I finished The Basic Eight and I can't decide if I enjoyed it

2024-08-17

Spoilers to follow.

I wrote in my week notes:

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler. Handler's Adverbs is often what I cite when folks ask what my favorite book is, and I loved Watch Your Mouth, too. I need light reprieves from The Odyssey, too, so this seemed an excellent time to round out my reading of Handler's bibliography. I'm about halfway through and enraptured by the narrative voice. It's pretentious, as a story narrated by a precocious high school senior should be, without being cloying, and with Handler's charming humor throughout. I love it so far and have faith that the feeling will continue. I normally hate books set in high school, but this one takes me back to my high school self — somehow, in a good way, which I don't think I've ever felt before.

I finished the book an hour or two after posting that.

I stand by some of that: I love Handler's prose, his humor, his ability to string you along in suspense when you know the ending, and paramount here, his playfulness with plot structures and meta-narrative. In reading others' reviews online¹, I am finding that detractors felt the main characters to be irritatingly privileged, unrealistic, and arty (to which I say of course they are — they are high school characters in a fictional book and they are meant to be — but I can see how that might make almost 400 page a slog to read for some²) and that the twist was easy to guess.

Perhaps here is where I must turn in my English degree as I admit sheepishly that I did not see the twist coming at all, despite acknowledging Flannery as an unreliable narrator (clearly not realizing to what extent) and knowing in advance that there was a twist.³ I will reiterate my spoiler warning and no longer dance around it. Natasha, Flannery's best friend and a purported member of the Basic Eight friend group, does not exist — is a manifestation of Flannery's id, the voice and actor in what she wishes to say or do but lacks the courage to own. The twist is outplayed by the almost thirty years of media that stand between me and The Basic Eight's publication (interestingly, the book was published in the same year Fight Club the movie was released, so perhaps it was more novel (get it?) a twist then), and it's a shlockiness that I don't expect from Handler (his adult novels, at least). In his defense, it was his first novel, and the shlock is intentional I think. And in my further defense (to whom? to whom?), while the twist is subtly revealed (thank you to the reviewer who mentioned page 99, which hits you right in the face), Handler also deliberately covers it up through the unreliable narration. There's layers-upon-layers of clever unreliability at work, but the twist nonetheless left me dissatisfied by the ending. I closed the book and was left asking, "Is that all there is?"

Having known that there was a twist ahead of me, I had hoped it was around Adam's murder. Flannery reveals early in the narrative that she kills Adam, a boy she is in love with — the entire narration of the book hinges upon this, and the murder is the climax of the book. As I reached that moment, I read almost through my fingers and hoped that the twist was that she didn't actually kill him; instead, that the twist was that she built this (again, intentionally) ridiculous narrative frame around an invented murder to cope with the simple fact of teenage heartbreak and shitty high school boys; creating the artifice of teen murder media frenzy as an allegory for the high school gossip scene; positioning herself as a ward of the state to punish herself for letting her teen angst bullshit tear apart the Basic Eight, her beloved band of misfits, disappointing and dissolving her friendship with Natasha, and losing herself in the process. The narrative frame would then fulfill Hattie's prophecy that Flannery would become wise — in a typically kooky Handler way, by constructing fictional talk shows and discussion questions — but with the empty lesson we adults learn: wisdom comes through experience, and that experience usually blows.

I am not a writer and it is for a good reason. Reader, she does kill Adam. My proposed revision is probably a corny ending too, and perhaps I need to eat the words I say to Joe as he makes us quit watching shows like Search Party because he can't stand to watch characters make bad decisions over and over again: that's conflict! That's what makes for interesting stories! Flannery has to kill Adam because I'd be just as dissatisfied if she didn't, and I'd be here complaining that Handler didn't have the guts to follow through on his promising hook. I'll keep telling myself that until I believe it.

I'm left annoyed. Natasha being Flannery's invented shadow-self seems clichéd by 2024 standards. It undercuts the beautiful, ride or die female friendship that I loved, especially during the uncomfortable⁴ episode with Mr. Carr. In fact, without Flannery and Natasha's friendship, the girls of the Basic Eight friend group — Flannery included — are awfully catty to each other, in a way that makes me uncomfortable considering this book was written by an adult man.⁵ Flannery's only supportive friends become the male ones — Douglas and Gabriel — and Kate and Flannery a derisive mockery of teenage girls who gossip and steal each other's flames. Kate's orchestration of the murder cover-up becomes a self-interested satisfaction that the ex who wronged her is dead; V___ is merely protecting her social standing; Lily is emotional and throws up in stress; Jenn I cannot remember at 1:28am; and Flannery, crucially, hates and excludes Flora. When there's no light in the dark — no Natasha for Flannery — the representation of teenage female friendships and, by extension, teenage female characters becomes sneering instead of complex.

Most egregiously, The Basic Eight's twist feels like the bogey monster of but the main character was crazy all along!, which scrapes dangerously close to my other hated contrivance, it was all a dream, and it undercuts Handler's actual main goal: to satirize the media frenzy of violent teens and Satanic panic. You can't do that while also using the same devices of those who create Satanic panic. It's instead a satire Ouroboros, feeding the thing it hopes to destroy.

The Basic Eight is a good book. It is well-written and I enjoyed reading it mostly. The ending disappointed me. Those can all be compatible statements, simple truths, and I can live with that complication. I'll keep saying that too until I believe it.

Adverbs, I love you regardless.