s end it here.
Steve Weinberg is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, the writer of numerous nonfiction narratives for magazines, and the author of eight nonfiction books. He lives in Columbia, Mo.
