An Unexplained Death: The True Story of a Body at the Belvedere, Mikita Brottman (Canongate 2018)
This is the second Mikita-Brottman book I’ve tried and the second Mikita-Brottman book I’ve failed to finish. It’s a much better book than Crossing to Kill (2003), but that doesn’t make it any good. The title is uninspired and so is the book. If Mikita is as bland in person as she is in print, I’m not surprised by her complaint that she’s “invisible” to many people. They meet her, then fail to recognize her when they meet her again. Understandably, Mikita doesn’t like this, but there are worse things to suffer in life.
I spotted some of those worse things as I read the book. Or rather: I failed to spot them. Yes, there’s a deep unacknowledged irony at the heart of An Unexplained Death, because even as Mikita was complaining about her own invisibility and the erasure of her personhood, she was invisibilizing others and erasing their personhood.
And unlike privileged white Mikita, those invisibilized others lead genuinely difficult lives and suffer from genuine injustice. This book is about Mikita’s life in the luxurious Belvedere Hotel in an American city called Baltimore. Maybe you’ve heard of Baltimore? Ah, you have heard of it. And what does Baltimore mean to you? That’s right: Baltimore is world-famous both for the rich, vibrant culture of its Black community and for the suffering of that community, whose Black bodies are under 24/7/52 assault by the hegemonic forces of white racism and white supremacy.
Mikita Brottman has lived in the Black-majority city of Baltimore for over ten years. She has been surrounded by both the rich, vibrant culture of the Black community and the suffering of the Black community for every second of those more-than-ten-years – that’s more than 315,360,000 seconds. But does she deign to notice the slightest crumb of that Black culture or the slightest tear-drop of that Black suffering in this book about her more-than-ten-years in Baltimore? You guessed it: she doesn’t. Or at least, not that I saw in what I read of An Unexplained Death. I didn’t see her reference the Black community once. Not once. So one thing is for certain: she did not center the Black community in her book about Baltimore, as she would have done if she had any decency and compassion.
Instead, Mikita Brottman centered herself and her tony world of white privilege. It’s true that, yes, the “Unexplained Death” of the title references a Hispanic male, Rey O. Rivera, who died by falling from the roof of the Belvedere. But Rivera was a rich, white-adjacent Hispanic businessman. What about the many, many Black victims of “unexplained death” in Baltimore? Mikita obviously doesn’t care about them. She doesn’t identify with them and she can’t use them as a mirror for her own neuroses and self-obsessions. So can you wonder that I felt sickened to my stomach, repeatedly, as I read the book? I kept thinking to myself: “You ain’t a Mikita, baby: you’re a go’damn Karen.”
But even if I hadn’t been sickened by the book and its white-centered self-obsession, I wouldn’t have found it any easier to read. The main story, of Brottman’s search for the truth about Rivera’s death, just wasn’t interesting. Not to me, anyway. I found myself skipping forward to the digressions Brottman sprinkles through the book. She talks about everything from vultures and their unsavory thermoregulation techniques to how a mouse can survive a fall that would shatter a human being or liquefy a horse. Those were the best bits, for me, but they didn’t last long enough to rescue the book from its white-centeredness or redeem Brottman’s sickening invisibilization of Baltimore’s Black community.
I don’t think anything could ever redeem that. And inevitably I found myself comparing Miki with Miri. And Miki did not come well out of the comparison. What am I talking about and whom am I comparing with whom? I’m talking about Mikita Brottman and Miriam Stimbers, and I’m comparing the former with the latter. Mikita Brottman and Miriam Stimbers were both bright young Britishers from humble backgrounds who, by dint of sheer cerebral effort and dogged determination, won scholarships to study English Literature at Oxford University. First they did a BA, then they did an MA (probably), then they did a PhD, then they entered the wider world.
And it was now that both Mikita and Miriam faced the same stark and simple choice. Either they could embrace white supremacy, exploit their white privilege, and coast to success in terms of the literary world. Or they could oppose white supremacy, refuse to exploit their white privilege, and achieve success only and entirely on merit. I am afraid to say that Mikita chose the former course. Miriam, in complete contrast, chose the latter.
But it was not the first time that their life-trajectories had divagated in terms of core ethical dilemmas. During her time at Oxford, Mikita had written for Headpress, the journal of strangeness and esoterica overseen by committed counter-culturalist, proud Gypsy and unashamed gargoyle-fan David Kerekes. Miriam, however, had refused to write for Headpress, on the ground that Kezza, although a proud Gypsy and unashamed gargoyle-fan, was nevertheless a dim but devious adolescent voyeur, like a cross between a Daily-Mail reader and a necrophile.
In short, Miriam was prepared to take an ethical stand. Mikita was not. Sad to say, after she wrote for Headpress, Mikita’s embracement of white supremacy and ruthless exploitment of her white privilege came as no surprise to perceptive observers. Having moved to America, the headquarters of white supremacy, Mikita became the life-partner of a rich and successful white writer, acquired a well-connected white literary agent, and began to write acclaimed but underwhelming white-centered books like An Unexplained Death. But when Miriam moved to America, things were very different. In complete contrast to Mikita, Miriam became the life-partner of a member of the Black academic community, the proud Black-African Diasporan Dr Nigel M. Goldbaum, acquired a Black literary agent, Rebecca Rubinberg, and began to write masterpieces like Jane in Blood: Castration, Clitoridolatry and Communal Cannibalism in the Novels of Jane Austen (TransVisceral Books 2021).
But Miriam’s masterpieces have not enjoyed a tenth of the success nor received a hundredth of the exposure of Mikita’s mediocrities. Why not? It’s simple. Miriam is fighting white supremacy and rejecting her white privilege, rather then embracing white supremacy and exploiting the hell out of her white privilege. That’s for why. Mikita’s An Unexplained Death is a case in point. It has an uninspired title and it’s an uninspired book. But it’s been much more successful and been much more extravagantly praised than all of Miriam’s masterpieces put together. In the land of white supremacy, the Karen is Queen.
Previously Pre-Posted on Papyrocentric Performativity…
• Cannibal HolocAusten — Miriam Stimbers and Rebecca Rubinberg interrogate issues around Jane in Blood: Castration, Clitoridolatry and Communal Cannibalism in the Novels of Jane Austen (2021)
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