Relevant message in ‘Exile’ Brewer novelist explores violence in schools

EXILE IN THE KINGDOM, by Robert Harnum, University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H., 165 pages, $22.95.

Philip Carmichael is a 17-year-old star athlete and honor student at his high school. He has a computer, cable TV, video games, friends, family and an AK-47 in his locker. His single mother sends him encouraging e-mails, leaves loving notes and amply stocks the freezer with microwave meals. He faithfully attends basketball practice, does his homework and doesn’t spend time in the principal’s office. His most intense emotional relationship is with his ancient and dying dog Gretchen.

The protagonist in Brewer resident Robert Harnum’s slim novel “Exile in the Kingdom,” is a pretty typical middle class American teen-ager. Philip is on the verge of everything adult life has to offer, but he’ll destroy it all in one impulsive violent act. On an otherwise peaceful Monday morning, in a crowded school hallway, the boy will kill two police officers, two classmates and wound several others before screaming voices descend on him in a school restroom.

Harnum, a writer and former French teacher at Brewer High School, wrote this novel five years ago, before shootings in American high schools culminated at Columbine. He first wrote it in French and intended the book to be a late 20th century update of Albert Camus’ “The Stranger.” Even Harnum’s title, changed from the French “La Derniere Sentinelle” or “The Last Sentry,” pays homage to the Nobel Prize-winning existentialist, whose collection of short stories is titled “Exile and the Kingdom.”

Unfortunately, the author of “Exile in the Kingdom” exceeded his grasp when he reached for Camus. While both writers address the broad theme of the isolation of man in an alien universe and the estrangement of the individual from himself, the setting and structure of Harnum’s novel lessens its emotional and intellectual impact, even though it is written in the first person from Philip’s point of view.

The first third of the novel covers the three days leading up to the shootings and is the most powerful and insightful section in the book. The teen-ager’s emotional isolation is powerful and the way his attention wanders from basketball to his former girlfriend to the Playboy Channel to his parents and back again is chillingly real.

After the shootings, the book loses its way, focusing too much attention on the legal wrangling of Philip’s lawyers. It seems unrealistic that the teen would suddenly pay such close attention to his attorneys, be able to quote verbatim their entire opening and closing statements as well as the questioning of witnesses, without his mind ever wandering from the proceedings.

Harnum chose to set his allegorical tale in Maine – a real place with a legal system far different than the one described in the novel. The impact of Philip’s situation would carry more weight had the author set his story in a state that has the death penalty and allows juries to determine sentencing. Neither is part of Maine’s criminal justice system.

Detailing the courtroom proceedings so precisely shifts the reader’s focus from Philip’s internal thoughts, observations and reactions and almost turns “Exile in the Kingdom” into a Perry Mason episode. The fact that neither the defense nor the prosecution calls to the witness stand the man who taught Philip how to shoot the gun is a ludicrous and laughable omission.

It is Philip’s chilling revelation about his crime that keeps the reader from getting lost in lawyers’ rhetoric and gamesmanship. As they are weighing whether to have the teen-ager testify, Philip tells his attorneys that the crime is “only so violent because you know me, because you’re here.”

“If you were some place else reading about it you might feel upset for a few minutes, but it wouldn’t really bother your day,” Harnum writes. “You’d still go to work, you’d still have a home and a wife and kids and stuff, because it’s not close to you, it ain’t you, and you see lots more violent stuff than that all the time.”

As a writer, Harnum does not come close to Camus. Yet, he succeeds in creating a kind of instant snapshot of teen culture in America in the late 20th century. “Exile in the Kingdom” succeeds in capturing the materially wealthy but emotionally devoid and disconnected lives some teen-agers lead and it is frightening picture.

Unfortunately, the people who would have the most insight into Philip’s actions and feelings may never read “Exile in the Kingdom.” Because of the novel’s violent subject matter and the fact that Harnum writes realistically about masturbation, it’s doubtful whether the book will make the reading lists of many high school English classes.

While this is a flawed novel, random, impulsive and thoughtless acts of violence in school should be discussed by the people most affected by it. “Exile in the Kingdom” offers an excellent way to begin that conversation.