"Beautifully written and cleverly plotted. A rich, complex family
saga, one deftly woven through a fine legal thriller."
--John Grisham
"Rich, rewarding and compelling.... Transports readers into a
different world and creates characters that resonate long after
you've finished it."
--USA Today
"Full of energy...high-spirited and fleet of foot.... This
novel...lives on the page.... It's not much of an exaggeration to
think that in Stephen Carter the black upper class has found its
Dreiser."
-- The New York Times Book Review
"A remarkable debut novel.... A rare look into the world of wealthy
and established black families.... One is at a loss to name another
book...that has sought to convey, with such clarity, such depth of
understanding or such cultural analysis, the uniqueness of this
experience."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
"A thrilling entertainment."
--Newsday
"Rich, rewarding and compelling.... Transports readers into a
different world and creates characters that resonate long after
you've finished it." --
USA Today
"A delightful, sprawling, gracefully written, imaginative work,
with sharply delineated characters who dwell in a fully realized
narrative world." --
New York Review of Books
"A dense, dark legal thriller.... Talcott's clear-eyed observations
of his peers, both white and black, give
Emperor a
social conscience that most books of its ilk lack."
--
Time
"Closely observed, often affecting.... Written with easy
authority...nimble...satiric.... Persuasive." --
The New York
Times
"A thriller as heady as it is hefty.... Using...wry descriptions of
place, power and privilege, Carter keeps attitude spinning.... With
Emperor, Carter fills the gap between intrigue and
intelligence." --
People
"Carter writes powerfully about such virtues as love, faith and
forgiveness...and offers a strong commentary on race as seen
through the relationships between his characters."
--
Philadelphia Inquirer
"An admirable debut.... Mr. Carter's storytelling skills are
impressive." --
Wall Street Journal
"
The Emperor of Ocean Park is an
outstanding work of fiction.... Masterfully developed.... A
gripping story." --Newark
Sunday Star-Ledger
"[Carter] has shed an unblinking eye on an area of race and culture
conspicuously absent in popular fiction." --
Miami
Herald
"A light thriller for the beach; a wicked satire of academic
politics; a stinging exposé of the judicial confirmation process; a
trenchant analysis of racial progress in America." --
The
Christian Science Monitor
1. How does The Emperor of Ocean Park differ
from more conventional mysteries? In what ways is the narrator,
Talcott Garland, unlike his counterparts-men like Philip Marlow,
Sam Spade, and their descendants-in the prototypical mystery?
2. How does Carter build and sustain suspense throughout the
novel? What are the several mysteries Talcott is trying to solve?
What discoveries does he make-about his father, his wife, his
brother, Jack Ziegler, Justice Wainwright, and others-over the
course of the novel? What effect do these discoveries have on
him?
3. The issue of race is a recurrent theme in The Emperor
of Ocean Park. What is Talcott's attitude toward race? In
what instances is he subject to racial stereotyping? What
observations does he make about the white liberal racism he
encounters on campus? What racial hypocrisies does he see in his
fellow blacks?
4. At the Judge's funeral, Aunt Alma cryptically tells Talcott
that he has "the chance to make everything right. . . . You can fix
it. . . . But your daddy will let you know what to do when the time
comes" [p. 24]. Like Hamlet, Talcott is charged by his father,
beyond the grave, to set things right. In what other ways is
Talcott a Hamlet-like character? In what ways must he both fulfill
and transcend his father's demands?
5. What makes Jack Ziegler such a frightening character? In what
ways is he more than a mere villain? In what sense is he, as
Talcott says, the "author" of the Garland family's misery?
6. Talcott's cousin Sally tells him: "You think you're so
different from Uncle Oliver, but you're just like him. In some good
ways, sure, but in some of the worst ways, too. You look down your
nose at people you think are your moral inferiors. People like your
brother. People like me" [p. 270]. Is she right? In what other ways
is Talcott like his father? How is he different from him?
7. What role do the chess problems play in the novel? How do
they lead Talcott to uncover his father's "arrangements"? How are
they related to issues of race and power? In what sense is Talcott
himself a pawn?
8. When a man calls his house asking for his wife, Talcott
thinks: "Odd the way the immediate concerns about a dying marriage
can knock worries about torture and murder and mysterious chess
pieces right out of the box, but priorities are funny that way" [p.
453]. In what ways is the story of Talcott and Kimmer's failing
marriage-and the larger story of the complex relations in the
Garland family-more important than the murder mystery? How are his
marital problems related to the mystery he is trying to solve?
9. The Emperor of Ocean Park describes a social
milieu rarely seen in American fiction: the black middle class.
What does the novel tell us about the highly successful people who
make up this class? How are they different from African Americans
more commonly encountered in modern and contemporary fiction?
10. Late in the novel, "a wave of fatalism" sweeps over Talcott
and he wonders "whether I could have done anything differently, or
if, once the Judge died, setting his awful plan in motion, and Jack
Ziegler showed up demanding to know the arrangements, everything
else was fixed. Whether my marriage, even, was doomed from the day
of the funeral" [p. 533]. Is the story fated to end as it does or
could Talcott have changed its outcome? What might he have done
differently?
11. The Emperor of Ocean Park is not merely a
thriller, but also an extended critique of American culture,
commenting on issues of family, religion, law, education, race,
marriage, wealth, and politics. What do the frequent philosophical
digressions add to the novel? What beliefs and values does Talcott
Garland try to live by?
12. During a dinner-table argument, Dr. Young asserts that Satan
"always attacks us in the same ways. . . . He attacks us with
sexual desire and other temptations that distract the body. He
attacks us with drink and drugs and other temptations that addle
the brain. He attacks us with racial hatred and love of money and
other temptations that distort the soul" [p. 346]. How does this
perspective illuminate the behavior of the major characters in the
novel? Who gives in to the temptations that Dr. Young describes in
this speech? Who resists them?
13. How do Talcott's relationships with his family-with his
father, his sister, his brother, his wife, and his son-change over
the course of the novel?
14. When Talcott retells the story of how he and his future wife
had gotten out of the Burial Ground by crawling through a drainage
tunnel, he writes: "Some metaphors need no interpretation" [p.
515]. Is the meaning of this metaphor obvious? How should the
escape from the cemetery be interpreted? How is the Burial Ground
itself important to the novel's plot?
15. As the Judge's secret life is revealed, Dana Worth, a woman
who had always admired Oliver Garland, tells Talcott: "I don't want
to say he was evil . . . but he wasn't just deluded, either" [p.
615]. How should the Judge finally be judged? What drove him to do
what he did? Are his actions understandable? Forgivable?
16. When he delivers the eulogy at Theo Mountain's funeral,
Talcott breaks down weeping. "I suppose people think I was crying
over Theo. Maybe I was, a little. But, mainly, I was crying over
all the good things that will never be again, and the way the Lord,
when you least expect it, forces you to grow up" [p. 620]. What are
the "good things" Talcott mourns the loss of here? In what ways has
the Lord forced him to "grow up"? How have the events of the novel
changed him?