The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The City of Your Final Destination by Peter Cameron
Daniel Garrett

Peter Cameron. The City of Your Final Destination. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002. 312 pp. $24.00.

Peter Cameron’s The City of Your Final Destination is a novel about characters whose ideas and impulses are presented so directly they seem to embody forces of nature. Omar, an Iranian graduate student in Kansas, wants to write a biography of a distinguished poet, Jules Gund, for which he’s received a grant. The hitch is that he failed to get authorization for the book from the three executors of the poet’s estate, Gund’s brother, wife, and mistress, all of whom live in Uruguay. After Omar writes them, he receives a letter refusing authorization. Omar’s girlfriend Deirdre encourages him to go to Uruguay to convince them to give him authorization; and when he does meet them, he becomes entwined in their needs and schemes and is forced to reconsider his own life choices. Omar is confusion, drift, sweetness, and good intentions; Deirdre is boldness and efficiency. Arden, the poet’s mistress, is helpful service and love; the poet’s brother Adam is cold intelligence and contempt; the poet’s wife Caroline is the fragile wounded whose subsequent desire for order, respect, and safety has made her nearly untouchable. The novel’s themes include the prevalence of drift in individual lives and the amoral complicity that develops between people. Days after I finished reading the novel, I heard the author read from it in a Manhattan bookstore, and I was struck again by the articulate intelligence of Cameron’s characters, and the intensity of their exchanges, and the resulting wit. When asked about his influences, Cameron said he liked E. M. Forster’s Where Angels Fear to Tread and the work of James Salter and Elizabeth Bishop. One can imagine a day when this is widely considered the company in which Cameron’s work belongs. [Daniel Garrett]