Tag Archives: Great Depression

Love Quadrilateral: Watershed

30 Monday Dec 2019

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Review: Watershed, by Mark Barr
Hub City Press, 2019. 303 pp. $26

Early one morning, Claire Dixon wakes because of painful symptoms of gonorrhea, which she could only have contracted from her husband, Travis. In a fury, she bundles their two children into the old car and sets off for her mother’s house nearby. The older woman, none too pleased to be roused, nor to have house guests, acts as though these burdens can only be redeemed through the arduous chores she has planned for her eleven-year-old grandson.

What a thrilling opening; you see Claire’s predicament instantly and can’t help put yourself in her place. And since this is sometime around 1936 or 1937 in small-town, western Tennessee near Memphis, hard times elicit hardness in people, while gossip about the Dixons will surely become cheap entertainment. It’s a hardscrabble place, Dawsonville, and the only hope for the future is the dam under construction that will provide the area with electricity for the first time. Not everyone greets the project with enthusiasm, either, for the federal government is the builder, which evokes fears of taxes, intrusion, or invasion by city slickers.

Initial architect’s rendering of the Watts Bar Dam on the Tennessee River, ca. 1939 (courtesy Tennessee Valley Authority via Wikimedia Commons)

One such newcomer is Nathan McReaken, a young electrical engineer from Memphis, but the way people treat him, he might as well hail from the dark side of the moon. He’s trying to catch on with the dam’s engineering office, no easy task, despite his impressive resume. Nathan’s granted a ninety-day tryout, reaching the end of which will require cleverness, talent, and political skills.

Like a bunch of other out-of-towners, he rents a room in a boardinghouse run by Claire’s Aunt Irma. But unlike them, he has a keener, more nuanced sense of his surroundings, and he’s far more sophisticated intellectually and emotionally, though that’s not hard. Unfortunately, he’s taken professional risks in the past, and he’s running from a mistake for which he’s been unfairly blamed. So, like Claire, he fears for his reputation too.

The 1930s and the New Deal fascinate me, so I was primed for this book. I also love the engineering office politics, easily the strongest scenes in the novel, and the cutthroat competition just to have a paying job, which brilliantly captures the desperation of the Thirties. The descriptions of the construction process and the difficulties of supply and labor offer a glimpse of how remarkable the effort was — and when you realize that this dam was only one of thousands of government projects, you have to be awed. On a more human scale, Nathan’s voice represents the passion and professionalism behind the project. He comes through loud and clear, expressing his acuity but also his loneliness:

Downstairs someone coughed. He pictured the boardinghouse as if it were a child’s miniature, each of them a doll in its own compartment. There was only the cough, the scuff of a shoe, the sudden voice raised in laughter, that told you someone was really there. A half-dozen lives playing out in parallel.

However, Watershed’s parts don’t cohere. I don’t know how Claire decides, as she does, to make something better of herself; at times, she hardly seems the unsophisticated “country girl,” as described, so what’s she changing from? She’s certainly not her mother’s daughter, and I feel I know the older woman better, what her standards are, what she cares about most, and why. Three men want Claire, or act as though they do, but, other than her prettiness, I can’t say what motivates them. Nathan, who believes he’s meant for her, just “feels right” in her presence. Okay, but the three men spend so much time maneuvering around each other, I begin to think Claire’s more an object of desire than a full person. I will say that after Travis, a complete boor, practically a thug — why did she marry him, again? — Claire’s next romantic choice makes sense.

But mostly, Watershed loses its way after its powerful start. Many chapters, though too brief to digress far and well written, have nothing to do with the story and exist only to show attitudes toward the dam and the electricity that will come. Though I like these themes, I wish Barr had confined them to scenes in which his protagonists appear, which would have felt natural, not shoehorned in. Without revealing too much, I note that these favorite themes loom so large at the end, they confuse the resolution, which zips by. Twice, I looked back after finishing the book to be sure I hadn’t missed a brief chapter or section. I’m still puzzled.

