Paris Trout is a novel of limited scope, but what it takes on it accomplishes brilliantly. This is not a novel about racism, or life in a Southern town circa1960. The title of this masterful little novel clues us to the author’s intent. Paris Trout is primarily a character study. What we have here is a portrayal of anti-social personality disorder. We have all crossed paths with Paris Trout. He is the man standing in line in the supermarket, which for reasons we can’t put into words, makes us uneasy, makes us want to put as much distance between him and ourselves as quickly as possible. It is not his racism that sets Paris apart from his neighbors. Sure he is a bigot. However, his assumptions about race and White privilege are not out of step with the rest of his community. Given his comments about how deep down we are all really them same, he may in fact be relatively enlightened on the subject of race. No what sets Paris Trout apart is his mental illness. His refusal to accept societal norms of behavior, his lack of empathy and remorse for those he harms, his proclivity towards violence, his blindness to his own outrageousness, his inability to maintain healthy relationships, the wake of mayhem and chaos he leaves in his path, and the sense of dread he instills in all who come into contact with him, are all hallmarks of anti-social personality disorder. Dexler accomplishes two things with his writing that I find remarkable. First, he skillfully conjures up the same sense of foreboding that meeting Paris Trout in the flesh would induce. In every scene that he appears, even before we have seen the violence he is capable of, we are afraid for what will come next. Again, and again I had a palpable sense of relief every time Paris moved off the page. Second, I found it remarkable, that despite his despicable acts and his complete lack of admirable traits we feel at least a modicum of compassion for this individual. I suppose this is because, while there is more than enough misery to go around, clearly no one in the novel suffers as profoundly as Paris. Especially by the end of the novel I found him more pathetic than evil. His illness profoundly separates him. It precludes him from enjoying even a taste of the wealth of Human experience. This is all the writer is asking us to take from this novel: to acknowledge this man as the Human being that he is. The bigger questions of societal culpability and the impact of racism on our culture, while they are perhaps brought to mind by this novel, are not directly addressed. Paris Trout succeeds so completely in part because of its modest ambition and narrow focus. It is well worth the read for anyone interested in understanding psychic pathology, aberrant behavior and the extremes of Human character.
This book was set during Prohibition and written in 1987 - the year after I was born - but it felt to me like it was written specifically for today. The book is an account of a man's slide into madness after the murder of an innocent girl, and the reactions of those in his small Southern town.However, the most striking part of this book for me was the murderer's insistence that the shooting was entirely justified, was just business. He believes there are two completely different sets of laws; the laws on the books, and the unwritten code that governs men who make a profit. As Paris tells his lawyer, immediately after gunning down two innocent women to try and collect on an $800 debt, "The principle in this is on my side...You're a businessman, I ain't got to explain it to you." This attitude is one that scares me about living in the United States, the belief that making a profit isn't just a right - it's a virtue. You see it played out daily in the news. Saving the environment would be nice, but not if it might cost a business money. As they recover from the Recession, companies are pocketing the profits and refusing to rehire workers who were laid off. People still walk into work at cigarette companies, 40 years after it became accepted that smoking causes cancer, to line their pockets with that money.That's why, I think this book resonated so profoundly with me. It seems to foreshadow the world we find ourselves in today, when we've abandoned our principles in pursuit of profit.Trout, the killer, sums it ump, meeting with his lawyer after learning the girl he shot in cold blood has died. "I get what I'm owed. There is a natural order of things, and you and me and everyone is a part of it, and there ain't no laws can blame anyone for the way God created the earth...I did what was right as rain...I ain't guilty of a thing...If somebody got shot, they shot themself."I know I will be thinking of this book every time I hear about a CEO giving himself a massive raise while laying off workers, or when a fire in a carpet shop in Thailand kills all the workers because an extra door was too expensive to install, or when the coastline is flooded with oil because a company took unnecessary risks in their pursuit of liquid gold. Profit is not a virtue, and this book is a stark, much-needed reminder of that truth.Jesse CozeanMy Grandfather's War
What do You think about Paris Trout (1989)?
I like Pete Dexter. I do. But I don't think he'd like me. I don't know if likes people in general, and, given that he was once near-fatally pummeled by a bat-wielding mob of them, why should he? This is a well-written account of people treating each other abominably. Is it cruelty for cruelty's sake, or is there something more substantial to take away from it? Let me know if you find anything. Dexter's prose especially takes flight during the sequences when the title character is sexually humiliating his long-suffering wife. That seems telling. He got the National Book Award for this novel. Also telling. Conclusion: People are violent perverts. Thanks for the news flash, Pete! Thanks for backing him up, National Book Award voters!But then it's easy to dismiss such content as porn in disguise, and I feel I'm probably missing something. As I said, this is good writing, intent be damned. At no point was I bored, and it won't deter me from trying another of his works of fiction. I was introduced to Dexter's style through "Paper Trails", a compilation of some of his old newspaper columns, and I would recommend that fine collection before "Paris Trout".
—Jeremy
In so many cases of Good vs. Evil, Evil is more interesting. Authors often like the challenge, it seems, of opening our eyes to the reasons Evil does what it does. We may come away with an understanding that fits our theories of human nature. Evil's thought processes, when explained, may ring true, and bad behavior may be driven by unfortunate circumstances as much as anything else. Depending on the degree of the depravity, we may even apply the familiar "There but for the grace of God" line. Well Paris Trout is not such a case. With this one it's more like: "There but for the fact that I'm not a nasty, racist sociopath..." Even the omniscient narrator is loathe to figure him out, and maybe that's for the best.Paris Trout is the bad guy. He kills a 14 year-old black girl in Georgia, provoked by little more than his own cold blood. The town's reaction to it all is what proves to be interesting. As more is revealed, there's less to like. Even his lawyer, the best drawn character in the book, would agree.Dexter also wrote Deadwood (made famous later by HBO) and the screenplay for Mulholland Falls. Any pattern of bleakness may be tied to an event in the early 80's when he was working at the Philadelphia Daily News. According to Wikipedia, he was beaten by an angry, drunken mob with baseball bats in reaction to a column he wrote. I felt some of that in this book.
—Steve
This was an intense, often disturbing story, and the first time I started it, I abandoned it to read Owen Meany. Maybe because Irving's novel turned out to be a royal disappointment, or maybe because Irving's writing style in that novel is both comfortable and smug, I returned to Paris Trout and found the narrative to be refreshingly spare. The most remarkable thing about this story for me is the unexpected course it takes. It begins as a story about racism in the Jim Crow South; the reader assumes that the narrative will follow the efforts of the prosecuting attorney to bring Paris Trout to justice for the murder of 14-year old Rosie Sayers. The trial and the guilty verdict take place well before this novel concludes, however. Indeed, the official acknowledgment of Trout's guilt doesn't really change anything in this small southern town. Trout's mental state declines, and soon it becomes clear that everyone around him, from his estranged wife to his attorney to the judges and police officers who try to avoid him, all participate in his progressive derangement.It reminds me of William Faulkner's story "A Rose For Emily." There, too, an entire town pretends to condemn the Grierson Family while at the same time enabling, even encouraging Miss Emily's decline into insanity and violence. Here Paris Trout's mental instability and consequent crimes are analogous to racism itself, which maintains its strength and rises to its horrible climax in part because everyone looks the other way.
—Nancy
