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trayals and maledictions against each other, in a more
subtle but no less destructive fashion. In a succession of
careful, precise strokes, Indiana meticulously renders
a portrait of a morally-malformed society whose governing
principles are irrationality and amnesia, where
justice is a commodity and ethical considerations an
irrelevancy – a world whose denizens, poisoned by
immersion in a toxic morass of glossy images, pseudoevents,
and hyperkinetic impermanence, struggle to
retain the vestiges of humanity. It’s hell, repainted in
garish Disney colours.
Wisely avoiding the temptation to proselytize, Indiana
leaves it to the reader to connect the dots between Resentment’s
fiction and real-life events. While purposelyglaring
parallels with the Menendez and Simpson cases
abound, additional layers of possible similarity between
art and life, such as the details of individual characters’
(psycho)pathologies and their role in governing human
interaction, are left open to interpretation. It’s a tactic that
BUY Gary Indiana books online from and
virtually mandates reader participation in the form of
thoughtful interpretation and re-interpretation throughout
the book, leading in a roundabout way to Indiana’s
maintaining our rapt attention.
Resentment is a fable of fin-de-siècle madness in its
most acute stage, a premonitory snapshot of a moment
when order and chaos, reason and insanity are locked
in fights-to-the-death, the outcomes too close to call.
Indiana has cleverly, cruelly drawn the blueprints for
apocalypse-in-microcosm – the whimper, not the bang,
which would signal that the end is near – and left it to
his readers to deduce the degree to which art mirrors
reality. Resentment is subtitled “a comedy”, but any
laughter is only a buffer against tears and terror. The
engine driving Resentment is Resentment, a bitterness
at having arrived at an inescapable cul-de-sac en route
to the American Dream – a frenetic, endless loop where
we’re likely to claw each other to pieces, a Roach Motel
for human souls. �
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