A CEREBRAL OFFER

Two artistic friends get pulled into an odd series of socially disruptive acts in this literary novel.

Harry Gnostopolos co-owns the Cabrillo with his girlfriend, Dana, in San Francisco’s foggy Richmond District. The independent movie theater is struggling financially, which is putting a strain on the couple’s relationship. Added to this is Harry’s recently developed gephyrophobia, a fear of bridges—ironic given his proximity to so many large ones. Dana is convinced this is just a new manifestation of Harry’s unwillingness to leave his beloved San Francisco, something that Dana is anxious to do. She’s also confounded as to why Harry, who made an Oscar-nominated Kerouac biopic right out of film school, never tried to make a second movie. Then Jackson Halifax reenters Harry’s life. A notorious author and bohemian Harry knew in his younger days. Jackson brings with him a Beats-obsessed Moroccan woman named Nadine Chakir, with whom Harry becomes infatuated at first glance. It turns out that Jackson is in need of a cash influx just as much as Harry is, and he has just the plan for how to get it. Jackson has connections to a mysterious woman named Madam X, who pays him to complete strange, high-profile tasks, such as dismantling all of the Facebook-installed speed cameras around San Francisco. Can they pull off this modern Merry Pranksters job in order to become financially solvent? And if they do, what even more earth-shattering tricks could they manage? Along with Jackson, Nadine, and a cabal of mysterious criminals, Harry may have the chance to strike back in the name of the bohemian San Francisco of his youth.

Janjigian’s tale is a buoyant pastiche, full of unexpected brawls, journeys, romances, and impassioned dialogues about life and art. There is a nostalgia for an earlier, bohemian time shared by the author and most of his characters, all of whom love the Beats, San Francisco, and romantic, itinerant lifestyles. But this enthusiasm comes across more as fandom for a thing than the thing itself, and the book is filled with passages like this one—about a former acquaintance of Harry’s—that ring thoroughly hollow: “Arsen had left San Francisco to follow a beautiful bipolar Spaniard whom he’d fallen tragically in love with. When things fell apart, he stayed in Barcelona trying to figure out his next move, with suicide on the table of options.” Jackson is a complete contrivance—the leader of a surrealist art movement who became a successful fiction writer, vineyard owner, boxer, and, finally, art thief. Harry loves him, and readers are supposed to love him as well. (Most will not.) To confirm how completely rooted the novel is in the mid-20th century, the book ends up with a deep dive into the real story behind President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. (All the more befuddling, as Harry and Jackson are supposed to be members of Generation X.) If this is the old San Francisco that has been lost to gentrification, many readers might rather peruse a novel about the tech industry.

A lighthearted but outdated tale about keeping the counterculture alive.