Vitamin C love potion may be unwholesome
From the National Post, August 4, 2001

LEMON
By Lawrence Krauser, McSweeney's Books 246 pp., $22

In The Fountainhead, one of Ayn Rand's potboiler mash notes to capitalism, newspaper columnist Ellsworth M. Toohey champions a book called The Gallant Gallstone. That The Gallant Gallstone is as terrible as the title suggests (if not more so) is beside the point; Toohey wields so much power and influence he can "convince" the litterati and the hoi polloi alike into believing it is "the product of a scintillating brain."

Which brings us to Lawrence Krauser, a playwright who has reworked the tired tale of love lost and found by adding a twist of vitamin C. Early in the novel, an office drone called Wendell must deal with his girlfriend Marge leaving him. He wakes up the next day to discover the left side of his face is paralyzed. His friends orchestrate an unsuccessful blind date. Wendell slowly turns his attention to thoughts of citrus. Curiosity becomes obsession, and Wendell loses his job and the respect of family and friends.

To invoke a nearly overused turn-of-phrase, David Eggers is the new Ellsworth M. Toohey. Not to suggest Lemon is on par with The Gallant Gallstone, but if not for the McSweeney's publishing concern, Lemon would not exist. Lemon first began life, in fact, in McSweeney's journal, Issue 2, in the form of a 32-point plot summary, an excerpt of dialogue and a meandering poem about le citron. From these humble seeds grew Lemon.

Eggers has published this book (featuring unique, individually hand-drawn covers by Krauser) because he can. It would not exist otherwise. Perhaps this is good and noble, and perhaps it is punishment for the McSweeney's faithful. Lemon is experimental, with an equal balance between the excitement and annoyance the word connotes. Krauser uses italics and dashes to indicate dialogue, providing a crisp momentum to his conversations. There are stillborn moments, however, such as Section III, which begins with a nine-page poem about the citrus du jour, featuring lines such as: "Or maybe it's a Higher Zeal/that fuses California peel."

Lemon is at its most vibrant and tart when it addresses the ridiculous elements of the tale -- dealing with co-workers, facing parental recriminations, a barroom bull session with buddies. These moments work not only because of Wendell's deadpan seriousness, but also thanks to the wry inevitability of the romance; Wendell is helpless yet completely cogent in his bizarre affection. Krauser metes out the absurdity in measured doses.

When Wendell's boss confronts him, the lemon lover pings each conversational pong:

-- The lemon has been in the building, has it not?
-- There have been thousands of lemons in the building.
-- But we're not talking about thousands of lemons.
-- More than four billion each year are consumed in the States alone, sir.
-- We're talking, correct me if I'm wrong, about one single particular lemon.
-- That's five pounds per capita per annum.

In moments like this, the reader ignores Krauser's self-imposed handicap. (Or is that challenge?) That Krauser can write so passionately and lyrically about the nature of obsession and attraction, even though his ardour is directed at a lemon, is a testimony to his abilities: "You are a dream or the fruit of a dream or the root of a dream. You are no lemon but an orbish yellowness in a room, next to a knife, mapped in my eyes. You are a theorem, I prove you by my own congruence."

Wendell bestows primary and secondary sexual characteristics upon the lemon (aureole, nipple, clitoris), which drifts from amusing -- his friends dub him a "citrussexual" -- to disturbing; he explains to his parents, "The relationship, if that's the word you're comfortable with, has been consummated."

Too often, however, the reader is left to push past tortured ruminations about a suspended animation between telephone rings or inner monologues about the colour yellow. A frequent but unresolved running commentary about Buckminster Fuller serves little more than to frustrate us, and Krauser tends to type himself into a yellow corner. Near the end of the novel, a policeman catches Wendell acting oddly in a precinct parking lot, discovers the lemon and eventually destroys it with a hammer. It's difficult to decide whether one should cheer or cry.