 As much as there is a vein of American literature considered “Southern,” Ducker has captured an essence of the West and its literature. He captures the zany oil heiress mingling with the street dweller, who borrows great works of literature from the libraries of seasonal residents, is certainly believable in Ducker and, by extension, Aspen’s world.
Reviewed by Elizabeth King Humphrey
Dizzying Heights: The Aspen Novel
by Bruce Ducker
Fulcrum Publishing
Paperback: 362 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1555916589, May 2008
Dizzying Heights: the Aspen novel is a fun romp through Aspen with many characters you might expect to find. Fortunately, in this 362 page novel, Ducker provides a Dramatis Personae, listing 26 individuals, all of whom play significant roles in Ducker’s ninth novel.
Dizzying Heights is a quick read. Ducker deftly pulls us through scenes built around the two dozen characters. The protagonist, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Brush, aka, Waddy, is a software designer who, being let go from his job, journeys east. He lands on his feet in Aspen, working as a waiter in the poshest of posh restaurants in a town known for poshness. (Full disclosure: I am a Colorado native who spent numerous weeks visiting Aspen in my youth…before it became posh. Oddly, even though some of the wealth creates an unrecognizable Aspen, Ducker ably elevates his reader to the realm of the upper and lower crusts in Aspen.)
“Tiffany [described as a Hollywood PR flack] noticed Waddy, lean, dark, insecure. Thought him handsome. That was one thing about Aspen, all the men were handsome.”
Dizzying Heights mainly follows Waddy as he is discovered by Mortimer Dooberry and returns to his programming skills. Dooberry has some dubious distinctions, but is a consummate sales person, funding a project that seems remarkable in its inception, but which Waddy undertakes. The programmer is then forced to contend with a femme fatale from his past, as his collaborator on the project while he struggles with his feelings for a woman he met from the posh restaurant. The restaurant provides the perfect melting pot of the various well-heeled characters.
“[Frankie Rusticana, the restaurant owner,] had just seated two of the country’s fifty wealthiest men—the current Forbes list was pinned to the corkboard in his office—and now walked back to assist his greeter. The greeting was one of Frankie’s secrets of success. Each patron of this, the most expensive restaurant between Rodeo Drive and 21 West 52nd Street, could flourish without radicchio but not without recognition.”
Ducker skillfully introduces the rich, the retiring and the perpetually scamming seasonal Aspen individual. Ducker explores the seedier side of the wealthy and their hangers-on. He dips into a carpet seller, whose trade focuses on illicit drugs, a shady restaurateur, artists and their wealthy patrons, crusading environmentalists, a land deal involving a suspected Native American burial site, a plane pilot rock singer and his drug habits, and those involved in financial markets. Inevitably the reader feels most professional fields are singed, in some way, by Ducker’s portrayal, except Waddy, described as “a callow young seeker of truth and beauty.”
As complex as it all seems, Ducker manages to keep the reader in the know about most of the plot twists and turns, which is no mean feat. Everyone seems to have a main action with ulterior motives to make your head spin.
As much as there is a vein of American literature considered “Southern,” Ducker has captured an essence of the West and its literature. He captures the zany oil heiress mingling with the street dweller, who borrows great works of literature from the libraries of seasonal residents, is certainly believable in Ducker and, by extension, Aspen’s world.
The individualism exhibited by all his characters, the quirkiness of some, are hallmarks that could point to the writing’s regionalism. On the other hand, Ducker also does well to expand that, giving characters that deserve consideration in their own right. Ducker received a Colorado Book Award for his novel Lead Us Not into Penn Station.
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