Fields of (Missed) Opportunities: A Review of Shawn Rubenfeld’s The Eggplant Curse and the Warp Zone

In many ways, it’s easy to think of the 1995 film Mr. Holland’s Opus as a feel-good movie. When Glen Holland (played by Richard Dreyfuss) retires as a musician and composer to become a high school music teacher, he’s hopeful that he will spend more quality time with his wife and compose his own symphony. Although over the next 30 years Mr. Holland inspires students to become passionate about music, even when budget cuts threaten the arts program, he never spends the time he thought he’d have on his own work, and after being let go, he’s merely left to conduct his final performance with the help of an auditorium full of ex-pupils. While the ending may appear to put a neat bow on Mr. Holland’s career, what is apparent to the close observer is that he settled for a job that although he was suited for, didn’t measure up to his dreams. In Shawn Rubenfeld’s debut novel The Eggplant Curse and the Warp Zone, Joshua Schulman’s life in many ways follows a similar trajectory to Mr. Holland’s, and when he convinces himself that the sudden opportunity to teach at a prep school a few thousand miles away from New York is the right choice, his goal of collecting the most prestigious retro video games begins to slowly dissolve, and the feelings he develops for a fellow teacher become much more complicated that he expected.

A debate that has arisen within academia lately is the extent to which attaining a PhD is worth pursuing. The job market, especially given the past year and the pandemic, is not necessarily the best for recent graduates, and academia can be a cutthroat world when job candidates are attempting to move into more secure positions. While Joshua recognizes the reality that awaits him, his life during the course of his studies is falling apart: divorce, mother with cancer, father turning exclusively to religion. Inevitably, Joshua loses interest in his own work, which he comes to believe might not have any real-world application and point (his research centers on Yiddish dialectology). When life doesn’t go our way, we all turn to something that helps us cope, and for Joshua it is collecting retro video games, a casual hobby that turns into a passion that turns into an obsession he becomes increasingly good at. Joshua’s pursuit comes with online bidding wars, constant monetary transactions, and gaming conventions, and it is at one of these conventions where he makes the mistake of tripping The Eggplant Wizard, a character from the Kid Icarus series (imagine an anthropomorphized eggplant with one giant eye and a staff). Conventional gaming wisdom says that doing such a thing will lead to a dreaded “curse,” but Joshua’s luck doesn’t seem to change for the worse, at least not initially. In fact, he receives an email shortly after with a job offer to the Fairbury Academy of Roll, in Roll, Iowa, population 1,412. Seeing that there is little left from him in New York, Iowa seems like the best idea, but Joshua quickly discovers that when that landscape becomes barren, and there is not much else to do than refine his online buying skills, the need to connect with something more becomes overwhelming. Enter his coworker Natalie Grey, a married woman with her own interests in higher education.  

This is the classic “boy falls for girl” narrative, but what Rubenfeld does so masterfully is show how sometimes simplicity has the power to sway even the most skeptical of people. Natalie is not remarkable in the traditional sense of the word, but she is honest, witty, and true to herself, and her stability (marriage, job, the desire to learn) represent for Joshua everything his winding days in New York didn’t. She makes Joshua laugh. She pushes him beyond his comfort zone (convincing him to go on a hike), and most importantly, she takes an interest in his video game collection. The irony in all of this, however, is that Natalie is by no means the model of stability, at least not on the surface. While divorce has become quite common in many societies, there are a number of reasons why people still remain in a marriage they deeply want out of, and though there are hints here and there with her conversations with Joshua about wanting to break free from her stasis, it’s evident that Natalie believes that her marriage and her future are set in stone. She recognizes that despite her attention to Joshua—holding hands with him on their hike, rubbing the tension out of his neck, going over to his place to enjoy a few hours of gaming—she can never be with him, and—call it fate, responsibility, obligation—she knows she has to distance herself from whatever it is they can claim they had, which becomes a much clearer task to do when she learns Joshua’s been lying repeatedly.

Part of the stipulation for Joshua’s employment in Iowa was that he continue and complete his PhD. Even though he acknowledged to himself that he was not returning to that path, he indicates, in a state of panic, to Dr. Kirkland (the Head of the School) that he was well on his way to attaining his degree. We all know how one small lie can lead to another, and another, and another, and Joshua’s own experience was no exception. While he knows his lies will eventually catch up with him, he continues lying, even saying to Natalie that his wife (who in the spur of the moment he calls Natalie too) has recently died. Joshua suffers what we all suffer in our lives: he yearns for affection and attention, and because he fears that the real him will not live up to how he thinks others view who he is, he digs his hole even deeper.

The guilt that he begins growing inside him, however, starts to manifest as an old foe, The Eggplant Wizard. He sees the character, in the same custom as at the convention, randomly throughout campus, and these sightings intensify when he fails to receive the coveted game BattleSport from an online buyer. The buyer avoids Joshua’s follow up messages and begins taunting him in online posts. Subsequently, Joshua loses all concentration and even becomes physically unwell. He eventually loses in the game Splat (a game the students and staff at Fairbury Academy participate in and whose objective is to smack your target with a stick when they don’t have their own stick in their hands). In the end, Joshua succumbs fully to his guilt, since he knows that he can no longer pretend to incorporate huge details of his life that are untrue. In confessing everything to Natalie, he understands that he has closed the door to their relationship, and even though he suspects he will continue with his job, he won’t be able to share the joy he finds in it with anyone else.

It’s never revealed who exactly is The Eggplant Wizard was (best bets, however, would lie with Dr. Kirkland), and there might be parts in Rubenfeld’s novel that feel slightly underdeveloped—the teachers-student relationship he has with Tyler, the banter with the other staff members. But even if readers don’t find the answers that we were hoping to find, there is no doubt they will see part of themselves in Joshua Schulman, and just as with Mr. Holland, or any character of that matter who has had their dreams interrupted, you will find yourself rooting for him every step of the way.