Power tends to corrupt, as the adage goes.
But what if corruption is in fact a prerequisite of power? What if the pursuit and exercise of control actually depends on an outsized ego and a natural willingness to embrace self-serving cruelty?
“To be a leader of people, you have to be a little bit of a sociopath, a little bit insane,” said Rob Benvie, the Toronto musician and author whose new novel “The Damagers” (Knopf Canada) grapples with questions about how power is generated and wielded, and seeks to understand why we so often end up with “buffoons” and “charismatic weirdos” in charge.
Set in upstate New York in the early 1950s, “The Damagers” tells the story of two girls — Zina and her younger sister Presendia — who are forced to flee to the Adirondack Mountains following a tragedy that left their family’s farmhouse consumed by flames. After a harrowing trudge through darkness, the girls arrive at a lakeside camp populated by misfits and runaways. Reclusive, hedonistic and vaguely spiritual, the community is revealed as a sort of a New Age congregation led by a brooding but magnetic leader named Peter. Eventually, Peter adopts Zina as his protégé, and tasks her with transforming his revolutionary visions into scripture.
But over the course of a tumultuous year, Zina discerns cracks in the commune’s ostensibly egalitarian edifice, and stumbles upon secrets that betray the misogyny at the root of Peter’s philosophy.
“The Damagers” is a gripping and propulsive novel, filled with absorbing philosophical interludes, psychedelic drug trips and stark moments of violence. Benvie’s prose is muscular and heady, reflecting the grandiose visions of his characters, for whom romantic idealism is perhaps the only antidote to the alienation of a rapidly industrializing society.
And though “The Damagers” was inspired by the utopian community movements of the postwar era, Benvie’s exploration of power dynamics feel remarkably relevant to our current political climate.
“We live in a time where human nature is so laid bare in our politics,” said Benvie, a founding member of the alt-rock band Thrush Hermit, noting that he began writing the novel during the first Trump era, “a time when petty grievances and fantasies and narcissistic behaviours were on display by the people in charge all the time.”
“The Damagers” provides no easy answers, but offers a provocative illustration of what Benvie called “the tug-and-pull between self-realization and the collective good.”
What did you last read and what made you read it?
I usually have two or more books on the go at once, and I just simultaneously finished W.G. Sebald’s “Vertigo” and Simon Critchley’s “Mysticism,” which made for some groovy concordances. But right now I have a stack facing me that includes Thom Holmes’s “Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture”; Paul Griffiths’ “Modern Music and After: Directions Since 1945”; and Mark Prendergast’s “The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Trance — The Evolution of Sound in the Electronic Age” … all because I’m writing a novel about people driven insane by synthesizers. Fun stuff!
What book would your readers be shocked to find in your collection?
Surprising? Maybe, maybe not. But an essential resource for any creative type is Salvador Dali’s “50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship.” So much crucial wisdom! The chapter titles alone are unimpeachable. Chapter 11: “The secret of a telescope constructed with the Aristotle’s lantern of a sea urchin by virtue of which the painter may know when he must stop working at his picture.” Chapter 23: “The secret of the reason why a great draughtsman should draw while completely naked.” And, of course, chapter 43: “The secret whereby a painter may become a very rich man, that is to say, whereby he may produce gold with his colors.” Who needs grad school?
When was the last time you devoured a book in one, or very few, sittings?
I recently read Maurice Blanchot’s “Death Sentence” over a couple of lunch breaks. Consuming that one in a subterranean food court in the bowels of the Financial District was kind of trippy.
Who’s the one author or what’s the one book you’ll never understand, despite the praise?
“The Creative Act: A Way of Being” by Rick Rubin. Rubin had approximately three good concepts 35 years ago and has since made millions cultivating this identity as a sort of mindfulness guru for bands who’ve run out of ideas. Labels book him as insurance against their shaky investments for the kind of dazzling insights he shares in this book, such as “To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before.” He’s basically the Deloitte of the music business. If you go home with someone and find this on their bedside table, do yourself a favour and call an Uber pronto.
What’s the one book that has not garnered the success that it deserves?
I’d be hard-pressed to say what it means for a book to have “success.” But a lot of interesting books could be considered failures. One is Malcolm Lowry’s “Hear Us O Lord from Heaven Thy Dwelling Place.” Everyone knows “Under the Volcano,” and rightfully so, because it’s wicked. But Lowry, despite his seemingly endless capacity for self-ruin, produced a lot of other stuff, most unpublished during his lifetime. Much of the writing in this posthumous collection is annoyingly overwrought, and you can sense within it a deep-seated resentment against, like, everything. It’s almost unreadable and it’s great.
What book would you give anything to read again for the first time?
One nice (albeit tragic) side effect of getting old is that as your storage capacity for cultural absorption becomes maxed out, things you’ve already read a few times can feel new. Mark Fisher’s “The Eerie and the Weird” is one of those jams where you can feel uncharted chambers of your brain opening as you read it. Fisher’s stature seems to have only risen in the years since his death, and for good reasons — his books remain poignant, consistently enlightening and fun. So I’ll probably reread it soon and it’ll be just like the first time.
When you were 10 years old, what was your favourite book?
As a spirited young lad, I was obsessed with Gordon Korman’s “Who Is Bugs Potter?” It’s the story of a dweebish, self-conscious young kid named Adam who befriends the dauntless rock drummer Bugs Potter — I longed to be Bugs, even if my natural disposition was more like Adam’s. Reading that book set me on a decades-long foray into rock ‘n’ roll delusion that I’m still clawing my way out of.
What fictional character would you like to be friends with?
Jean des Esseintes, from Joris-Karl Huysmans’ “Against Nature (À rebours).” We could hang out smelling flowers and spritzing perfume at each other while lamenting the inaccessibility of true decadence in these decrepit times. Now that’s my idea of a party!
Do you have a comfort read that you revisit?
Every Christmas the family and I curl up around the fire and read RZA’s “The Wu-Tang Manual” together. New delights reveal themselves each and every time.
What was the last book that made you laugh or cry?
I’m not really a big laugher or crier — more one to chortle appreciatively or fret inwardly, consumed in the mire of minor agonies. But I’ll take this opportunity to shout out Spencer Gordon’s “A Horse at the Window,” which came out last year. It’s a collection of super-funny, consistently enervating quasi-monologues that vehemently exists both in the right-now and in the eternal. There’s also a Buddhistic aspect to it that, while somewhat beyond my own dismally unenlightened mind, I can feel rubbing off on me as I read. And yeah, I laughed.
What is the one book you wish you had written?
Rupi Kaur’s “milk and honey.” I live in downtown Toronto, and these mortgage payments are killing me!
What three authors living or dead would you like to have a coffee with?
Elfriede Jelinek, Jean Rhys, and Arthur Schopenhauer. We’d wile away the time staring into our (potentially spiked) cups in stony silence.
What does your definition of personal literary success look like?
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.” —Conan the Barbarian
