Probably because of its provocative title (which comes from Nick Flynn's father's view of living on the streets), I was expecting to be blown away by this memoir of a ne’er-do-well father meeting his estranged son in a homeless shelter in Boston, where the latter is working. It’s an incredible story without an ounce of the sentimentality I was dreading. I was left wondering what has become of Flynn’s father since ABNISC was published in 2004, but I wasn’t really drawn in the way I am with some memoirs — like The Glass Castle, for example. Flynn has a way of keeping readers at a distance, which really makes sense, considering his life, so perhaps I’m being too finicky. A movie is being made of ABNISC starring Robert De Niro and Paul Dano. I have plans to see how the Flynns’ story is translated to the screen.
Daydreams and Nightmares: Reflections on a Harlem Childhood
Author:
Irving Louis Horowitz
Fiction or Nonfiction?
Nonfiction. Memoir. Winner of the 1990 National Jewish Book Award.
What led you to pick up this book?
Horowitz's memoir covers the 1930s and early 40s in Harlem. I'm interested in that period of American history and this also seemed like a fresh perspective.
Summary:
Daydreams and Nightmares is Horowitz' memoir of "growing up absurd" (i.e., Jewish) in Harlem. His parents immigrated from Russia in the 1920s. His father came to America first, followed several years later by his mother and his older sister. His father owned a small locksmith shop. According to Horowitz, "...based on crude but not unsound reasoning, my father decided to settle in Harlem because of high crime rates -- windows were always being broken, locks were constantly being picked. Small tinkering was a needed skill."
Soon after the family was reunited, Irving Louis Horowitz was born in 1929. He was born with a cleft palate and a harelip, which made several years of surgeries necessary. Horowitz claims that he received excellent care at Sydenham Hospital in Harlem, attended by highly trained and skilled doctors who were fleeing Europe. "I was a beneficiary of fascism." he writes. He also said that while he was in the hospital during these times, things at home were easier for his family because they didn't have to be bothered with looking after him or feeding him.
Horowitz returns to this theme often, writing in varying degrees about "the coldness of family life." At first glance, it would seem typical and understandable, since the parents were struggling to make their way in a completely new world, but Horowitz points to his father's brother's family, who immigrated to Argentina (by mistake -- they thought South America meant the southern United States, like Georgia or Alabama) but that family constantly exhibited affection and laughter.
Horowitz discusses being terrorized by black kids in Harlem; day-long performances on weekends by extraordinary talent at the Apollo; how Central Park seemed to be some sort of special turf where all classes and races seemed to tacitly agree to get along; his devotion to the New York Giants and his adventures as a turnstile boy and later a scalper; Saturdays at the movies where he could see six features for ten cents and finally, the 1943 Harlem Riot, which took place in August after an African-American soldier was shot and wounded by a white New York City policeman. Hundreds of businesses were looted and destroyed, including Irving's father's store. Shortly thereafter, the Horowitzes moved to Brooklyn, where Irving had to learn to file down some of his survivalist, street-smart edges to fit in with his new friends.
What did you like best about this book?
In the preface, Horowitz declares that he used George Orwell's memoir essays as a model. He admired the way Orwell wrote unsentimentally and unromantically about childhood. Horowitz was successful in what he set out to accomplish.
What did you like least about this book?
So interesting but so short! (116 pages) Daydreams and Nightmares is of course meant to cover Horowitz's childhood in Harlem. I was glad that he went a little further as he discussed the difficulty to transitioning to Brooklyn, then his early years at City College, but I became so interested in his story I wanted a longer biography that extended into his adult years.
Share a quote:
Above all, the movies set Saturday apart from the rest of the week. Saturday meant life, reality, action. The films, even the deadliest of them, touched my heart in ways that school never could. Saturday was a daydream and nightmare combined in a singular, intensely private experience. Thus to be deprived of a Saturday at the movies was more than a cultural deprivation; it was a form of punishment unparalleled in my young life.
Horowitz wrote that on the average, he was able to get his father to give him the dime for the movies about 2 Saturdays out of 5. One week, when he couldn't get the money, he decided to take matters into his own hands while he was working the cash register:
Stealing in Harlem was a way of life -- an act of faith in the viability of the operating system itself. The test of character was doing so artfully, brilliantly, so that no one ever knew.
