Sadder than a Speeding Bullet

All My Friends are Superheroes
by Andrew Kaufman
2003, Coach House Books


I have a certain stock group of people I rely on for really good book recommendations - people whose taste I trust across a variety of media. One of these friends very passionately recommended All My Friends are Superheroes to me a few years ago. I checked the library or bookstore several times over to no avail. Recently I explained my inability to locate it and I was granted, in the absence of a loaner copy, a signed, adorably well-read copy of what turned out to be a really wonderful book.

Before handing me her copy, my friend warned me that the book's author, Andrew Kaufman, was heavily inspired by Aimee Bender and that the influence would be obvious. All My Friends are Superheroes indeed wears its magical realistic roots on its sleeve, but its heart becomes all the more tender despite it.

Like Bender's work, Kaufman's book imagines a world not entirely unlike our own. It takes place in airports and apartments, backyard parties and basement get-togethers. Magical realism draws its strength from engaging the conflicts and parallels that emerge from uncommon goings-on in common settings. As the title would suggest, this particular foray into the genre is populated by characters with superpowers of one variety or another.

Many of the characters appear in the guise of traditional superhero roles - invisibility, for example, or the power of persuasion. Kaufman deliciously deviates from the path of predictability here in creating a number of characters whose superpower is merely a thinly veiled satire on the culture in question: the social and romantic lives of twenty-somethings. To wit:

The Chip

Chip was born with a chip on her shoulder. It's an immensely heavy chip, a chip that weighs so much it forced her to develop superhuman strength. But the chip on Chip's shoulder weighs so much that only her super-strength could remove it, but she can't use her super-strength until she gets rid of the chip and she can't get rid of the chip without using her super-strength. She appears no stronger than any regular.

The book is populated by a series of vignettes describing these superheroes, who more often than not ring uncannily familiar as the denizens of most social gatherings one suffers through in young adulthood.

While the satirical bent to these portraits is sharpened to a rather nasty edge, this in no way dulls the cumulative emotional effect of Kaufman's book. Coursing between these delightfully cynical vignettes is the blood of a terribly sentimental heart.

The story is primarily concerned with the relationship of the main character with his girlfriend, The Perfectionist. The Perfectionist (or Perf, as he diminutive-izes her) is just that: a girl who must have everything exactly so in her life, in her apartment, in her surroundings. She possesses a magical skill to make every moment he spends with her utterly, unerringly perfect.

One of Perf's ex-boyfriends becomes jealous of the main character Tom. The ex's superpower is the ability to convince people of things and Perf falls so heavily under his powers of persuasion that she no longer sees her boyfriend. He simply disappears.

The book is short, largely due to Kaufman's knowledge of how far he may draw out a somewhat simple concept. And while the magical aspect of magical realism here is laid on pretty thick, it opens Kaufman to explore rather grand subject matter in a a precise, but generalized way. In other words, unfettered by traditional realistic characters and settings, he need not mince words to convey a theme that is gnawing at him.

For an example of how Kaufman generalizes his themes, read the following excerpt in which Perf invites a door-to-door love salesman into her home to receive his pitch. Here, Kaufman rather beautifully categorizes the scope of human affection into commodities that ring so true it smarts.

"What kind of love are we interested in today?" he asked.

"What kinds do you have?"

"Well," he said. He stood up. "I've got the love you want, the you think you want, the love you think you want but don't when you finally get it..."

"That must be very popular."

"It is."

"What else have you got?"

"I've got the live that's yours as long as you do what you're told, the love that worries it's not good enough, the love that worries it'll be found out, the love that fears being judged and found lacking, the love that's almost - but not quite - strong enough, the love that makes you feel they're better than you..."

The effect is rather tongue-in-cheek but, conversely, quite sentimental in its seriousness. Kaufman's talent as a writer is in the precarious balancing act of these brittle, winking satirical asides and the rather earnest emotion running alongside it. Each tendency tempers the other; without the caustic and cheeky asides, the emotion would come across as plangent, excessive, or desperate rather than quietly sweet. The effect is one of a deeply intelligent writer who wears his heart on his sleeve but deftly layers his outerwear.

The thought that has stuck with me the longest since completing the book is the book's conceit - that Tom is the only non-superhero in the world in which he lives. The feeling that one is dwarfed by the achievements, talents, skills and quirks of others is familiar territory, personally.

To take the emotional concept of never feeling good enough - which I think, is intrinsic in most romantic relationships - and transpose it into a cute metaphor of superpower is handled with grace. It would be too easy for the concept to become cloying. In Kaufman's able hands, his imagination flourishes into an earnest parable of sincerity, love, self-worth and loss.

While Tom may suffer internally from his dearth of overt magicalness, it is without question his realness that endears him to both The Perfectionist and the reader.