The Sweep of the Second Hand

A Novel by Dean Monti

Academy Chicago Publishers
$23.95
ISBN 0-89733-490-6

By Tim W. Brown

In The Sweep of the Second Hand, Malcolm Cicchio is the manager of an art house movie theater
improbably located in the suburbs of an unnamed city. The theater can afford to play to houses of
eight or ten people every night and lose money, because it’s a tax write-off for the owner,
Malcolm’s real estate baron father. Little responsibility and gobs of empty time allow Malcolm
to indulge in a boatload of neuroses. He constantly frets about the impending marriage of his ex-
girlfriend to a successful cardiologist, a hive of yellow-jackets buzzing menacingly inside the
walls of his apartment, a fascist landlady whose maiden name could easily be Mussolini, and,
above everything else, his circadian rhythms, which are gradually changing from diurnal to
nocturnal.

On top of these troubles he obsesses over the women in his life, who function like the ghosts of
Christmas past, present and future in A Christmas Carol. Representing Malcolm’s past is Lena,
the ex-girlfriend, who, by marrying his antithesis, reminds him of his long-standing romantic,
economic and social ineptitude. Darlene, a singer of “post-punk ballads and dirges” (p.78),
represents his present. She lives in the moment, giving little thought to the consequences of her
actions. She shoplifts, does drugs and strives to jump his bones whenever they meet. Anne
represents Malcolm’s future. A levelheaded woman who understandably is leery of him, she
volunteers part-time at a crisis hotline and promises normalcy and mental health.

Malcolm’s predicament parallels that of many young adults. He is educated (witness how he
speaks fluently about film history), but he is a total underachiever. The demands of the modern
world hold little interest for him (and in fact frighten him), but the world nonetheless insinuates
itself into his life. He retreats into the projection booth of his cinema, where he watches old
Kurosawa and Bergman films. He responds to their melodrama with great feeling and
appreciation, but he has not yet made the leap from his imagination to real life. He senses that he
must act to improve his lot, but he is clueless as to how. All three women in the story have
answers, if he would only pay attention.

With Malcolm as his narrator, Monti provides a running monologue on his protagonist’s many
absurd experiences. Gifted with a light comic touch, the author drops a number of one-liners and
funny metaphors, most of which work well. Describing his worry that he is talking too much
about his problems with Anne, whom he has just met, Malcolm wonders, “[W]here was I headed
with this type of conversation? I’d been circling her airfield, waiting for clearance and now I
didn’t feel as though I was landing on her carrier as much as plunging suicidally onto her deck”
(pp. 154-155). This and scores of other such humorous asides neatly capture the awkwardness
and anxiety of interaction between the sexes in today’s world.

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Once in a while, Monti inserts a joke that falls flat. Midway through a conversation with his
friend Bix, he discovers, “I was even too tired to talk about [my sleep problem], but the coffee
was pushing my words forward like a squirrel in a cage” (p. 105). This metaphor and a couple of
others are difficult to visualize. I think Monti/Malcolm means here a squirrel running on an
exercise wheel in a cage. Fortunately, this lack of precision occurs only a few times.

Presenting the occasional unfunny joke is risk every comic author assumes when he or she
writes. Monti succeeds in stirring a laugh much more often than he fails. His is a gentle brand of
humor that meshes nicely with the subject matter. The Sweep of the Second Hand could easily be
a bitter, self-pitying screed about alienation and contemporary angst. But this self-deprecating
narrator is much more sympathetic than a complainer; and Monti, by not taking himself or his
subject too seriously, depicts the intricacies and ironies of modern life far better than a heavy-
handed author of deadly serious tomes.