Unfortunately, his father caught him and for punishment, he tied Irving to the hot-water pipe and beat him severely:
The word spanked sounds so genteel, so perfectly bourgeois; beating across my bare ass more aptly describes what happened.
Horowitz can also be wickedly funny. In another incident, the father decided that a guard dog would be a good idea for the store, so he brought home a German Shepherd, Rex. Irving and the dog bonded, but the father decided to "put the dog in its place" by beating him. Predictably, Rex turned on him. The father then set out to "lose" Rex in Central Park. He failed; actually, the dog beat the family back home. Finally, in 1940, he was successful in ditching Rex while Irving was at summer camp. Irving was furious and inconsolable when he got home and realized what had happened. Fast-forward to 1973. Irving's mother and father were visiting him and his family. Irving got the word that there was a German Shepherd nearby available to a good home. The reason? The father in that particular family didn't care for the dog. Everyone piled in the car to go get the dog. When Irving came out with the dog, who was a dead-ringer for Rex, his father "blanched and was quiet during the ride home", much to Irving's grim amusement.
Have you read any other books by this author?
No, I wasn't even familiar with Irving Louis Horowitz.
After reading this book, do you plan to read other books by this author?
Horowitz has done most of his work in political sociology. He researched and wrote about the influence of Korean evangelist Sun-Myung Moon (whose university is just down the road from mine!) and the Unification Church on American politics. I would be be very interested in reading about that particular connection.
I'm still reading and enjoyingMoby-Dick, but I'm only halfway through my voyage. I'll take a short break and put up my notes on a nonfiction book I read last fall. They were scrawled on a single sheet of notebook paper that's bound to get lost if I don't do something.
The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus - Joshua Kendall (2008).
I borrowed this book from a coworker. It's a vivid portrait of Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869). Known primarily for his Thesaurus, he was also a physician, invented the log-log slide rule, and published The Bridgewater Treatise, a 2-volume survey of physiology/natural theology. Poe and Emerson both loved Bridgewater and Tennyson consulted it often while writing In Memoriam.
As a doctor, Roget spent some time in Manchester where he worked for John Ferrier, the supervisor at the Manchester Infirmary. (Ferrier is also famous for coining the word "bibliomania".) Manchester was a nasty, dirty place -- pollution from the factories and outbreaks of cholera made it an undesirable city in which to live. Ferrier and Roget worked tirelessly to battle filth and disease and educate the public about safe and sanitary practices.
To unwind and get his mind off of his job, Roget worked on a word list that he had started back in childhood. According to this biography, making lists had always been his coping mechanism. Roget was shy and a bit on the gloomy side. His father died when he was a small boy and his mother was overbearing and paranoid. Young Roget was also attracted to science, so classifying and making lists seemed to go hand-in-hand and produced a calming effect on him.
The Man Who Made Lists is an engaging read. Kendall has a clear and straightforward style. Some of the scientific information could have been deadly reading -- obviously Kendall had to wade through an ocean of 18th century science writing, but he makes it interesting and appealing to modern readers. He also connects Roget to the other famous figures of his day. Some are still well-known now, others not so much. Kendall briefly but meticulously sketches in the necessary biographical detail.
.Although Roget was involved in a plethora of activities during his long life -- he wrote a thesaurus in 1805, but didn't publish it until 1852 when he was past 70 -- Kendall carefully traces how everything he did eventually led up to his most famous work. One of the ways he accomplishes this is with his chapter headings -- each one is an entry from the Thesaurus.
Kendall's writing is lively and accessible, but sometimes he gets a little too breezy. Certain phrases, which are straight from our time create a jarring shift in tone that is an variance with the subject and his time: "his smarts" and "crank out the syllabus" are a couple of examples.
.Also, Kendall often attributes certain thoughts to Roget without attribution. The index is good, but there are no notes or bibliography. Both should have been provided. In addition, he belabors the point about Roget's mother -- Okay, yes, we get it -- she WAS overbearing, she DID have a few mental problems! Finally, that subtitle is a little too overly dramatic. I'm almost sure that Kendall had nothing to do with that -- it reeks of committee meeting.
