Lancaster and Freddie are drawn to each other. Lancaster suggests a few times that he and Freddie are cosmically connected, that they knew each other in a previous life. Both Freddie Quell and Lancaster Dodd improvise in life.
But Lancaster feels the pressure of his followers' expectations, their fragile devotion, and his determined spouse, Peggy (Amy Adams).
Freddie represents something like freedom. He is wild. He gets out of control and does not try to control others. He seems to have no views. And he claims to do what he wants.
His relationship with Dodd is Freddie's only meaningful one since before the war when he courted a young girl. The relationship with Dodd gave Freddie a taste of intimacy.
But
Dodd cannot pursue life with Freddie. Freddie is too damaged, too unstable, too
uncontrollable, and Lancaster has too many commitments. Moreover, Peggy will
not allow it. So Lancaster will carry on without him, and Freddie will drift
away alone.
Notes:
The host, made by a robot and cloned a
thousand times, asked me: "Do you want to see a woman without a head?" I am living in hell's dead body. She did not die here
old with us; the body stopped moving, but that is in this world only.
The younger model could not be saved emotionally and was not even physically or mentally salvageable. The girl and her fetus were in the photos, and some of the photos are still for sale.
The machine sky fell, and blood and sex were currency. We slept and cried and took drugs to get through the few remaining days after that.
Alice Prentice drags her son, Bobby, through her unstable life. They survive mostly on alimony as she chases artistic success she can never have.
After high school, Robert enlists and finds himself overseas during the last days of World War II. He makes a pitiful soldier, getting sick on the line and overwhelmed with confusion when fighting starts.
The novel's end made an impression on me. Spoiler: Alice starts drinking a lot and pins all hope on Robert returning and working so she can start sculpting again. But Robert decides not to return to America. He sends her a little money and wishes her luck.
The novel is no comedy, but I laughed at Yates's telling of some of Robert's struggles in the war. I related to his attempts, all vain and hopeless, not to look foolish. I laughed on a
crowded train when I read this part—Robert struggles to follow his platoon and
make sense of the action around him:
They were in a plowed field: the ridged, uneven earth gave like sponge beneath their feet. Prentice followed the sounds of voices into the darkness, running again, while the shells rushed overhead to explode well behind him, back on the other side of the canal. And it was there in the field, slightly behind him and to the right, that he heard Sam Rand’s voice:
“Prentice? That you?”
“Sam! Jesus, where’ve you—”
“Where the hell you been?”
“Where’ve I been? My God, I’ve been looking all over hell for you!”
It was still bad, but Robert had felt a little less confused in this firefight. So when his platoon leader inevitably reprimands him, Robert fires back. But doing so only makes matters worse.
This book has so many golden moments. The prose—every humiliation, whether in the chaos of the battlefield or during a childhood encounter with neighborhood kids—swells with sensitivity.
Several years ago I read a Yates short story collection and The Easter Parade. I knew he was special, but I guess I waited a few years before reading everything else he wrote. I knew he was my favorite author probably after reading this or Revolutionary Road.
Notes: A Special Providence, published in 1969, is Yates' third book. The cover image chosen for this Vintage Books/Random House edition does not fit the books contents or themes.
Jim suddenly sees himself—an old man in a leather vest sitting alone on a turquoise-colored couch in a Southwestern-style living room: stucco walls, wrought iron and reclaimed wood furniture set on terracotta tile. Even a cactus by the window and an old steer skull over the TV. Hell, Jim is from Gladwin, Michigan—what is he doing here?
He met Katie at Central Michigan University, where he ended up majoring in Finance and she dropped out to have Jason her junior year. Jim's modest career in accounting and Katie’s desire for warmer weather took them to northern Arizona a few years after Jason moved out. They were both 47 then.
Katie went all in on Arizona, got way into the Southwest stuff, filling the house with turquoise and dream-catchers and all that. She even started getting Jim to wear loose bolo ties on white blouses open at the neck and this leather vest. She spent $900 on this vest.
They grew old this way and Jim retired. She brought home a little white dog.
The crazy thing, Jim thinks, is he had hated all this—the décor, the vest, the fact that she spent $900 on this vest, the skull on the wall. Even the dog. Jim had hated a lot of things.
But she died three years ago, he misses her, and this is still who he is. He wears the vest almost every day, walks the little dog, and turquoise is his favorite color.
He still hates the wrought iron and reclaimed wood furniture. One piece of furniture she got right was this couch. He sleeps on it nightly. Hasn't needed to open the bedroom door in years.
