Domino

A writer succeeds only by reason of the intensity with which they project their drama. When Cowper executes the qualities that define him best, his stories reverberate in the imagination long after they end. If Cowper were still alive and read what I’m about to say, he might roll his eyes, but here it is: I wish he would write the same novel over and over. I want him to keep circling his strengths from different angles, like Monet, Bacon, Kafka, Dostoevsky, and even Malzberg in science fiction. Cowper’s skill as a stylist is questionable; he is not a panoramic writer like Stapledon or transformative like Nabokov. He is a granular writer, emotionally attuned, exceptional with character, feeling, and minute visuals that persuade the reader to follow his fantasy.

Domino, however, is not a strong work, purely for the aforementioned reasons. When Cowper strays from the anachronistic and romantic qualities that make Phoenix and The Twilight of Briareus (his masterpiece) so wonderful, his stories suffer. Here are the bare bones: a teenager witnesses a séance where the medium calls him by name. He is then pursued by a malevolent force intent on killing him. What follows is a kind of Hardy Boys adventure where much of the novel is spent rehashing events the reader has already experienced. The mystery is finally resolved with a blunt info-dump.

What disappoints me most is that the final big reveal is the very thing Cowper should have focused on. That single page, which exposes the mystery, is more expressive and more foundational to his style than the standard fare mystery novel he chose to write. Even the title, Domino, suggests that Cowper could have experimented with his linear outline more playfully, juxtaposing the mystery with the promising sociological elements he decided to explore fleetingly. It’s possible Cowper wrote one exceptional novel; albeit unfortunate, it’s more than most can ask for in a lifetime. Yet there are serious craft failures in this novel: wildly inconsistent characterization, protagonists that simply disappear off the page, and most damningly, choosing the least interesting angle for the story. I’m not sure how he rode this one out, but it was a fundamental miscalculation.