Overall, I recommend The Man Who Made Lists. I'd like to see a book in a similar vein about Noah Webster, and I nominate Joshua Kendall for the job.
Probably the author's best-known work, this comic memoir tells the story of Betty MacDonald's brief first marriage (1927-1931) and how she and her husband tried their hands at chicken farming in the Chimacum Valley in Washington state.
This way of life wasn't MacDonald's first choice for the ideal life and although she's extremely witty about her hardships, her tone gets a little acid at times. One can't really blame her; if what she says in The Egg and I is true, Bob slapped that wedding ring on her left hand one minute and was eagerly pouring chicken feed into it the next.
MacDonald also creates unforgettable comic sketches of her neighbors, particularly the Kettles. Ma and Pa Kettle and their brood of 15 children went on to achieve iconic status in a series of popular B movies and were the inspiration for The Beverly Hillbillies.
Readers are warned in the foreword, written by both of MacDonald's daughters, about her negative and disparaging attitude towards Native Americans, but I wasn't prepared for the humor to be utterly cast aside as MacDonald luxuriously unleashed a torrent of scathing commentary about them and what she perceived to be their squalid lifestyle. Much of this invective is concentrated in one chapter, but other mean-spirited asides are peppered throughout the book.
This negativity tainted what was otherwise an enjoyable reading experience. Because I really wanted to love this book, I tried hard to put myself into a "1945 reading audience" mode, but found it difficult to shake off my knowledge about how the United States treated the Native Americans and subsequent problems they have faced.
When MacDonald capped off her tirade by comparing the Native Americans she saw around her to Hiawatha (an actual historical figure, but highly romanticized as a "noble savage"), I had to face it that she was a product of the time (1908-1958) in which she lived. What really puzzles me though is that she had painstakingly and successfully established perfect comedic pitch in the previous chapters, then she undercut it with that abrupt and jarring transition. It didn't hurt the success of her book, obviously, but it seems like a strange authorial choice. I wonder if her editor commented on it.
I'm disappointed that I didn't love The Egg and I as much as I thought I would, but I still very much want to read Betty MacDonald's other humorous autobiographical tales The Plague and I, Anybody Can Do Anything and Onions In The Stew.
I'll be back in the blog saddle soon, but meanwhile, enjoy this review from my friend, Bronson. He's the first guest reviewer I've ever had atNaked Without Books. I hope that this visit is the beginning of an ongoing trend.
Pete Duel: A Biography, by Paul Green. Foreword by Pamela Deuel Johnson. Published by McFarland & Co., Inc., 2007. 219 pp.
Pete Duel. One in a long line of Hollywood tragedies. In December 1971, while at the height of his success with a starring role in the TV Western Alias Smith & Jones, Pete Duel shot himself, dead at the age of 31.
We have the Internet to thank for this book. Thanks to its fruition, Duel’s fans found an outlet where they could share information and rejoice in the glow of their favorite actor. It became all too apparent that Duel had a substantial fan base. That adulation, in turn, created a fervor that resulted in a 1999 episode of E!’s Mysteries & Scandals, which eventually paved the way for Paul Green to pursue this endeavor.
Green, who also authored A History of Television’s The Virginian, 1962-1971 (McFarland, 2006), does a fair job of relaying Duel’s story. His writing style is competent and informative, though not particularly spectacular. He relies on extended quotes to tell the story, occasionally working in his own prose to tie parts together, which makes for an easy and somewhat engaging read, though not a very exciting one.
Even so, through the remembrances of Duel’s family, friends and colleagues, Green does succeed in his purpose, painting a portrait of an artistic, yet disturbed, young man. Duel’s passions for acting, animals, politics and the environment are well-examined, as are his personal shortcomings, such as alcoholism, philandering and sporadic outbursts of violence. The reader manages to get a better grasp on Duel’s character, and even though he was obviously a flawed human being, he also comes across as a genuinely likeable one.
