‘Our town’ A fanciful view of the trials of Buddy BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Don Dimaio of La Plata By Robert Arellano. Akashic Books, 170 pages, $13.95.
	Between the lines Writer Robert Arellano has a hypertext novel online, as you might guess talking with him. His mind is so active, his thoughts so burbling with amendments and asides, that when speaking he often verbally clicks on subordinate clauses, shifting attention for a digressive, clarifying moment, before articulately wrapping things up. Putting the hyper in hypertext, so to speak. Take his reply when asked what he says to people who point out the advantages of linear narrative storytelling, to the disparagement of hypertext. "First," he began, "I would agree unconditionally with that person and with the advantages of closure and of linearity — for certain kinds of stories. And then I would probably try to — and I’ve been refining this idea over years, and trying to convince myself and fine-tuning the rhetoric I use — that hypertext is not just new media, it’s also a new genre. And therefore there will be certain stories that we will always prefer to read with the authoritative, even authoritarian — one might even say disciplinarian — narrative voice." He went on to pose Marcel Proust’s A Remembrance of Things Past as epitomizing an "eloquent and stringent" linear narrative, in contrast to his hypertext Sunshine ’69. He sometimes refers to that 1996 tale, written under his Internet pseudonym Bobby Rabyd, as "a networked story in the online oral tradition" rather than a hypertext novel. In 2001, his Boston-set novel, Fast Eddie, King of the Bees, was published by Akashic Books. Oh, yeah — as a songwriter and musician, he has also performed a lot with his techno-Latino pick-up band Havanarama (havanarama.com). Arellano was speaking late last summer, in the midst of packing up and leaving Brown University after 16 years there, first as an undergraduate and grad student and then as an instructor. Raised in Summit, New Jersey in a Cuban-American family, he learned to like poetry at age six, when his mother paid him a dollar apiece to type Shakespeare’s sonnets. Right now he is looking around for another gig, probably teaching, and, after a writing sabbatical in Mexico, has settled temporarily in the Sierra Madres in California with the family of his "cowgirl" wife Jodie. Arellano’s just-published novel on currently incarcerated former Providence mayor "Buddy" Cianci isn’t hypertext, but it can get a reader to jump around almost as much as if it were (see above). The inspiration for the book, back in 2000 when the mayor was indicted, was the felonious milieu of Providence more than Cianci himself. At Jerky’s bar on Richmond Street, where Arellano sometimes hung out, he was approached by a guy pretending to be the brother of former mayor Joseph Paolino as he tried to "borrow" $20. "I realized that not only had I been here long enough to recognize the scam," Arellano said, "but I had actually had the same man try to scam me once before!" So he started collecting Cianci stories and Providence stories — Mr. Hyper-Tech scribbling longhand notes in a steno pad at Jerky’s and elsewhere. Arellano attended the Plunder Dome trial. He grew amazed. "I was astonished to find that some things that I wrote about Pally Demaio may not have been too far off in regard to some real Buddy stories that could never be put on the record," he said. Arellano was writing in a more conventional form this time, but the novel wasn’t about to develop into a linear All the King’s Men. "About halfway into the process, there was a sort of magic moment when I realized this is not going to be just the straightforward story of a — three hyphens — cocaine-power-sex-addict mayor whose life is unraveling as a result of the corruption and the decadence of his administration," the novelist said. "Basically, a sort of Aladdin’s lamp appeared in the story in the form of a magic, talking telepathic toupee. And that detail, that element, really takes over about halfway through the book." At the trial, Chief US District Court Judge Ernest C. Torres all but shook his head in bafflement when he referred to Cianci’s self-destructive behavior as a Jekyll and Hyde personality. Arellano sees Cianci’s personality as more of a delusion of grandeur, the arrested development of a spoiled kid "who can’t get disciplined by a parent and is trying to get attention because discipline would be some kind of love." Maybe ’tis, maybe ’tisn’t. In any event, fiction writers know of worlds that diligent reporters can only dream of. What did Mike Stanton, author of the local non-fiction best seller, The Prince of Providence, have to say about Arellano’s opportunity? "I do believe he used the word ‘lucky’ in describing my latitude, that I had the ability to say all these things he knew and he wished he could tell everybody but that he’s got to keep to speculative conversations with close friends," Arellano recalled. Fiction, the novelist observes, can tell truths that no amount of research can uncover. Truth, fiction, where do they begin and end? Vincent A. Cianci Jr.’s proctologist father didn’t understand him, the Stanton book notes. The Arellano novel continues the thought with an unanswerable question: "Was it thereby inevitable that the guy would become such an asshole?" We get to read both books and decide for ourselves. — Bill Rodriguez

If Robert Arellano hadn’t written Don Dimaio of La Plata, then either Buddy Cianci’s shrink or his stand-up fall guy Frank Corrente, who went to the slammer rather than rat out the boss, would have had to. Thank goodness a Brown creative writing instructor got there first. His fantasy version sheds uproarious light on the testosterone-lubricated inner workings of the disgraced ex-mayor’s psyche and political machinery.

