“Want Not,” Jonathan Miles’ second novel after 2008’s “Dear American Airlines,” is a pleasurable dumpster dive through the various kinds of waste in contemporary society. In three disparate storylines, Miles explores what (and whom) we throw away, where it ends up and how we cope with what we have sloughed off.
Talmadge and Micah are a “freegan” couple squatting in an abandoned building in New York City and living off the city’s abundant supply of garbage. Their life is Micah’s vision, and Micah is the novel’s conscience and heart; Miles devotes a lot of time and beautiful sentences to her Walden-esque upbringing in rural Appalachia. Talmadge is devoted, but more so to Micah than to her ideology. This becomes clear when Matty, Talmadge’s former Ole Miss roommate, comes to crash with the couple. Matty is a scampy grifter far better suited for con jobs and petty theft than foraging for produce. He does what literary visitors do best: overstays his welcome, clashes with the party he feels has stolen his friend from him, and reminds Talmadge of his slacker past, complicating his idyllic life with Micah.
Elwin is an obese linguistics professor reeling from a recent separation from his wife. A caretaker of dead languages, Elwin is defined by his efforts at conservation. When he hits a deer with his Jeep one night, he takes the carcass home, skins and cleans it, and cooks venison steaks to feed his father, a historian suffering from Alzheimer’s, for Thanksgiving lunch. He finds new purpose when he is invited onto a government project to design a marker that will warn future societies to avoid a buried cache of radioactive materials. His arc drags occasionally with his navel-gazing on his failed marriage, but Miles makes Elwin, and his steady fumbling toward redemption, easy to root for.
Sara is a wealthy 9/11 widow remarried to Dave, a slimy debt collector who has made a fortune harassing people into paying off “stale” accounts they could legally ignore. We first see Dave after Thanksgiving Dinner, gazing admiringly into his toilet at what he has left there. Lyrical descriptions of human feces seem to be a trend in recent novels – Jonathan Franzen has done so twice – but given “Want Not”’s focus on waste, and Dave’s comically vile persona, the inclusion does not seem excessive here. Dave is a complete scumbag – greedy, chauvinistic, homophobic, you name it – but his saving grace may be his attempt to connect to Sara’s 17-year-old daughter, Alexis. At first, Dave’s attention to his stepdaughter seems clumsy, even creepy, but it gradually reveals itself to be a more authentic concern for Alexis than Sara’s shallow worries about her daughter’s weight and appearance. Alexis may be the novel’s one false note. She comes off mostly as a surly, eye-rolling cutout than an actual teenager. This is especially disappointing given that her storyline builds to a harrowing, can’t-look-away conclusion by the end of the novel.
These storylines touch, as they must, sometimes in passing glances and sometimes in life-altering encounters. Some of these connections can be seen from a mile off, but this doesn’t make the outcome any less satisfying.
“Want Not” would be an impressive feat merely for pulling off so many riffs on its central theme of waste; Miles throws in nuclear refuse, memories trashed by Alzheimer’s, salvaged roadkill, discarded divorcées, and even meditations on genocide. It’s a clever performance; but where he could have settled for cleverness, Miles imbues the proceedings with heartfelt characterization and gorgeous prose. A year or two after reading it, you may find you’re still carrying this book about trash around in your head, unwilling to toss it out.