Green’s major ally in this project is Duel’s younger sister, Pamela Deuel Johnson, who provides the foreword. Thanks to her contribution, the reader receives a thorough history of Duel’s childhood, complete with stories of discovery, frivolity, and tragedy (including the death of Duel’s infant sister Jennifer in 1952). Green deserves kudos for making contact with many of Duel’s significant others: Jill Andre, Kim Darby, Beth Griswold and Dianne Ray (who was at Duel’s home when he died) among them. Likewise, many of Duel’s colleagues (e.g., Mike Farrell, James Drury, Juliet Mills, Glen A. Larson, and Jo Swerling, Jr.), as well as friends throughout various stages of his existence, provide valuable contributions. All of these people speak freely and openly about their respective relationships with the late actor, providing anecdotes and insight that bring his character to life. (This book also contains approximately sixty previously unpublished photographs, many provided by Duel’s family and friends.)
Although these recollections provide a fairly well-rounded portrait of this troubled young man, one can’t help but notice some suspicious absences, most notably Ben Murphy (Duel’s AS&J co-star), Roger Davis (Duel’s AS&J replacement) and Geoffrey Deuel (Duel’s younger brother, also an actor). The absences of Murphy and Davis are particularly suspicious because both were interviewed for the E! Mysteries & Scandals episode several years prior. Deuel, on the other hand, wasn’t associated with that project; even so, one can’t help but find it odd that he would not use this outlet to tell his side of things. Whatever the reasons for these gentlemen to not contribute, this biography is definitely worth a look-see for any of Pete Duel’s fans. Green brings to light a story that was kept in the dark for way too many years.
Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? -Henry II, speaking of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. (Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral shortly afterwards.)
The Pillars Of The Earth spans about 40 years during the 12th century in England when King Stephen and Empress Maud are locked in a power struggle for the throne after old King Henry dies without an heir. All of this has a trickle-down effect on the fictional town of Kingsbridge, which is trying to complete its cathedral. Good and evil clash repeatedly as fortunes seesaw back and forth. Nobles plot against each other and even priests and bishops are continually jockeying for position, whether inflamed by personal ambition or what they feel is best for the church. This novel is a great read because of a storyline that carries the reader along effortlessly. The good characters are good and the bad characters are wretched beyond compare, so there's no real heavy lifting required.
I enjoyed all the details Follett included about everyday life in the 1100s, and his architectural descriptions are detailed and quite educational. Every now and then, though, I was jerked out of that lovely haze of verisimilitude when characters would use words or phrases that were decidedly un-medieval. For example, a young Spanish noblewoman is referred to as "sexy", and one of the characters thinks the Latin phrases used in masses are "mumbo-jumbo". In addition, Follett has a tendency to send characters in a reverie and they invariably re-summarize their actions up to that point.
This is just nitpicking though -- these things are minuscule compared the overall enjoyment and excitement I was experiencing. Although it seemed a bit of a stretch to get Prior Philip to Canterbury in time for Thomas Becket's final moments, Follett succeeded admirably, and the scene at Canterbury is both horrific and moving.
The Pillars Of The Earth was pure reading entertainment. I'm hoping to find the sequel to this novel, World Without End, and I will be on the lookout for that as well as another Follett novel, The Eye Of The Needle.
Bibliolatry asked me a couple of weeks ago about my impressions of this memoir. I'm having a devil of a time getting a coherent review together, so below is an attempt to organize my thoughts. It's just notes, though. Sorry.
Although I'm an Updike fan, I can't help but laugh and shake my head at what Florence King once wrote about him: Reading John Updike reminds me of Herman Melville and Jane Austen; it's like trying to cut through whale blubber with a pair of embroidery scissors.
Who? John Updike What?Self-Consciousness: A Memoir Where? Various places. Mostly Pennsylvania, where he spent his childhood and Massachusetts, where he spent most of his 30s and 40s. But mostly John Updike is his own setting. When? This book was written in the mid-1980s when Updike was about 55. Why? Updike heard that someone wanted to interview him so they could begin writing his biography. He was appalled at the idea of someone else handling his life, so he took on the project himself. How? Updike wrote a memoir in the form of 6 semi-connected essays.
