The Late, Great Bingham

Perhaps one of the most talent writers of his generation, the late Robert Bingham managed to write one novel before his premature demise. That’s a shame for more reasons than one. Bingham weaves literary fireworks with his unique use of language, pitch black wit, and compelling narrative. He had a true talent for putting the reader in the mind of each character and bringing out the character, flaws and all, through their thought and actions. In this debut/swan song, Lightning on the Sun, a down and out expat named Asher tries to better his out of control life by initiating the smuggling of heroin from Cambodia into the US. Of course, this is Bingham’s nihilistic world where nothing goes as planned. His ex-girlfriend, herself looking for a chance to make her life as a strip club bartender better, has her own issues. The unwitting mule is a burnt out journalist who is home on a break from the Phnom Penh bureau. All these wonderfully flawed individuals populate a world in which pain rules. By the book’s end, the events of the story have built up so that when Asher gives the middle finger to his existance, and, one might say, to existance in general, it is uterly beleivable.
Bingham’s language is like that of New England prep school boy who graduated and spent time in places at the opposite end of the affluence scale. Half-dressed in designer threads, half covered in grit. This seems to correspond to the lives of the once affluent people crumbling apart in a place like Cambodia. The irony, which is lost to Asher, is that Cambodia is a place where most people would kill to be in these flawed foreigners. Indeed, some do kill in the attempt to get a little piece of the wealth. This point is not lost on Bingham, who endows his self-centered characters flashes of compassion.
Still, it is more spectacular and sustained missteps of these flawed elites that gives this story its juice.
Bingham would definitely have become one of those writers whose next release readers anxiously await. However, it was not to be. All that remains is this novel and a collection of short stories called, “Pure Slaughter Value.”