something about "Cold Spring" Harbor by Richard Yates

Evan is a strapping but slightly dull young man; he lacks confidence, discipline, and ambition. At 24, he already has a failed marriage behind him. His father, Charles, a retired army officer, feels unfulfilled, having missed his chance to shine in the fighting of World War I and married to a long-suffering, self-isolating alcoholic.

Evan remarries, this time to Rachel, a nice young woman who lives with her mother, Gloria, a nervous divorcee and compulsive talker, and Phil, Rachel's cynical 15-year-old brother. Cold Spring Harbor, the final novel by the stellar American author Richard Yates, handles the tepid, incongruous relationships between the two small families and the constellation of characters that orbit them.

Yates' characters grow quietly desperate as they stumble down any path that might lead them to what's missing. They are stung by resentment and disappointment, seemingly doomed to forever reckon with the disconnect between reality and the life they had imagined. Sexist and patriarchal norms blossom in the foreground of this novel, which was published in 1986.

Here are two of my favorite passages. First, after the Army rejects him because of his perforated eardrums, Evan begins to worry about his social standing as America prepares to enter World War II:

Well, but still, other men were saying goodbye to their wives all over the world. Other men were caught up in a profoundly hazardous adventure now, unable to guess how long it might last and not even caring. None of them were ready to die but they all knew their death was entirely possible; that was what would invigorate every waking moment of their lives.

And when they came back, these other men—or when most of them did they would all have a decided advantage over Evan Shephard. They might look at him as if he were scarcely worth bothering with, the way the cops had looked at him the night he was booked for disorderly conduct. If they talked to him at all it would be in tones of condescension, rarely waiting to hear his replies. And whatever elaborate peaceful structures they might manage to build in the world, after the war, would always seem to be there for no other purpose than to shut him out.

One thing, therefore, was clear; they had better not find him like this. Evan Shephard was damned if they'd find him punching a factory time clock, fondling his thermos bottle of coffee and his little brown paper bag of lunch, doing mindless, underling things all day then driving home in an absurdly cheap old car to this absurdly expensive place.

And, later in the novel, Evan and his brother-in-law, Phil, set out on a driving lesson. It is a chance to bond; Evan has always loved driving, and Phil is a lonely teenager eager to mature. But the lesson fizzles out in frustration.

That was how the lesson went until darkness began to fall—nothing really taught, nothing really learned—and when Evan drove them silently home he appeared to be sulking, as though he'd been offended by the afternoon. It was clear now that there would be no further driving lessons unless Rachel could find some agreeable way of encouraging them; it seemed too, from the set of Evan's handsome profile, that he might now be thinking of ways to let her know, tonight, what a hopeless fucking idiot her brother was.

And Phil knew there might not be much profit or future in hating your brother-in-law, but that didn't mean you couldn't figure him out and see him plain. This dumb bastard would never get into college. This ignorant, inarticulate, car-driving son of a bitch would never even be promoted to a halfway decent job. This asshole was going to spend the rest of his life on the factory floor with all the other slobs, and it would serve him right. Fuck him.

Phil also imagined how his approaching chance to enter the service and the war would give him the advantage over blue-collar Evan.

Phil Drake might not be much bigger or heavier at eighteen, but he'd be stronger and smarter and hardly ever silly any more. Except for a few widely scattered Irving School boys there would be nobody to remember what a jerk he'd been, and so the army might be the making of him; it might be the time of his life. Just before going overseas he would come home on furlough, wearing a uniform that could only make Evan Shepard weak with envy, and he'd say "Well, how're things going at the plant, Evan?"

Or, to be fair, Evan might have found his way into some second-rate engineering school by then, years older than any of his classmates, with Rachel at some menial daily work to make ends meet. But even a line like "How's college, Evan?" would be good enough, coming from a soldier in wartime. It would take care of the situation; it would do the job.

I first read this book in May 2021 and then reread it in May 2022. It was even better the second time.

something about "You Were Never Really Here" by Jonathan Ames

Joe's job is rescuing young girls who have been kidnapped and trafficked into the sex trade. You Were Never Really Here describes a job that will probably put Joe out of his misery.

Joe, a former Marine and FBI agent, gets hired to save the daughter of a corrupt politician in New York. But when he briefly disturbs operations at a brothel, Joe becomes a threat to a conspiracy and soon learns the stakes are higher than just a few months' income for a sex trafficker. The threatened trafficking organization murders the few important people in Joe's life. Joe, a deeply damaged human being, responds immediately by going on the offensive. He intends to brutalize his way to the crime boss who just destroyed the life Joe had come to accept. Now he has nothing left to lose.

"You Were Never Really Here," a slim novella published in 2013, was a huge departure for American author Jonathan Ames, whose work tries to be humorous. A gritty film version written and directed by Lynne Ramsay came out in 2017. It stars Joaquin Phoenix, who is real and the best actor of all time.

The book has a clumsy description of Joe early on. I wanted Ames to take us deeper. But, nevertheless, You Were Never Really Here was a highly engaging but too short read.

something about "The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway"

This collection is divided into three parts; some stories go together like a series. I especially enjoyed the random excerpts, such as "One Reader Writes." Here, Hemingway exhibits the empathy only a writer could capture. 