The essays: 1. "A Spring Night In Shillington". Updike loses his luggage when travelling to his hometown. He dispatches his family to the movies and walks around the town while waiting for it to be brought to him. He has to wait almost the entire length of the movie (Being There) and describes every building, every streetlamp, every crack in the sidewalk -- not only as it is now but as he remembers it growing up during the 1930s and 40s. Too much detail. Zzzzz. I was almost as glad as he when the luggage person arrived.
2. "At War With My Skin". From childhood, Updike suffered from psoriasis, which he inherited from his mother. He details his embarrassment over its unwelcome presence in the wintertime, and his relief when he could battle it with the help of the sun during the summer months. As he became a literary success and began making money, he could go to the Caribbean during the winter months and sunbathe. (I wonder if he's heard of Dr. Fish?) He ruminates on how this chronic condition helped to shape him into a writer. This is far and away the best essay in the book.
3. "Getting The Words Out." Updike also has a slight stammer that appears when he's nervous or stressed. Of course he also discusses how this shaped him as a writer. Other than that, I don't remember much about this essay.
4. "On Not Being A Dove". Updike discusses his slightly hawkish stance during Vietnam AND his dreaded and extensive dental work. The Vietnam part goes on way too long, which makes the dental part a relief to read. Still, it's a jarring combination that seems to clunk along. With impish good humor he pulls it all together in the last paragraph, but it feels like too little, too late.
5. "A Letter To My Grandsons". This begins interestingly, because his grandsons have a white mother from the United States (Updike's daughter) and a black father from Africa, and Updike touches on some of the cultural differences between these boys' two families. Then he meanders into his own family genealogy and seems mired there. Zzzzzzz. The best part of the essay is when he discusses a 1909 photo of the extended Updike clan, which is included at the front of the book.
6. "On Being A Self Forever". Updike is back in Shillington, visiting his mother again. It's like a bookend essay for the first one, except much more introspective. He discusses ageing quite a bit, both his mother's and his own. Much rumination about religion. Updike was brought up as a Lutheran, and married a woman whose father was a Unitarian minister. He seems crazy about Emerson, but with a strangely grim and deterministic humor that I associate with Lutheranism (perhaps unfairly) threaded throughout. Updike seems to believe -- or determined to believe -- in God because he feels that God is for people with imagination, which of course he prizes highly. In his view, atheism lacks this quality. [Edited to add: I enjoyed the part of the essay in which Updike muses that we shouldn't be afraid of death because we're changing all the time and the people we were in the past are, in effect, dead. He also talks about having favorites and unfavorites among your past selves, which was fun and whimsical.]
Recommendation: For hardcore Updike fans and Updike scholars. For others, check out Self-Consciousness from the library and read "At War With My Skin".
As far as the fiction goes, read the "Rabbit Quartet" for a neat time-capsule look at life in America in 1959, 1969, 1979 and 1989, and also for a compelling but often unsparing look at Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a man who hit his zenith as a high school basketball star and grew older and older but never really grew up.
The Tale Of Despereaux is the book we're reading for the August 10th BOOKLEAVES meeting. (If you just happen to be in Seoul, you can go with me! Leave a comment.) TOD was suggested by a new member who said it was "the book" when he subbed at a middle school in the United States a couple of years ago.
Book Zombie wants the 6 word review: Plucky little mouse saves the day.
It's obvious why teachers, children's librarians and parents have embraced this book. It's a wholesome tale of adventure with a misunderstood, yet noble animal protagonist. There is some darkness, but it's served up in a benign enough fashion along with a few new vocabulary words. Also attractive to these educator types is a narrator who is constantly engaging readers and encouraging them to use those higher level thinking skills to ponder the action. The ending is wrapped up neatly, sweetly and inoffensively with a whiff of a moral. Sometimes I think DiCamillo is guilty of trying too hard to please this adult set.
Melissa and Tiny Little Librarian want to know if I found the book compelling or annoying. And what about that narration?
