Finding a Girl in America – Andre Dubus
Girls are easy to find for Hank Allison, professor at an upscale university; they’re sitting in his classroom, waiting to be plucked. In the title story, I lost count of them. I also lost respect for Dubus. If you’re an author and professor of literature, you can’t have a protagonist who’s an author and professor of literature and not expect the reader to see the work as autobiographical. I passed judgment on an individual who has affairs with girls fifteen years his junior. Dubus added to my alienation by subjecting me to smarmy sex scenes with all the thrusting details. I had started this collection in a positive frame of mind; I liked Dubus’s one novel, The Lieutenant. But the first four stories (before I got to “Girl”) were flawed by the author’s presence; I felt him showing off his all-embracing sensitivity. In two stories empathy is extended to killers. Here’s one contemplating his victim: “He felt her spirit everywhere, fog-like across the pond and the bridge, spreading and rising in silent weeping above him into the black visible night and the invisible space beyond his ken and the cold silver truth of the stars.” This excerpt is an example of panting prose; Dubus wants the reader to think, “God, that man can write!” But back to “Girl.” Dubus ennobles the affairs: they move Hank from “a need not only to give her more of what attracted her in the classroom” to his “passion to know all of her.” For sexual gratification he can’t turn to the women in the town who “thought Chekhov was something boys did in their beds at night.” He needs someone who, like him, loves literature. Needs: Hank has a lot of needs to fill; it’s a burden that can do a lot of damage to someone vulnerable. Most of the coeds he beds are far from paragons of virtue; if they’re budding writers they probably see sleeping with their published prof as a chance to advance their careers. But at the end of the story he has found his true love in Lori, who’s relatively innocent. I fear for the Loris who unwisely stray into the orbit of his neediness.

A Question of Upbringing – Anthony Powell
The burden this novel carries is that it’s the first of a nine volume undertaking called A Dance to the Music of Time. I couldn’t help wondering, “Do I want to spend a good part of my life reading about these people?” The answer, which came to me on page 150, was that I just wasn’t interested enough. Part of the problem is that the narrator is looking back at events that occurred in his late teens, and his older self exhibits little emotion; even when the word “love” is used it’s without animation. Not helping matters is the stately prose: “The fact that an incisive step of one sort or another had been taken by him in relation to Lady McReith was almost equally well revealed by something in the air when they spoke to each other: some definite affirmation which made matters, in any case, explicit enough.” It’s as if the author was writing while dressed in suit and tie (and maybe spats). This excerpt also illustrates Powell’s quirky use of the colon. Was he trying to set a world record? As an experiment, I just opened the book five times, at random, and every page had one or more colons. The fact that I was noticing punctuation is a bad sign. But I’m being hard on a work that deserves respect. Though it wasn’t my cup of tea, I realize that Powell’s opus would be a treat for others. They could snuggle down by the fireplace for a good long read; they could enjoy Powell’s intelligence and sly humor; they could follow his handful of characters until, I suppose, they become doddering old men. Enjoy away!

Too Many Clients – Rex Stout
This was written late in Stout’s career, and it shows an author merely going through the motions. Archie has lost his bounce, and the many women characters are hum-drum. Like Stout, I didn’t exert myself – I read this inattentively. If I had made an effort to solve the mystery I would have resented how Stout pulls a motive for murder out of thin air (Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention . . .). What makes the ending interesting is that Nero Wolfe once again gives the murderer the time and space to commit suicide.

