Book 37: All Involved

All Involved

Ryan Gattis

Given the recent resurgence of civil rights activism, this novel's arrival on my public library's shelves felt particularly timely. Focusing, as it does, on the 1992 L.A. riots, All Involved offers a unique opportunity for Ryan Gattis, and the middle-class readers his book appeals to, to draw back the curtain and catch a fleeting glimpse of life as it may have been lived in some of the country's most dangerous neighborhoods during some of their most volatile moments. While Gattis certainly doesn't shy away from depicting the raw, constant violence that defines and drives life in this environment, he resists the urge to turn his book into a gruesome spectacle, choosing instead to focus on each character's individual humanity. And while the inner monologues that comprise the book's many narrative threads may at times reach slightly beyond the characters' likely literary capabilities, his decision to personalize the core story by viewing it from several different angles and through an array of equally vivid (if not equally plausible) voices humanizes the neighborhood's inhabitants more effectively than any amount of moral proselytizing ever could. Each narrator offers, in turn, a compelling story about their lives inside, outside, and adjacent to an anonymous gang's operations in a Hispanic area of south-central Los Angeles, and in doing so emphasizes a fact that is so easy to forget in the whirlwind news coverage of similar gang-related crimes: like it or not, and as violent as they are, the perpetrators and victims are people who hope, fear, and suffer just as the rest of us do. Indeed, it is one of the book's great accomplishments that its characters only resort occasionally to stereotypes; even when they are used, the uncompromising context implies that they are not clichés but somber facts of everyday life. Gattis goes through great- but rarely pained- effort to make his characters sympathetic, even as they plot cold-blooded murders and more justified, but nonetheless horrifically violent, revenge.

This rich characterization is built on a tightly knit plot that serves as more than mere scaffolding. With the glaring exception of the final chapter, each segment adds depth and complexity to the whole as Gattis gradually weaves a multi-layered portrait of a city in crisis. Some of the perspectives are surprising, including a pair of alternate perspectives from members of law enforcement agencies. Indeed, while the book is hardly short on violence, its most shocking scene illustrates just how effectively Gattis portrays his primary subjects and draws the reader's sympathies toward them. Simultaneously, the book provides a poignant illustration of the zero-sum nature of gang warfare and the ways in which life in these environments revolves around a culture of all-pervasive violence, whether one is all involved or an innocent bystander. The murder that launches the over-arching plot is far from an isolated tragedy, but is instead indicative of a whole other way of life lurking just beneath the surface.

Equally intriguing, then, is the author's decision to pit his story against the backdrop of, but not directly within the scope of, the Rodney King riots. The African-American community makes a few cameo appearances, and the surrounding chaos is certainly a central part of the story, but Gattis is more interested in the unnoticed consequences on some of the city's other forgotten quarters. His vision of L.A. is akin to a fare more violent Wild West, sans sheriff and with the addition of far more powerful, and plentiful, firearms. In some ways, the general (but, importantly, not complete) absence of (justifiably) distracted law enforcement personnel allows Gattis to imagine the neighborhood at its worst, to exaggerate the violence to proportions that should seem caricatured but instead carry a discouraging ring of truth. I am so very far removed from the scenes depicted in the book, but Gattis immediately makes sense of the (not-so-?)twisted logic that drives his characters' decisions- logic that is uncomfortably similar to that which more affluent readers may use in their own everyday situations, even if it usually carries significantly different stakes. All Involved unapologetically and seamlessly invites readers into a world so different from their own that it may as well be a different country, and his deft humanistic touches, along with the story's resonant emotional core, illustrate the fundamental humanity and shocking ruthlessness of life when a largely lawless land sees the last vestiges of order fade into utter chaos, if only for a moment.

Grade: A-