I'd really love to test-drive The Tale Of Despereaux with someone between the ages of 7 and 12, so I could get some badly needed input. The storyline is charming, if a little awkwardly told, but the narrator constantly talking to the reader gives the book a claustrophobic feel -- it's like someone is right in your face chattering while you're trying to build images in your mind. Also perhaps there was a little too much telling rather than showing. What really annoyed me was that DiCamillo makes such a big production of trotting out a new vocabulary word, then discussing it. She even tells the reader to go look up a word in the dictionary. At that point, the reek of teacher breath was overpowering; I muttered a two-word imperative that you'll never see in a children's book and would have me missing recess for a month. E.B. White knew that you didn't have to attach a bunch of bells and whistles to new vocabulary. Just serve it up like a tennis ball and most of the time, kids will deftly smash it right back over the net at top speed.
Book Chronicle wants to know: Where do you think this fits with the history of children's literature?
Since The Tale Of Despereaux won the Newbery, it has been assured a place in children's lit history, and if the movie is well-made and commercially successful, it will solidify the book's good reputation and help it to stay popular for many years.
Tasses asks: Have you seen or readBecause Of Winn-Dixie[also by Kate DiCamillo]?
No, but I'm curious about it now. The book, that is. My son told me that the movie blows chunks. (Or some sort of lofty film criticism to that effect.)
Karin asks: With the movie coming out soon, do you thinkThe Tale Of Despereauxwill transfer to the big screen while keeping the quality of the story?
Unless the people in charge of the movie version are total morons, there's no reason why this couldn't be a warm and enjoyable family movie. They've actually got an excellent opportunity to improve on the book by trimming down the narration.
After Letty Fox: Her Luck, it was a relief to read some clear and reader-friendly prose. Of Human Bondage may not have the most likable characters you've ever seen, but within a paragraph or two of their introduction, they are unforgettable. Among them are Philip's love-starved aunt, his dour uncle and Mildred, the cheap, grasping waitress that Philip inexplicably falls for, and Philip himself, who manages to overcome his self-consciousness about his clubfoot and finds out through trial and error where his talents lie.
Since Maugham was also a playwright, he seemed to have a tendency to write situations overlarge: Mildred is not only a bad girlfriend, she's monstrous, complete with green-tinged skin that Maugham alludes to on several occasions. Philip not only hits a rough patch; he nearly starves to death. His divorcee girlfriend and the young woman he subsequently falls for are not only agreeable, they're practically earth goddesses. Luckily, Maugham had such skill and craftsmanship he was able to pull off this kind of thing with great success.
Another testament to Maugham's skillful writing is how he's able to make certain situations crystal-clear, even though in 1915, when Of Human Bondage was first published, a writer tiptoed around and discreetly alluded to subjects like extramarital sex, prostitution and venereal disease. Maugham was a good boy and followed the rules while dropping a lot of strategically placed clues.
Of Human Bondage whetted my appetite for more Maugham; I'm definitely a fan of his now. I want to read another of his novels, but can't decide on which one. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Gentle Reader wrote a much better, more in-depth review of this novel. You can view it at her enjoyable blog, Shelf Life.
I was disappointed in the nonfiction book AMONG THE BOHEMIANS by Virginia Nicholson. She's the great-niece of Virginia Woolf. The book had an interesting premise: How artists and writers fought to free themselves from the extreme confines of the Victorian Era by adopting a Bohemian lifestyle, and how modern life has been influenced by the early 20th century Bohemians.
Nicholson arranges the chapters thematically: sex, food, children, housekeeping, etc. and illustrates these themes with examples from some famous literary and artistic (and some not as famous, but usually running in the same circle) lives. Because she uses so many examples and it's the same people, some of the chapters feel repetitive and claustrophobic. In spite of that, I sympathize with Nicholson's fervor to throw it all in. She's coming at this project as a sort of "literary anthropologist", if such a term can be allowed.
AMONG THE BOHEMIANS is not the great read I expected it to be, but I did learn more about the practices, morals, and mores of the Victorian Era, and much about the homely details of day to day existence during that time. In addition, I learned about many Bohemians that are just fringe-famous, but often fascinating in their own right. This would be an interesting book to throw in if someone was teaching (or taking) a literature course on Bloomsbury.
"Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street..." Now, that's an opening line worthy of a novel! From the very first time I heard "Is She Really Going Out With Him?", I was a Joe Jackson fan. When he did the song on "American Bandstand", he introduced it by saying, "This is for anyone who's ever had acne." The fresh-faced dancers on the show laughed lightly, politely. I knew they didn't get it.
