Book Review

DMR
by Daniel Trask
One Tiny Pizza Publishing, 2008
www.otppub.com.
ISBN-13: 978-0975951514

Daniel Trask's DMR is a skillful, amusing and often profound novel about a ticklish subject—the care of mentally disabled adults at the Massuchussets Department of Mental Retardation, the organization from which the book takes its title. There are numerous pitfalls that a book like this can sink into, and Trask sidesteps all of them. He doesn't work so safely in his treatment as to be sterile, and neither does he offend. More importantly, DMR never surrenders to the temptation to make the Individuals (as decency currently terms the mentally handicapped) come off as wacky and slapstick in their challenges. This book isn't Crazy People; there is no character who riffs on a variety of "howdy-do" gags. There's no cross-eyed savant with the quirky insights of Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys, and any comparison to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest falls flat. The narrator's experiences are original, and there is a flabby truthfulness in the way they're recounted.

Johnathan is fresh out of college when he applies for work at the DMR, thinking a job on the nightshift in an agency home would allow good time to prepare for grad school. He's a likable young man—distinct from the detached hero of so many experiential stories because not only is he affable, he also invests himself in the things that happen around him. For instance, when he accepts a position at a home for four Individuals, he has to go through the formality of meeting the people for whom he'll be caring. In what would be a painfully uncomfortable situation many of us would eagerly escape, John stays for dinner, chips in for the food he eats (and he mannerly eats seconds), and helps at every turn. In fact, he feels bad when he is instructed not to help Julian with his belt when, balls-out naked and beaming, the man shakes his genitals at the table. Throughout DMR, we're treated to a number of blunt and grotesque vignettes like this.

Faced with the unappealing job of feeding, bathing, and cleaning after the Individuals, John is the type of guy who follows the lead of the other employees on his shift. If he's working with a diligent caregiver, he'll match their dedication. If he's scheduled to work with a slouch, he'll relax just the same. More than anything, he doesn't want to rock the boat. It's one of Trask's skills to present a variety of fellow workers with unique and memorable characteristics. DMR is as much about those who care for the Individuals as it is about the Individuals themselves, so his ability to write a person like Heather, the efficient supervisor who "had previously been fatter," and Ralph, the third shift layabout who matches his clip-on bowties to his socks, not only enriches the story but makes it possible to keep a narrative with a lot of players from getting jumbled.

Before long, John is setting out some activities he'd like to accomplish with the Individuals in his charge. He invests himself in their routines and works to develop them, and when he eventually moves to third shift he's disappointed that his time with them will be limited. It also so happens that this new schedule throws askew his drinking hours. Now he takes to the bottle at seven in the morning. Trask writes some interesting things into John's life outside of work, giving him context through the people with whom he associates. His roommate is a tough nut, a womanizing jackass who borrows money to buy weed. His sister is a great girl and a drinking buddy. Trask lets John's interactions with these people show his decency.

Things get complicated by a sexual transgression on the part of one of his co-workers, and John is faced with a serious ethical dilemma. It's creditable that Trask has made the DMR-world full enough that the circumstance is believable without being palatable. John's subsequent decision is an understandable one, and it's not the patronizing, either/or resolution that could have unraveled the complexity of the rest of the story. One of DMR's strongest attributes is the balance between John's goodness and an ordinary but disturbing seediness that underlies it. The grit might just be the way of youth, the tendency for excess, but it bolsters John's character and gives the novel its powerful realism.

Trask's first book, My Dog the Meat Eater, was a short, heartwarming story published when he was 21. It suffered from being severely imbalanced, so that it was difficult to determine sympathies. In its structure, DMR is a little imbalanced too, and a large portion of the book consists of anecdotes that don't do much except reinforce John's character; however, in this case it doesn't translate as a fault because the details are so inviting, and the book is long enough that it can support the sprawl. If you're looking for Oliver Sachs or even Mark Haddon, this isn't it. But Trask's DMR stands tall in a rich library of factotum literature, from "Bartleby the Scrivener" to Down and Out in Paris and London to Richard Yancey's recent memoir, Confessions of a Tax Collector.—Adam Robinson.