'Sins' finds summer lovin' with weak prose

Collecting Sins

Santa Monica Press

Imagine, if you will, that you're 15 years old back in the late '60s, and during the course of one summer you get stoned for the first time, hitch-hike to the beach everyday, and have sex with three different women (two of which are older than you). You might think a tale with this much adolescent discovery and kinky action on the side would be inherently fascinating and enthralling. But miraculously and inexplicably, Steven Sobel's debut novel "Collecting Sins" manages only to bore and frustrate the reader.

Sobel's protagonist, Ben, a fifteen-year-old boy growing up in Southern California thirty years ago, is possibly a cut above the average teenager in his confidence and intelligence. However, after rattling off his paradoxically uneventful adventures for 279 pages, one may begin to wonder if such good character qualities are even relevant. While in the sewers one day with his best friend Graham (they are collecting sins for the newly Catholicized Graham to use in confession), they happen upon an unconscious woman to whom Ben returns to save with a different friend, Jackson, the next day. The woman is grateful to Ben and Jackson, and seeing that she is a prostitute, she promises to sleep with both of them in the form of an IOU (commencement of sexual subplot number one).

At the same time, Ben deepens his friendship with Connie (a girl dying of cancer) to the point where they become boyfriend and girlfriend, making up the second sexual subplot. Simultaneously, Ben starts going to a small canyon town near the beach. While eating there one day, a girl a couple of years older than him, Franny, sits with him. Ben talks the talk with her and drops a few lies to keep her interested (the third sexual subplot ensues). No, this is not a script for a porno movie.

Needless to say, Ben eventually sleeps with all of them. But that doesn't matter much, considering Sobel can't close the deal with lurid, erotic, or even romantic details. Ben recounts his lost virginity by saying, "Connie helped me get my clothes off pretty quickly and then I couldn't believe it was over so fast." Thanks for the descriptive prose, Steve.

If a story can't have a plot in which the characters and ideas come full-circle, then it damn well better have some beautiful and transcendent prose fueling the fire. Unfortunately, Sobel's writing is merely compact, easy and stylistically timid. On occasion he gives Ben some really wise remarks and a great ability to act on his thoughts.

The only good piece of wisdom you may come away with from this book is that Ben's optimism is real; beyond that you could just watch any of a number of freeze dried retro Vietnam-era films that try to evoke the same bittersweet emotions. Or, God forbid, you could listen to a Bob Dylan album or read an old Thomas Pynchon novel to see what the experience was really like. Or maybe just put this retro fascination to rest and move forward (or maybe a little further backwards).

However, Sobel's treatment of adolescence is rather refreshing. Ben's psyche is not angst ridden like most. This is good, considering the novel could have been even worse if it had been bogged down with such useless anger.

On the whole, "Collecting Sins" is an easy read with a lot of sex. But the lack of plot, style and willingness to go into graphic detail leaves the reader wishing he had spent his last 300 pages on something with a little more depth and boldness.

Nick Broughton

11-03-99