The Occidental Book of the Dead

This hyped literary crime novel has as much heft in its sheer physical size, as it has in the ideas it explores. It takes a dedicated and determined reader to make it to the end, and a reader who has a lot of time on their hands – because it is written to be read slowly, the words carefully digested so pictures emerge from the page, angrily taking shape and substance. However, a warning as it is not a book for everyone.

The Occidental Book of the Dead requires slow reading, re-reading and making notes as one reads – because of shifting points of view, opposing retellings, thematic complexity and dense sentence structure. Adding to this, the narrative contains much urban American regional slang, cop terminology, ghetto euphemisms and acronyms that do not get explained when they appear.  That all being said, this book is extraordinary in its ambition but perhaps less so in its execution. However the question that remains for the reader when you put the book down is “was it worth it?”

Set in Atlantis [coded for Atlanta], in the southern US state Glorious [coded for Georgia], Johnson’s novel interweaves the short life of a white teenage school boy Anthony ‘Tony’ Montana with that of a black police officer [coded for peace officer] George Washington Jonson [aka ‘Go Go’].

The first section is set in 2005. School boy Montana is a smart teenager, living in a rough housing project [‘The Bricks’] which is home for predominantly poor black families. He works as a low-level white drug dealer for the unpleasant black criminal ‘Pepper’ and his two henchmen ‘Cornelius’ and ‘Ivan’. Being a white school-kid, he can sell drugs in the affluent white neighbourhoods [where a black face would be a cop magnet].

When a consignment of drugs goes missing while in the possession of Montana, the criminal ‘Pepper’ takes control of Montana’s beloved dog, a Pitbull named ‘Knuckles’, and will only return it once he has earned back the money lost to the missing drugs. ‘Pepper’ enters ‘Knuckles’ in illegal dogfights, which are harrowing not just for Montana, but also for the reader. Montana is suspicious of his ex-junkie mother as well as his ex-convict uncle Frank in having a hand in the mystery of the missing drugs.

Then the narrative zips back in time to 1992 focusing on the black cop George Washington Jonson [aka ‘Go Go’] and his life emerging from ‘The Bricks’, the same poor black neighbourhood housing project that would be home for the white school kid Montana [two decades later]. Brought up by a single mother ’Go Go’ Jonson falls in love with the mysterious MK [Mary Kay] but in order to escape the ghetto to make a life for themselves, he joins the US Army and becomes stationed in Germany. The experience opens his eyes, for he asserts that he is treated as ‘a human being, not just as a black man’. He makes civilian German friends becoming popular as he can source drugs for rave-parties. This side-line however leads to repercussions which result in his quiet discharge from the army and return to the US.

Back in Atlanta [aka Atlantis], ‘Go Go’ finds employment with the Police Department as a rookie cop. His former girlfriend Mary Kay [MK] is now shacked up in ‘The Bricks’ with a drug dealer named Zachariah Isiah Paul [aka ‘Dice’]. He finds himself at the end of a restraining order when he discovers that Mary Kay and ‘Dice’ have an infant child Aladdin, who ‘Go Go’ believes could be his son.

‘Go Go’ like all the rookie cops is assigned a FTO [a field training officer], named Tucker – a seasoned white policeman helping the intake of rookie cops adjust to modern policing. Tucker is a self-proclaimed ‘Red Neck’, but takes a shine to ‘Go Go’, even inviting him to home barbeques enjoying the company of Tucker’s son Tommy and his liberal wife, a teacher who he refers to as ‘The Brenda’.  ‘Go Go’ is also introduced to Tucker’s mistress ‘Kaysha’ such is the growing trust between these two black and white cop partners.

Matters take a swerve when a police raid [that ‘Go Go’ witnesses] descends upon the ghetto house ‘MK’ and ‘Dice’ share, landing both in prison or what Tucker’s acronym OASIS spells – Off America’s Streets Into the System.

Then Johnson’s narrative fast forwards [back] to 2005, where the life [and death] of the young school kid Anthony ‘Tony’ Montana and the [now] older seasoned cop George Washington Jonson [aka ‘Go Go’] collide.

Atlanta / Atlantis is well into the gentrification phase of the city’s development. ‘Go Go’ is now married to a white woman Colleen, and has a stepson Alan who he adores with as much affection as the boy reciprocates back. Now, ‘Go Go’ is the FTO [field training officer] breaking in a rookie cop named Utner who appears to be a tad gung ho, and perhaps also a white redneck.

While on night patrol, ‘Go Go’ Jonson and his rookie partner Utner get involved in the shooting of a suspected drug dealer gunman. It is white cop Utner holding the smoking gun, and when the hoodie is removed from the body on the tarmac – it’s revealed to be the corpse of a white youth – a fatal juxtaposition of what would become ‘black lives matter’ vs, ‘American police’ situation.

Enter Internal Affairs, Captain Ridenhaus from Philadelphia, written statements, interviews and the complex racial history of America.

Uncomfortable and at times unsettling reading.

Like some of the characters, not all readers will make it to the end of the book, and if they do, they may not be intact and it could be argued the readers that got to read ‘The End’ should be honoured with a certificate of achievement. With honesty, I must confess I sadly won’t be a recipient of the completion award for ‘The Occidental Book of the Dead’.

Despite enjoying the rich language, the intensity and challenge of reading the first half of this narrative; especially viewing urban Atlanta and America’s South before and after the millennium through the [first-person] eyes of an African American – it just became too much for me, and I was drained and had to leave the task unfinished.

However, I would implore others to seek out this unusual [and uncomfortable] literary crime novel, for it is so, so very different in terms of reading experience, one that author T. Geronimo Johnson has crafted into an extraordinary book – one that challenges as well as confronting some harsh truths.