Watershed reached print through the generosity of Charles Frazier, whose Cold Mountain Fund dedicates itself to bringing southern writers into print. I applaud this mission with fervor and look forward to future offerings. However, I urge the powers behind Watershed, whether the fund or the publisher, to devote more resources to proofreading. Watershed suffers from many errors, not just dropped letters or words, some of which make the dialogue hard to follow.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Who Sups with the Devil: Manhattan Beach

01 Monday Jan 2018

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Review: Manhattan Beach, by Jennifer Egan
Scribner, 2017. 433 pp. $28

Anna Kerrigan likes to join her father, Eddie, on business trips around their native New York City. Anna’s too young to understand just what Eddie does for a living, and since this is the Depression, plenty of people get by in strange ways. But she’s proud, at his insistence, to provide another pair of eyes and ears, and he loves her emotional strength and quick-wittedness beyond her years. When she’s almost twelve, in 1937, Eddie brings her to meet Dexter Styles, a man who, she gathers, is very important to her family.

Years later, Eddie has disappeared. The war has come, and Anna has taken a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She runs into Styles again, and she doesn’t recognize him at first; but she realizes he’s a gangster, and that sets her to wondering whether he knows what happened to Eddie.

At the time this photo was taken at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in mid- April 1945, four aircraft carriers were under construction (courtesy U.S. Navy via Wikimedia Commons)

I expected to love Manhattan Beach, not least because of the rave reviews in the press, but I find the book a disappointment. Still, there’s much to praise. From her solid, if complex, premise, Egan has spun an ambitious novel about greed, power, lust, money, self-image, and innocence lost — the important stuff. She writes compelling, many-faceted characters, develops them over time, and gives them room to stretch. Nor does she pull punches with her storyline, so her people take plenty of punishment. She has also researched her historical ground with care and love, revealing myriad nooks and crannies of Depression and wartime New York, seamlessly rendered. Some years ago, the New-York Historical Society ran a terrific exhibit on the social mood of wartime New York and the hundreds of businesses and institutions that supplied the war effort. Manhattan Beach is like walking through that exhibit, except it speaks.

Egan gives you the harbor, both topside and below water; nightclubs and gambling dens; Brooklyn walkups and country clubs; ships and churches; anyplace you could want. And she peoples them with working stiffs, sailors, soldiers, young women doing “men’s jobs,” bankers, society folk, and hoods. The parent-child scenes are wonderful; a few took my breath away. And especially with her most important characters, Egan takes care to show their inner lives, as with this reminiscence of Eddie’s:

Lying in the vast dormitory, hearing his breath melt into the collective sigh of so many boys asleep, Eddie was shamed by his own meagerness: narrow hips; a sharp, unremarkable face; hair like dirty straw. Even more than the orphans’ annual excursion to the circus, he thirsted for the moment each month when the protectory barber’s hands would touch his scalp briefly, indifferently, yet capable of soothing him almost to sleep. He was of no more consequence than an empty cigarette packet. At times the brusque mass of everything that was not him seemed likely to crush Eddie into dust the way he crushed the dried-out moths that collected in piles on the protectory windowsills. At times he wanted to be crushed.

So what’s not to like, you ask? The narrative is so complicated that the pieces don’t fit together, and I have trouble believing much of it. Styles’s life as a gangster and Anna’s as a Navy Yard worker make sense apart, but trying to weld them—at least in the way Egan wants, pushing her characters to change–the components fail to mesh, so the effort feels forced. For instance, though I understand why Styles married his wife, Harriet, daughter of an admiral turned banker, I don’t see why she married him (and that’s a key part of the setup). More significantly, the story works very hard to bring Styles on a tour through the Navy Yard, using his daughter, Tabatha, as the catalyst, whereupon she drops out of the novel almost completely, even though she and her father have a special relationship. But the biggest trouble I have is imagining that Anna would go near Styles after realizing who he is, how dangerous he can be, and what he might have done to hurt her. She wants to let loose, yes; but she’s too smart, has such a strong sense of self-preservation, and has worked so hard to get where she is that I can’t see her risking it. Not for him.

I admire Manhattan Beach for its emotional range, breadth of theme, descriptive power, and bold scheme. I think Egan’s an excellent writer. But this novel left me unsatisfied.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

The First 1800 Words: A Glimpse of My New Novel

14 Wednesday Sep 2016

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Today, I’m offering a peek at my new historical novel, tentatively titled Curtain, inspired partly by Colm Toíbín’s fine book, Nora Webster. If you care to comment, I’d be happy to know whether what I’ve written here would tempt you to read more.