My Struggle: Book One – Karl Ove Knausgaard (Norwegian)
This is the first of six autobiographical novels. The word “addictive” applies. For over four hundred pages I was absorbed in a narrative that, for the most part, consists of ordinary daily events (the parts where the author goes into deep thinking mode were less engaging). The prose is unadorned and straightforward, the dialogue naturalistic, and the secondary characters strong. Most important, I felt that a sincere effort was being made to tell the truth; Karl presents himself to the reader, warts and all. The main focus in this volume is his relationship with his father. As a boy he senses that the man disapproves of him, so he becomes fearful of any contact. As an adult he watches from a distance as his father’s life deteriorates. After his death (the result of a long bout of suicidal drinking) Karl and his brother clean a house that has descended, over the years, into a disgusting state; that a man could sink so low is appalling. Karl has no answers as to what tormented his father; regarding his own struggles, he’s aware of personal inadequacies but seems unwilling to take steps to resolve them. This isn’t a memoir; it is, as advertised, a novel, and it attains the stature of literature in an unusual way. By an accumulation of events, some showing Knausgaard as a boy and some as an adult, we live segments of a man’s life and feel what he feels. But do I want to read more? Not soon; maybe later I’ll pick up the second volume. At this point, I need a break from being Karl Ove.

Norwood – Charles Portis
Dear Mr. Portis. This is the only time I’ve ever written an author. I don’t read many books. Most are long and complicated and I don’t care about the people. They’re not like me. But your book was short and simple to read, and I knew Norwood. He was a good old boy like me. He has some wild adventures and it was fun going along with him. I’ve never been twenty miles from where I was born and I never met a midget. I wonder if that midget will send him his fifty dollars. I doubt it, not the way he hightailed it after he got the money. Will Norwood marry Rita Lee and will they be happy? I’d say yes, because neither expects a whole lot out of life. And both are goodnatured. Norwood thinks he can play the guitar and sing, but I was glad you didn’t have him wind up on the Louisiana Hayride and be a big hit. Because that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in real life. It’s just stuff we dream about happening. I saw in the back of the book that you wrote this other book called True Grit. Now I seen that as a movie, the one starring John Wayne. I expect you got paid plenty for that. So I was wondering, could you send me $50? It’s for a good cause, to bail Granny out of jail. She’s in for battery on a police officer, but there’s two sides to what happened that night. Anyway, the hoosgow ain’t no place for a 67 year old lady. I think from your book that you got a good heart. I promise I’ll pay you back soon as I get my disability check. I’m not like that midget. Just send the money to me at the Tickfaw, Louisiana post office, general delivery. I get all my mail there. Thanks. And keep writing them good books.

The Lieutenant – Andre Dubus
This is a military novel, but the battles fought are over moral choices. Lieutenant Dan Tierney is in command of a Marine contingent aboard an aircraft carrier. Trouble arises among his men; it emerges, gradually, that some of the soldiers are engaging in homosexual bullying. Ted Freeman is their main victim; the role of victim is one he has endured all his life; it was out of a need to gain self-esteem that he joined the Marines. Lieutenant Tierney, though only twenty-five, believes fervently in the old school values of the Corps (he even carries a swagger stick). He takes action to end what’s going on – which he considers repugnant and shameful – while trying to keep it hidden from his naval superiors; his decisions are irresolute and make matters worse. There’s a saying that’s relevant: “The career of a Marine officer is living the lie and making the lie come true.” Tierney lives the lie – that the Marine Corp is an honorable institution – but he cannot make it come true. In a prose as compact as a bullet Dubus relates a series of events that will ultimately crush Freeman. In trying to help the boy Tierney locks horns with the ship’s captain, and as a result his career is derailed from what he believes is his true calling – to lead men in combat. Tierney’s emotional makeup is an amalgam of passion and stoicism. When he gets a Dear John letter from the woman he loves and needs (she’s the daughter of a Marine Colonel and she doesn’t want to live the life of a Marine wife), he writes her, in block letters: “AS THE SAYING GOES, IF THE MARINE CORPS WANTED ME TO HAVE A WIFE THEY WOULD HAVE ISSUED ME ONE.” Andre Dubus was a Marine for six years; he was thirty-one when this novel (his only one) was published. In 1967 the taboo nature of the subject matter – homosexuality in the military – may have contributed to its lack of recognition. The 1986 edition I have was put out by The Green Street Press; it’s beautifully done, obviously an act of respect. The novel deserves respect. *