In the Age of Jackson, American democracy was fluid and effortless. There were no entrenched aristocracies or theocracies. If you needed land, you could move west a few hundred miles and find some for the taking. As long as your ancestors came from a select short list of approved countries, you bowed to no-one, and no-one bowed to you.
America in 2012 still sees itself as a classless society. We believe that anyone can become rich if they’ve got the brains and the determination. This is why millions of people working 50-hour weeks for $10 an hour rally around a political party that refuses to tax the rich—couldn’t that be them with just a little luck and effort? And it’s why teachers are held in such low esteem—if kids don’t learn it isn’t because of where they live or who their parents are. Because this is America and everybody starts even. So it must be the system—those teachers.
Parrot and Olivier is the story of two Europeans—an Englishman and a Frenchman—who come to American in 1830. Parrot, the Englishman, has to his credit no family and no money, and just a modest amount of talent. Fate has carried him from England to Australia and then to France. His real name is John Larrit, but he is called Parrot in recognition of his mimetic abilities—he can draw pretty well and can reproduce the vocal mannerisms of others. He is a copier rather than a true artist. Shrewd, ironic, elliptical and precocious, Parrot is an elusive figure who tends to blend into situations. When others look at Parrot, they don’t really see him—they see his status (or lack thereof) or they see an instrument to do their bidding, because Parrot lives by making himself useful.
Olivier is Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur de Garmont, the only child of two French nobles who have managed—just barely—to survive the French Revolution. We first see Olivier as a high-strung sickly 10-year-old trying to make sense of the mayhem around him. He is a weak, rather pathetic creature given to puking and nosebleeds. But there is determination and imperiousness in him, as well. Olivier adapts the high drama and self-importance of his parents’ circumstances to his own cosseted little world:
Then Odile arrived carrying a large rose-tinted Ch’ien-lung goldfish bowl. This contained my leeches. She set it on an English giltwood stand and removed the muslin cloth from around its neck. These vieilles amies had always been in her charge and she was constantly ready, at whatever hour her bell rang, to scoop out the starving parasites…
Olivier, the book’s jacket copy tells us, is “an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville.” Not being well acquainted with that figure, I perused his wikipedia entry and decided that the similarities were relatively superficial. Their circumstances are obviously very similar, but I would be rather surprised to discover that de Tocqueville was nearly so pompous and fantastical as Olivier.
The book consists of alternating first-person chapters from Parrot and Olivier. We wonder, at first, how they will find each other. It happens after they have both grown up. Olivier’s mother, worried that her son might be becoming a conspicuous target for political intrigue, arranges to get him out of harm’s way by having him shanghaied to America. The pretext for this removal is that he is to compile a report on prison conditions in America (as per de Tocqueville). Parrot is sent along as servant and spy—to protect the incautious nobleman but also to report back on on his doings.
Once his characters reach America, Carey keeps several balls in the air. One is the evolving relationship between Parrot and Olivier. After some early spats, they come to appreciate and assist each other. Each has a view of the other that adds perspective and depth to our understanding. Each see the other’s flaws, vanities, etc., but sometimes the observer underestimates the observed, as when Parrot thinks Olivier is failing to woo a certain American heiress when in fact Olivier (who is after all a Frenchman) has matters well in hand.
A second ball is the appraisal of America performed by Olivier. This is where a better appreciation of de Tocqueville would probably have served me well. Olivier admires America and recognizes that its experiment in democracy will eventually spread back across the ocean.
A third ball would be Parrot’s American transformation. Parrot becomes an entrepreneur, helping to publish a book of lavish illustrations of American birds. The reference, of course, is to John James Audubon—another Frenchman who made a name for himself in early nineteenth century America. Except that here the artist is not French and in fact bears no resemblance to Audubon.
Parrot’s talents are a better fit for America than they were for Europe—he’s a swan in New York when he was just an ugly duckling in Paris. He does have a talent after all—for business. All his pecularities and shortcomings have become assets.
I had read two previous Peter Carey novels—Oscar and Lucinda and The Tax Inspector. I think of him as a highly entertaining and very original writer. Parrot and Olivier is all that and much more—a book full of riddles, crosscurrents and obscure parallels. That’s what two Man Booker prizes will do for an author—up the ante. It is a book that should probably be read twice. It might not be unfair to say that it is a rather strenuous book that is perhaps a bit overwritten.
Parrot and Olivier is also a very late flower of what Henry James called the “international novel”: the collision of old world sophistication and corruption with new world energy and artlessness. Except that in the 21st century it is no longer possible to present this theme without considerable irony, where innocence corrupts and sophistication is naïveté. In this respect, Parrot and Olivier reminds me in places of another unlikely late specimen of the international novel: Lolita. Humbert Humbert and Olivier-Jean-Baptiste de Clarel de Barfleur de Garmont are alike in being simultaneously enchanted and appalled by American vitality and vulgarity. Both contemplate marriage. Both are humorously high handed. But Humbert has a kind of moral disease in him. He and his teenage nymphet are infecting each other even as they seduce each other. There is tragedy and monstrousness amid the sparkle of Lolita. That’s what makes it a great book. Parrot and Olivier is a fine book as well, but it’s no Lolita.