All of this is an extremely roundabout way of saying that I've found another Joe Jackson to admire! I'm currently reading A FURNACE AFLOAT, which is about the 1866 disaster in which a clipper ship called the Hornet burned at sea. The crew and passengers all survived the blaze, but they were crowded into small lifeboats with minimal provisions for 4,300 miles until they were finally rescued.
All of Jackson's books look wonderful to read. He's also wrote LEAVENWORTHTRAIN: BITTER JUSTICE IN THE VANISHING WEST which is a true crime story. He also co-authored DEAD RUN: THE SHOCKING STORY OF DENNIS STOCKTON and LIFE ON DEATH ROW IN AMERICA.
I finished LUCY CROWN a couple of days ago. What a terrific book. It makes me lonesome for books that I read when I was a child. I like huge chunks of dialogue, in which one person is "speechifying" and gets it all said at a crucial part in the novel when the reader's head is buzzing madly with predictions and questions. I like it that Irwin Shaw seemed to understand that. A writer should be a reader, first.
I'd only had a nodding acquaintance with Shaw's novels. I remember being in early high school when RICH MAN, POOR MAN (the miniseries) came out, so I decided to give the book a try. I remember liking it; I don't remember why I abandoned it after the first section.
Fast-forward almost 30 years, and I'm browsing at the library and I see a title: LUCYCROWN. I have a weakness for novels named after the main character, especially if the main character is female, so I read the first page, then I read a page in the first part of the book in which Lucy is arguing futilely with her husband. It all looked scrumptious, so I stuck the book back on the shelf. I knew that soon I would develop a jones to read this book. I didn't have long to wait: About a week and a half later, I stumbled into the library, over to fiction, over to the S's and claimed my book.
In an earlier blog entry, I'd written that the book seemed arch and too John-Cheeverish to suit me, but I plugged along and was rewarded. When Shaw hit Chapter 5, he went into high gear and never looked back.
A point that Shaw handles brilliantly is that he has men all over the book describing Lucy and how beautiful she is, and how they'd no longer be the mortals they are if they could just get her into bed for one night. Ordinarily, this is enough to put me off, but he balances it all so expertly by showing what a dumb ass Lucy is about her life and relationships. Adding another layer, he shows that she *does* have a brain, but she's using it in ways that make the reader want to scream WTF?! especially where her twelve-year-old son, Tony is concerned. On the other hand, the reader understands completely where she's coming from. Shaw has seen to that, but he's got a nice light and deft touch with Lucy's psychological underpinnings. He gives a few brief details, then gives the reader credit for being able to connect the dots.
For a book about infidelity, this book is refreshingly free of sex; it all takes place 'offstage', so there's not the obligatory sex scene. When the reader sees Lucy at her most primitive, it's got nothing at all to do with sex, only self-preservation.
In addition, World War II plays a role in the middle of the novel, and when LUCYCROWN was written, in the early to mid 1950s, it was a recent event. This gives these passages a great deal of solidity; the reader doesn't have that niggling feeling that the writer sweated over his research and dropped in as many details as possible to give the writing verisimilitude.
I really don't want to discuss the ending, but suffice it to say that Irwin Shaw takes a God-like stance towards his remaining characters and gives them mercy.
Right after I finished LUCY CROWN, of course I had to find other readers, to see what they thought. So I hopped on the internet and found an article that mentioned that Irwin Shaw was a frequent guest at Richard and Andrea Simon's home. They were the parents of pop singer Carly Simon. During this time, which would have been Carly's preadolescence, Andrea Simon took revenge on Richard Simon (whose apparent weakness was other women) by having an affair with a very young man in their employ, and this liaison was allegedly conducted right under Carly's young nose. Irwin Shaw said, gee, I have an idea for a novel.
Reading about the fictional Tony is bad enough because I have a male only child, but reading the novel with Carly Simon fixed as a character gives it creepy undertones. Also, Shaw seemed to want to make sure that the Simon family knew fully about his inspiration; Carly Simon's sister is named Lucy. I kind of wish I didn't know this additional information. Little bit of an ick factor at work here.
