The introduction, discussion questions, author biography, and
suggested reading list that follow are designed to enhance your
group's reading of Stephen L. Carter's eagerly anticipated and
hugely ambitious first novel,
The Emperor of Ocean
Park.
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 Garland 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 appears, in one form or another, throughout
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 Tal 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 merely a villain? In what sense is he, as
Talcott says of him, the "author" of the Garland family's
misery?
6. His cousin Sally tells Tal: "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 Tal 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, Tal 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 Tal 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 Tal 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
novel? Who gives in to the temptations that Dr. Young describes in
this speech? Who resists them?
13. How do Tal'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?