Gould: A Novel in Two Novels - Softcover

Gould Bookbinder, the protagonist of Stephen Dixon's novel, Gould: A Novel in Two Novels is not a nice man. When we first meet him, he is an opportunistic college freshman in the process of seducing a girl whom he later impregnates. This is just the first of several pregnancies for which Gould accepts no responsibility. He grows older in the first part of the novel--aptly titled "Abortions"--but wisdom is slow to catch up. Not until near the end of the first section, when Gould is in his 40s, does his attitude change. Then he finds himself trying (unsuccessfully) to convince a pregnant girlfriend to have the child. The second part of Gould, entitled "Evangeline," is a flashback to the long affair between Gould and Evangeline--a relationship that lasts as long as it does mainly because of Gould's affection for Evangeline's son.

With no paragraphs, no page breaks, and precious little attribution of dialogue, Gould is not an easy book to read. The eye tires of words running unrelieved by white space across the page, and Dixon's idiosyncratic prose style can be irritating. Despite it all, Gould is ultimately a remarkable and rewarding read as Stephen Dixon transforms his creepy antihero into someone who, while perhaps not likeable, is at least sympathetic.

Gould is a self-absorbed and exhaustively self-conscious man who becomes fixated on the desire to procreate. Almost any sentence he utters is a likely and immediate subject of his own preemptive metacommentary, a habit that provides much of the novel's humor, especially when the habit spreads to his lovers. As the novel progresses, though, it reveals Gould's increasingly aggressive need to block objections to his own desires, primarily the desire to procreate, which puts him at odds with some of his open relationship^-minded partners and is thwarted by the abortions they have or claim to have. His procreative efforts are usually carried out with deception and coercion: by promising but then failing to withdraw during lovemaking; by threatening to kidnap a pregnant lover until she carries to term; or by covertly inseminating his overtly objecting, infirm wife so as to have the magical "three" children he has always dreamed of. Dixon has created a distinctive portrait of one who is finally too selfish to acknowledge even his wife's wishes. Jim O'Laughlin