In Kick It Till It Breaks: A Belated Novel of the 1960′s, Ira Robbins performs as literary lepidopterist as he pins a roving cast of radicals, wannabes, double agents, academics, and guileless bumblers to the specimen board of his novel, letting the reader examine each in turn. This approach, a finely honed magnification, allows us to see every little flaw and failure in the characters—a clever choice, considering Robbins is sharply limning the role of the individual within the sprawling hue and cry of 1960′s activism. His almost clinical study of these characters is at a far remove; one gets the sense that Robbins would like to have more empathy for them but is finding it a little difficult. He treads a fine line here, one that is poised between biting satire and the kind of bemused tenderness often bestowed upon children, who know not what they do. No matter how sharp the satire, however, Robbins seems to espouse a keen awareness and fondness for his players; there is a Swiftian flavor in the work.
The novel opens in 1964, where anti-hero Ydinia Ochreman is beginning her career of political radicalism. Ydinia has a tattoo of Chairman Mao on her thigh and an X-shaped scar on her cheekbone, courtesy of a signet-ringed punch from a New York City cop. She is anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-establishment; she is not precisely ravenous for revolution, but rather ravening, hunting down injustice and dispatching it as she sees fit. Problematically for Ydinia, though, is the execution of her grandiose plans. She is the queen of idealistic rhetoric without the wherewithal to back it up. She becomes the mouthpiece of a shadowy group called the Plumbers, a radical lefty bunch at the top of the FBI’s wanted list, and she engages in all kinds of protest, but the sum total of her acts are ineffectual at best.
A brief litany of her exploits, ranging over a period of nine years and encompassing locations from Georgia to England, include the following:”Liberating” a scrum of orphans from a children’s home, dropping them off as she travels; being complicit in the bombing of Lock and Dam 53 on the Ohio River, which accidentally blows off her compatriot’s fingers and kills one innocent watchmen to boot; inadvertently falling in with a player in the Irish Republican Army, only to get involved with his mother—a woman militantly devoted to spreading the gospel of atheism.
At some points in her journey, Ydinia does stop to question herself, but these brief introspections never last long. Her role in the novel, in a darkly funny way, serves as the anti-bildungsroman; despite all that she does, all that she sees, her development is static and stunted. She is in good company, however; the Robert Altmanesque cast of supporting characters that intersects with her have their own issues. Far from focusing on just Ydinia, Robbins does a masterful job of illuming the varied tensions and viewpoints at play during this era. There’s Jonah, the depressed naïf who pops up and gets himself in trouble due to Ydinia’s machinations. There’s a brief episode with members of the Black Panthers, there’s the Imagine Peace Again Committee leader, Husk, who is a double-crossing FBI informer on the side, and Stan Porter, the FBI agent who sacrifices him to appease the agency’s director, to mention just a few.
Most of these intersected threads are tied up for the reader by the book’s conclusion. Ydinia’s story picks back up in the early 90’s—it’s the same old Ydinia, albeit one with a bit more clarity and self-awareness. It’s not shocking when Agent Porter, all these years later, finally nabs her and puts her in jail; what is shocking, however, is how she chooses to extricate herself from that situation. Ydinia’s last moments are a twisted punch line to the dark stand-up act of her past; though the reader is in on the joke, it is powerful, sorrowful, and unsettling nonetheless.
In Kick It Till It Breaks, Robbins has created a world that is complex and tragicomic, a world that tilts this way and that. You may think you know what side you were on, back then (and now) but this political picaresque could subvert your own ideologies. And if you laugh darkly while reading, well then—viva la révolution! to you.
Amity Bitzel is a contributing editor to shaking like a mountain
You can’t say “insists upon itself” without me thinking of what Stewie said to Brian about not liking the Godfather on Family Guy. But seriously, I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I never saw that critique aimed at Tom Brokow when he brought out the Greatest Generation, which could have been construed as just another book about Depression era kids who grew up to fight in WWII,if he didn’t have something to say. And it sounds like Mr. Robbins has something to say.
Great review, but it raises the question: what is gained by another book about the Sixties? That decade–that generation–continues to insist upon itself and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.
Work it, girl!