On Reading The Liquidators

As critic, novelist, and one of the judges of the 2005 National Book Awards, Tom LeClair knows good fiction when he sees it. And

The Liquidators

, his latest novel, clearly fits that description.

Tom LeClair

A unique blend of storytelling, wit, and serious meditation on family and materialism,

The Liquidators

traces a few weeks in the life of aging Tom Bond, who has sacrificed too much to his successful business to let it slip beyond family control. But neither of his children is interested in taking on the cross-country empire he has built by buying and reselling merchandise from failed businesses. His customers may appreciate or resent him for engaging them in the process of “diffusing the collected waste of (the) nation’s commerce,” but their motivations suddenly become less important to him than unraveling the past and finding a way to compensate for old failures.

Just when he has retired and seems poised to do so, an unexpected turn of events sends him on a four-day journey from his native Middleton, Ohio, to the river towns of Kentucky and Indiana. Ending up in Paducah and heading north again, he discovers the “two-word secret” about life that can uplift as well as destroy. It provides an unexpected but masterful and eloquently written ending to the liquidator’s story.

LeClair says his inspiration for the novel was an advertising supplement in a Sunday newspaper: “I saw this garish mini-catalogue of discounted or failed goods, and I fell in love with the word ‘liquidation,’ its sound and all its possible meanings. So then I had to invent a liquidator, the language he would use, and the history of liquidating, which took me back to the origins of civilization when humans liquefied substances, such as lead, to make money and make history.”

For those familiar with the works of novelist William Faulkner, there are obvious similarities between his

Absalom, Absalom!

and

The Liquidators

. And LeClair invites Faulkner devotees to ask the question he himself poses: “Why do you have the nerve to write a sequel to one of the greatest novels in American literature?”

The answer? “

The Liquidators

didn't begin as a sequel to Faulkner, but when I realized that I was unconsciously reworking this grand novel of failure I decided to make my book an explicit updating of Faulkner's story of ambition and race. Probably a more accurate word than ‘updating’ would be ‘addendum.’ Flannery O'Connor said that when the big train comes down the tracks, you better get out of the way. I don't mind being the caboose.”