Book Review: “Toad” by Katherine Dunn
Strange, Beguiling, and Formerly Lost
I wasn’t sure if I was going to review the novel up for discussion here, Toad. It’s a book by a woman for women, and — after all — how would I be qualified enough to talk about it as such as a man? I’m glad, though, that I picked it up because it is quite a colourful book. It was written by Katherine Dunn (1945–2016), who was most famous for writing a grotesque novel published in the late ’80s about circus freaks called Geek Love. That novel has become something of an underground cult classic — as the foreword to Toad points out, it’s the kind of book that inspires female strippers to go out and get tattoos of how the main characters would be imagined to look like not so discretely on their bodies. The book was also nominated for a National Book Award, one of the U.S.’s biggest literary prizes. Toad, it turns out, is an earlier novel — written sometime in the 1970s — that for some reason or another never saw the light of day in terms of being published during Dunn’s tumultuous lifetime. (Dunn was an interesting woman. She tended bars, and broke up fights in the process — tough lady! — and then wound up writing about boxing for a few mainstream publications such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated.) Thus, 50 years later, we now have Toad in print. How does it measure up to her best-known work?
Well, I can say that Toad is well-written — but saying that feels like a cop-out. Whenever someone says a book is “well-written,” they’re saying that it is literary and full of “good” writing (as one is willing to objectively measure that), but, in the end, just wasn’t quite their cup of tea. That’s actually how I feel about Toad. The book is certainly one that was written by Katherine Dunn, and it has its share of gross-out moments along the lines of Geek Love. However, that’s really where the comparisons end. While Geek Love was a more complex and perhaps even speculative novel, Toad veers more towards the campus life sketchbook. It is also very much a product of its counter-cultural times — making its publication now something of an oddity. Still, Toad is the kind of feminist novel I’d imagine would be taught nowadays in undergraduate English classes at university because the protagonists are generally young (except for during narration in the “present moment”) and readers in their early 20s might relate to them. The story is centered around a curmudgeonly hermit named Sally Gunnar who is friends with two fellow college students named Sam (who frequently changes his name, and, thus, his identity) and Carlotta, his girlfriend. They live in Portland, Oregon. As the novel progresses, Sam and Carlotta quit school, buy a cheap farm and car and essentially drop out of mainstream life. Carlotta eventually becomes pregnant. From there, the book is — at least in part — about the recklessness of youth and the consequences of irresponsibility.
Despite any reservations I had, I was quite charmed by Toad’s first half. The writing is sharp, even if it induces you to vomit. For instance, the first time we meet Carlotta, she is presented as a beautiful young woman dancing barefoot on the lawn of someone’s house. Then she steps in dog poop matter-of-factly. Elsewhere, an obese middle-aged Sally comes home from work wanting to eat a bag of donuts, only to discover that her lover has peed on the bag to ensure that she doesn’t eat them so she can lose weight. She eats the soiled donuts anyway. I think it can go without saying that Toad is a transgressive novel and, I don’t know if this is an overused adjective, a fascinating read. However, and I want to be respectful even if the author has been dead for more than five years (and you can’t libel the dead after all), I did find the book to be the product of a young writer still learning her craft. Toad meanders. It goes into unexpected places it didn’t have to go. (Some of the topicality is about suicide, which comes right out of left field. After all, despite their isolation, these protagonists never felt to be wholly depressed, at least they didn’t to me. They’re more miscreants than wrist-slashers, I think.) I felt that 100 pages of this more than 300-page book (at least in print galley form) could have been easily lopped off. I found the book’s second half kind of plodded along aimlessly once Sam and Carlotta establish a family for themselves.
Yet, if you’re a fan of Dunn’s work and are willing to try a novel that’s in some ways thematically different than Geek Love, some things are astonishing about Toad. Dunn’s command of language and vocabulary is breathtaking as much as it can annoy — after all, who like to get up from the bed or the couch and run to the dictionary every time a $50 bill is used? (But I don’t mean to criticize too harshly there — you will learn new things by reading Toad, after all.) I’m also a bit stymied by the fact that it has taken a half-century for this book to be published. It was very publishable, I found, even though it is not a perfect book. I’ve certainly read a lot worse from mainstream publishers. I don’t know the reasons why it didn’t get published immediately after being written, and perhaps the reasons are best kept as a mystery for me. (Maybe if I were so inclined, a Google search might turn up why Dunn didn’t send this book out to agents or if publishers turned it down.) However, a book that has been “lost” or unknown for so long features some quality writing, and some interesting (there’s probably another lazy word reviewers use right there) qualities to the book too. If they don’t mind stepping in some dog shit in bare feet, Toad might be the perfect anti-Christmas gift for your loved ones this year. But just don’t let those loved ones pee on your donuts in return! Consider yourself warned.
Katherine Dunn’s Toad was published by MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux on November 1, 2022.
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