My favorite Hemingway short story in this collection is "I guess Everything Reminds You of Something." The heaviness of meaning and relevance in this story, which, unsurprisingly, is an easy read, will force any reader to pause.

Note: I read an edition labeled "The Finca Vidia Edition."

something about Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms"

Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms looks back at a love that fought in World War I. The lovers are Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley. Here is Fredric beginning his relationship with Catherine:

I thought she was probably a little crazy. It was all right if she was. I did not care what I was getting into. This was better than going every evening to the house for officers where the girls climbed all over you and put your cap on backward as a sign of affection between their trips upstairs with brother officers. I knew I did not love Catherine Barkley nor had any idea of loving her. This was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge, you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes. Nobody had mentioned what the stakes were. It was all right with me.

This passage stuck with me. Through most of the novel, I wondered if Frederic and Catherine really loved each other—or, at least, whether each loved the other at the same time. I thought that maybe they were lonely and scared and just wanted to love and comfort someone. She seemed to doubt his sincerity, and he seemed to be either keeping his distance or trying to persuade himself she was something more than she was. Then, by the end, their love—which of course is borne of loneliness and fear—becomes painfully real.

Catherine may be crazy, but she is a great and complicated character. She knew all along that their relationship was doomed.

I held her close against me and could feel her heart beating and her lips opened and her head went back against my hand and then she was crying on my shoulder.

"Oh, darling," she said. "You will be good to me, won't you?"

What the hell, I thought. I stroked her hair and patted her shoulder. She was crying. "You will, won't you?" She looked up at me. "Because we're going to have a strange life."

And one of my favorite Hemingway passages is this exchange between Catherine and Frederic:

"We won't fight."

"We mustn't. Because there's only us two and in the world there's all the rest of them. If anything comes between us we're gone and then they have us." 

"They won't get us," I said. "Because you're too brave. Nothing ever happens to the brave."

"They die of course."  

"But only once." 

"I don't know. Who said that?"  

"The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave but one?" 

"Of course. Who said it?" 

"I don't know." 

"He was probably a coward," she said. "He knew a great deal about cowards but nothing about the brave. The brave dies perhaps two thousand deaths if he's intelligent. He simply doesn't mention them." 

 

Note:  A Farewell to Arms was published in 1929.

something about "To Have and Have Not" by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, published in 1937, plays out the story of the destruction of Harry Morgan, an everyman fishing boat captain out of Key West, Florida. Harry, after being stiffed on a much-needed payment for chartering a private fishing cruise, finds himself with little choice but to recoup money through the black market, trafficking people and contraband between Cuba and Florida as opportunities to support his family dry up in the Great Depression Era.

I enjoyed parts of To Have and Have Not, but, most of the time, I was bored. That is probably ignorance, I know.

I did, however, enjoy a movie adaptation, "The Breaking Point," starring John Garfield and Patricia Neal. Ms. Neal, as she always did, stole the show, and the dialog at times was brilliant.

My favorite passage in Hemingway's text comes after a supporting character, American writer and expatriate, Richard Gordon, finds out his wife is cheating on him. Richard goes drinking. Here he is at the bar:

The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there.

Note: I have not seen the other movie adaptations.

something about "The Sweet Hereafter" by Russell Banks

I am a fan of the 1997 film, Affliction. In that film, Nick Nolte and James Coburn deliver rich performances depicting stricken men. The film is based on a book, published in 1989, by Russel Banks. Seeking other works by Banks, I found The Sweet Hereafter, which was published in 1991.

The Sweet Hereafter is divided into a series of first-person narrations of a fatal school bus crash and the devastation it brings on lives in a small town in rural Upstate New York. Most of the children on the bus die, but a few survive, along with the bus driver and a father whose daily commute follows the bus route. Lawyers, news media, and deep pain visit the town in the aftermath. The narratives are focused and contained, and the stories never get entangled. A gritty, emotional realism characterized by resignation imbues the novel—a feeling that is also prominent in the film adaptation of Affliction. This was a very good read.


Notes: 

The Sweet Hereafter is loosely based on an actual bus crash in Alton, Texas.
 
The film Affliction was directed by Paul Schrader and costarred Sissy Spacek and Willem Dafoe, who, as one would expect, were also great. I have always particularly enjoyed this short exchange in the film:

Rolfe Whitehouse (Dafoe): I was always careful around Pop. I was a careful child. And I'm a careful adult. But at least I was never afflicted with that man's anger.
Wade Whitehouse (Nolte): That's what you think.

something about "Dangling Man" by Saul Bellow

 
Our Dangling Man keeps a journal in which he agonizes over the gaps between his past and present selves. His encounters with people sound largely antagonistic.

The voice of the journal belongs to Joseph, a young man living in Chicago. At this moment in his life, Joseph is unemployed, and 1942 America is at war. Joseph's voice captures truths that are universal (or, at least national), temporal, and personal. Frustration over his compulsion to drill and drill himself for value taint Joseph's reflections. Although determined to unleash these thoughts, Joseph is an unwilling participant in a culture that increasingly casts every self in the lead role.