It’s April 1937, and Jeff Messer has missed the funeral of his closest friend, Broadway playwright Brendan Moore, by staying too long in Europe. Back in New York, Jeff apologizes, but Anna, Brendan’s widow, is too hurt to listen, and she’s furious that her sixteen-year-old daughter, Rosemary, takes Jeff’s side and tortures her at every opportunity. But Rosemary is convinced that her beloved father’s last play is the only thing that stands between the Moores and the relief line, and that Jeff, who directed all of Dad’s hits, must stage this one. However, no one knows that the play evokes a secret from a terrible chapter in Jeff’s life that may even get him killed.
Can these people find it in their hearts to see the others’ pain and grief–and is the play the thing to make it happen?

Chapter One

Anna was out, talking to the lawyer about Dad’s will, and would be gone an hour or two, easy. It was Friday morning, and Rosemary would return to school Monday, wearing this same black dress, most likely. Now was the time, before routine trapped her.
She ventured toward her parents’ bedroom and stopped, as if the heavy, white door, open a crack, were warning her to take care. She’d have to want to widen that passageway, an act of commission.
Rosemary reached toward the cut-glass doorknob, whose facets had used to make her imagine an immense diamond, too big to wear, only to draw back. She pictured faces challenging her in hurt or anger, voices calling her a hypocrite. Not just Anna, but her aunts and uncles, even her friends, anyone whose questions she’d ever rebuffed to protect a secret. This was her parents’ private place. Anna didn’t come into her room without permission, certainly not to snoop when Rosemary wasn’t there. The girl knew that because nothing had ever been disturbed, whether on her desk, in or atop her bureau, or anywhere else. So she’d never trespass the other way. Except that Dad’s legacy was a special case and maybe their best chance to stay off relief. And she, Rosemary, seemed to be the only one to recognize this vital fact. She grasped the doorknob and pushed gently, making sure to note the precise angle the door had made.
The phone rang in the living room. Rosemary ignored it.
Anna had stopped wearing perfume, so the room no longer smelled like lilac. In fact, aside from the ghost of Dad’s Camels, fainter and fainter over time, the only odor came from cabbage cooking upstairs, a scent Rosemary loathed. Cabbage was cheap, so she didn’t hold it against the Bartons, who were struggling, like so many. But she wrinkled her nose just the same, and it struck her: Aren’t we struggling too? No cabbage had shown up yet, but if the rest of 1937 was like the first few months. . . .
She shook her head violently, because she had a job to do, which didn’t include feeling sorry for herself, and stepped into the room. Just crossing that boundary made her hold her breath, as if she expected Anna to leap from the closet and say, “I got you, you little sneak.”
The phone continued to ring. It happened so often these days, like a tired song that repeated the same note over and over until you wanted to scream.
The closet remained closed, and nobody leaped anywhere. Emboldened, Rosemary went further, stood directly beneath the globe light fixture that hung over the foot of the double bed with its pale blue bedspread. The bed she’d been conceived in, most likely.
What a creepy thought. She’d been having thoughts like that recently, imagining her parents creating her. She hoped it didn’t mean she was perverted, wondering about stuff like that. But she couldn’t help it. Had they enjoyed it? Equally? Or had it hurt, for Anna? Something told Rosemary it hadn’t, but still, Anna had never gotten pregnant again. Rosemary would have liked a younger sibling, preferably a brother who’d be sweet and adoring and vulnerable and look up to her. Maybe Anna had wanted another child too. Both she and Dad had come from large families, so having only one child themselves was very different for them. Though the condolence visit from her aunts and uncles had proven having siblings was a hit-and-miss thing. God, what if she’d had a little brother like Uncle Timothy? Disgusting.
The phone stopped ringing, thank God. Now she could think better.
Where did they keep the script? More exactly, where had Dad left it, and had Anna moved it? If she hadn’t moved it, maybe . . .
Dad’s Underwood, covered up like a canary’s empty cage, stood on a table in the corner, out of the way. Tears came. Never again would he tap-tap the keys at the kitchen table, humming and chuckling as he wrote, while a cigarette burned in the ashtray.