In Don Dimaio of La Plata, we get the prose-style equivalent of ear-pounding fireworks, boosted to greater heights by Will Schaff’s comically erotic illustrations. And while the light brightening the dark recesses of Providence’s recent history may distort actuality, it sure as hell illuminates reality.

It’s a picaresque novel that takes its structural inspiration and major characters from the satirical Don Quixote de la Mancha. After all, who in recent memory has been as colorful a picaro (rascal) in Rogues Island as the quixotic Cianci? Events here are more literary than literal, but we do recognize familiar way points on the glide path to destruction of stand-in Don "Pally" Dimaio.

Beige University. McNamara Plaza. South Mean Street. Sound familiar? We get the Hades Brothers fast food next to City Hall instead of Havens; the Darci Brothers — Perry, Riley, and Onan — dressed like turkeys on "one of their overpriced sectionals." And there’s Potency Street instead of Power Street, where the mayor actually lived — even in a surreal novel, some things about Cianci can’t be improved. That also goes for the novelized parallel to Cianci’s famous wisecrack, "The toe you stepped on yesterday may be connected to the ass you have to kiss today." The author’s less felicitous version: "The hand you slam the door on today is connected to the dick you lick tomorrow."

If power corrupts, then absolute power corrupts hilariously, and that’s where Arellano improves on reality. By the time drugs and political office have sufficiently warped his mind, Dimaio thinks that his conscience, in the form of a white-cheeked gibbon — which actually has escaped from William Rogers Zoo — is following him to rip off his manhood. Not for nothing, his new toupee starts talking and convinces him that he can astrally project into the body of his bagman Hank Cantare and have sex with his new wife, whom Dimaio had lusted after. By the end, even a kilo of cocaine in the police headquarters evidence room is in peril.

Dimaio’s faithful Sancho Panza is his coke-holding chauffeur Sanchez, a cultural stereotype ("Dong forgay to cling up joo face, jorona") that only someone like the Cuban-American Arellano could get away with. This mayor’s back history is familiar, with a between-terms hiatus on radio after a conviction for beating up his estranged wife’s lover. First-person narration keeps us close to the source: "Broadcast was pretty much the same idea as politics: braggery and bullying."

There are fun set pieces, such as a fund-raising party when the city’s bluebloods dress as Mafiosi. In the equivalent to Don Quixote rescuing fair maiden-cum-bar wench Dulcinea, Don Dimaio fanaticizes rescuing Cantare’s bride from a gang of Boy Scout thugs. Here and elsewhere, the Cervantes parallels aren’t exact, but neither do most need to be, coming as they are from a deranged mind. The tilting-at-windmills moment is strained: Dimaio’s lance is his penis (nice), but the windmills are defaced billboards promoting his reelection, a symbol when a sight gag is needed.

However, it’s the aptness and process of the mayor’s derangement that has to work, and Arellano deftly accomplishes that. He makes this an erotic novel instead of a political novel, so Dimaio’s urgencies are visceral and empathize-able; we may never have lusted after political power, but sex is something else. Dimaio names his penis/lance Rock Sinatra, "the foremost of all the franks in the world." His delusions are masturbation fantasies — what could be more on the money for emulating the solipsism of politicians who feel unaccountable?

Arellano’s considerable skills as a writer come to the fore most impressively in the brief, punny, Joycean interludes that begin each chapter, in the "In which our hero . . ." style of picaresque novels. The author describes his improvidential knight errant as being "in great puerile" when Dimaio is especially childish. One longer example of these delights will suffice: "It now appeared to him fitting and necessary, in order to win a greater amount of hard-ons for himself and perve his country at the same time, to become a night erotic and roam the world on whore’s backs, in a suit of Armani . . . ."

If you don’t enjoy that wordplay, you won’t like this novel. A less confident writer — or one more self-indulgent — might go on for an entire novel in this fashion. And remain unread. Arellano does conclude with nine pages of that sort of text to decipher, plus a few punning bawdy poems.

For readers who love words, scoundrels and comeuppance, this book is a feast.

Robert Arellano will conduct two readings and book signings in Providence on Saturday, March 6. The first, for all ages, will be at 2 p.m. at the Brown Bookstore (244 Thayer Street). Call (401) 863-3168. The uncensored reading and book release party will be at 8:30 p.m. at Atlas Bower Books (345 Meeting Street). Call (401) 383-0336.