The temptation toward hyperbolics is pretty great when considering Mark Seal’s The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, a book which came out last month and which is among the very best books published this year. To get the easy and obvious aspects out of the way first: Mark Seal’s one of those Vanity Fair dazzlers who make the magazine worth digging deep into each month (check his piece on TWoods’ mistresses + try to keep your mouth from dropping ajar as you read), and The Man in the Rockefeller Suit began as a magazine piece published in January of ’09, a piece about a Boston man who went by the name Clark Rockefeller who kidnapped his child. The story, as Seal discovered and masterfully unfolded it, in fact featured no Rockefeller, and that the man claiming to be Clark was named Christian Gerhartsreiter, and that he’d shown up in the US in 1978 and had, over the years, tried on and discarded a one-act’s worth of various identities, each of which he used to work his way up the social ladder in the US. There are other aspects of the story, not least that when Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller was trying on the name Christopher Chichester, in San Marino, CA, a couple happened to disappear and their truck ended up being the vehicle of choice as Chichester jumped from the west coast to the east.
There are so many satisfying aspects of Rockefeller Suit it makes ‘reviewing’ the thing sort of silly, or at least tricky: the story’s the most compellingly addictive narrative I’ve read in I can’t think how long, and if you’ve never read Mark Seal’s writing, you’re a Google search from several good hours perusing Vanity Fair archives, if you’re inclined (I’d quote at length here, but, really, just go read some stuff and come back). The truth is, honestly, you’re a fool to not get right into this book and devour it, rapidly (if you’ve got a day to give to the thing, give in totally: it’s worth taking the thing in one big whump). The questions that the book ultimately raises, though are tricky and weird and hard to shake on finishing the book.
For instance: Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller’s success as an imposter depended on telling just-believable enough lies to get away with them, over and over. Yes: Seal points gives room in the book for those folks who thought something was off about the guy, but, by and large, Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller got away with what he wanted to. Obvious, idle Q: why? Scary but seemingly inarguable answer: Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller got away with his lies because, one could claim, of that old (false, but who cares) line from Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from you and me.” The Hemingway response–”Yes, they have more money”–is a nice, quotable quip, but Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller, through hinting at extreme family wealth, was able to induce in the people he fooled a sort of forgiveness, an allowance of/for eccentricities (Gerhartsreiter/Rockefeller never wore socks, for instance). This allowance should, I’d argue, scare US readers, at least to a degree: the United States of course has no nobility, at least not of the monarch variety: we’ve got great families whose greatness is founded on industry, but now, generations after those families were established, we’ve ended up with a sort of level of nobility–Kennedys, Rockefellers, MacArthurs, Vanderbilts, etc. The Man in the Rockefeller Suit (should) end up forcing readers to think with some seriousness about what we’ll tolerate from our phenomenally rich citizens.
Another question: what, exactly, is identity? I’m from Minnesota, and when I tell people that, I’m almost always offered some crappy imitation of a MN accent–which, of course, is one of the easiest social markers of identity there is (not just accents, but correctness of speech). This review itself’s been bad-footed by questions of identity: it feels ridiculously false to call Christian Gerhartsreiter “Clark Rockefeller,” though he spent more than a decade and a half using that name. At what point does one’s identity become “real”? Seal (wisely, thankfully) doesn’t get all noodly and postmodern about this stuff, but it’s impossible, as an attention-paying reader, not to wonder just what to call this man, or to wonder how one could possibly answer the question “who is he?” (It’s worth noting, too, that there’s a recent book about nom de plumes–the writer had an essay in last weekend’s NYTBR, and there’s a review of her book here, and there was also an essay just a bit back in the New Yorker about John Banville/Benjamin Black, also well worth reading).
Regardless: The Man in the Rockefeller Suit is a dazzling book, and everyone should be reading it, and, to that end, I’m giving away a copy of the thing, through a contest right here. Here’s how it’ll work: in the comments, write the false name you’d choose to use if you were to ever publically to use a fake name. Say why you’d choose that name. Next Wednesday, the 27th of July, I’ll pick the two best entries for books–one person’ll get a copy of The Man in the Rockefeller Suit, and one person’ll get a copy of the book I wrote up last week, Killer Stuff and Tons of Money. Both are phenomenal. Note: books will only be shipped to US addresses. Get cracking: who would you claim to be?