At the time of his writings, Joseph, Canadian by birth, has been waiting for word on his acceptance into the American army during World War II. He surrenders his personal freedom to end this suffering. He closes his journal with the words,

Hurray for regular hours!
And for the supervision of the spirit!
Long live regimentation!

Notes:
Dangling Man, written in 1944, is Saul Bellow's first published work. I thought Dangling Man had interesting moments, but I did not enjoy reading it.

A thing about the novella "Train Dreams" by Denis Johnson

Starting around the turn of the century, this fiction novella chronicles the adult life of northwestern laborer Robert Grainier. Denis Johnson's colloquial, often spartan prose endows Grainier and his story with simplicity. At this time the pace of change in life and society was gaining speed but Grainier, for the most part, remains insulated from all that in living his unexamined reclusivity from a woodsy outpost. But he isn't in hiding; in his life Grainier finds love, is found by tragedy; he comes to know the ache of time, the fury of nature; and from the margins he sees innovation and flirts with moral decay. Reading, we aren't driven by the plot or even the characters. Train Dreams feels like a writing exercise and succeeds with the down, diminished beauty of its prose.

Might be looking for more by Denis Johnson.

Something about the film "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

John Krasinski from the American version of "The Office" wrote, produced, and directed this adaptation of collected short stories by James Foster Wallace. In the film, a female doctoral candidate interviews dozens of men, exploring their hang-ups and modi operandi. But her motivation is not purely academic; recently heartbroken, she hopes to learn some elusive Truth. Unfortunately the dialog in this troubled film is tortured, as soliloquies of armchair psychology are spliced with eye-rolling confessionals. But we find one diamond in the rough--a short but picture perfect performance by Christopher Meloni in which he narrates an encounter with a young, heartbroken woman at the airport, his braggadocio showing a hairline fracture.

A thing on the book "At Home" by Bill Bryson

In At Home, author Bill Bryson offers an anecdote-rich tour of the modern suburban house. For this purpose he uses his own home, an impressive and well-aged English estate. This is a thick book of historical trivia in which Bryson introduces mostly little-known events and figures who share in the responsibility for our modern daily domestic experience. Bryson skips around the centuries (mostly the last four) and hops between Europe (mostly Western) and the Americas (mostly North).

Some pages in, I began to suspect Bryson of merely using the house as an excuse to assemble and publish a bunch of disparate historical tidbits he culled and collected along the way; oftentimes a story contributed nothing to our understanding of how the modern suburban house took shape.

But this doesn't make the reading any less agreeable. It's a good gift book, something that might liven up a coffee table in a lasting way.

Notes:

• I wouldn't want Bryson to really give me a tour. Not of his home or of a telephone booth or of anything.

Something on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

I previously wrote on two short Carson McCullers stories that depict love as a lost cause. Her most cited and celebrated work, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, zooms in on the lost. Loneliness reverberates through these pages as we  follow a modest cast of characters who harbor passions that stir and agitate them. Each character is doomed by their ill-fit connection to this world, seemingly unable to relate to it and to others. Isolated, they turn their thoughts and feelings over and over again in their minds before finding an outlet in a polite deaf-mute whose soft smile and modest nods of approval disguise his own pain.

Stealing moments alone with the deaf-mute, each character imagines they've finally found someone in the world who understands them without realizing that that someone actually does not. It may be the sole blessing in their miserable lives that they don't realize this, but even that delicate respite is stolen when the deaf-mute commits suicide. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter moves ploddingly at times but the characters are well drawn and the sorrowful tones resonate without deafening us to the sounds of tiny bubbles bursting.

Something on short stories by Carson McCullers

The drifter's wisdom imparted in Carson McCullers' short story "A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud." tells us that love don't come easy. Having first failed at love, this drifter concludes that to be successful he must take baby steps, first feeling love for a tree, a rock, then a cloud--objects seemingly less complicated, less sacred and dangerous than his love's final destination, the woman that got away. He claims his approach is a science. His conclusion indicates that he believes he is not the problem. No, love itself is the problem and, moreover, the beloved is tricky and must be approached with caution. If his conclusion holds true, does this make love impossible for all men? Only the aged can hope for true love. It's a guaranteed tragedy at best.

A similar message is driven home in McCullers "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe". Here she tells of misguided, unrequited love. The three primary characters are defined by a lack of love--either a lack of love given or returned--so much so that they are ultimately victimized by love, turned tragic characters doomed to love an impossibility while drenched in loneliness and soft brutality. The love we can call healthy escapes McCullers' universe.

On Percy Walker's The Last Gentleman

I had a longish review of The Last Gentleman but lost it through Google. So here's the shortened version:

Williston Bibb Barret was lost. With much help he discovered that his troubles belonged to man's condition and not to him alone. He found a future when he accepted one--in this case, the orthodox life of marriage, kids, church, and so on. Not as good as The Moviegoer but still very good.