Quietly, as if Anna could hear–as if Dad could see and disapprove–she slid open his top dresser drawer and listened carefully for a key in the front door. If Anna caught her, Rosemary could always say she was looking for memories of Dad, and she probably wouldn’t even have to fake her tears, which would silence Anna like a piece of tape over her mouth. But all she saw were Dad’s shirts, laundered, pressed, and folded, like he was about to wear them, his handkerchiefs, and cuff links. His watch. A packet of letters, tied with ribbon. Rosemary reached out, then mentally slapped her hand. She didn’t have time for that, and besides, reading them would really be snooping. She might feel guilty for that, and she didn’t want to do anything she couldn’t excuse. Though Anna had behaved really badly.
In Rosemary’s head, Anna had been Anna, and not Mom, for exactly eighty-three days, and counting. She’d officially rechristened her the night she’d overheard Anna say out loud that Dad was dying, the first Rosemary had heard of it. She’d never been so angry, felt so betrayed. Her mother had tried to keep her ignorant of the most important thing that had ever happened in their family. How could Anna, a woman who prided herself on the straight dope, who preached honesty, honesty, honesty, lie like that? It was a stupid lie, too, the kind that would show itself sooner or later. But that hadn’t stopped Anna, whose round, angelic face and light, blue eyes could fool you, and the eggshell chin that would crack before the mouth ever uttered a falsehood.
But the very next day, Rosemary had gone to Dad and asked him, point-blank. He’d looked at her with the dark eyes that had already started to shrink into his head, like there was nothing left in life for him to see, and said softly, in a voice that had begun to dry up like old leaves, “Yes. How it hurts to leave you and Mom.”
That conversation, only a few words, was the most precious she’d ever had–and Anna, in her role as Mom, had tried to prevent it.
The memory of Dad’s confession brought more tears. Rosemary turned away so that she wouldn’t cry into his top dresser drawer. Dad would forever be Dad, but, in her own mind, the only place that was truly safe, Mom had become Anna. Out loud, Rosemary would give her what she required, but in her head, she was a rebel, a resister. Anna had forfeited the right to her intimate name because she’d done something so hurtful, so ordinary, so goddamned stupid and insensitive. And to top it off, she’d treated Rosemary, who was sixteen already, like a little kid who wouldn’t know how to handle the news.
She slammed the first drawer shut and flung open the second. Anna might catch her, but she wouldn’t be lied to.
The phone began to ring again. Honestly.
But the second drawer proved no more enlightening, nor the third and last. A great weight seemed to want to drag her lungs down past her waist, as if they’d fail, like Dad’s. She struggled for air, caught her breath gratefully. What if he’d locked it up somewhere, maybe in his filing cabinet? She closed the drawer, checked to see whether she’d moved anything, and dove into the closet.
No luck. The cabinet was locked as tight as J. P. Morgan’s bank vault. Nothing on the floor, either, or wedged onto a shelf up top.
Anna’s dresser? Rosemary drew back. Rummaging there would be like slapping the empress’s face before the court. If she had to, she’d do it, but only as a last resort.
Wait. One more place. She dropped to one knee and lifted the bedspread, fighting off visions of her parents coupling. The sight of the boxes, neatly labeled in dark pencil, made her close her eyes and exhale in triumph. Left, Right; Pinch Me, I’m Dreaming; One of Us Is Crazy; Barrel Over Niagara; Marry Soon, and Often; and the others–the whole works, literally. She sneezed, twice–the boxes were dusty–and found the newest, which wasn’t dusty at all. Interchangeable Parts. Hallelujah.
The phone stopped again.
Rosemary looked over her shoulder, as if she hadn’t already broken the law and could redeem herself, should Anna surprise her. But Anna wasn’t there, nor did her key enter the lock. Rosemary slipped the looseleaf binder out, replaced the box and the bedspread, and spent precious seconds deciding exactly how far open to leave the door. Then she raced into the hallway, and grabbed her coat and hat from the rack.
Call first? Yes. She had to be sure. She went to the living room, lifted the receiver quickly, before anyone else could call, and dialed. Some people, like the Bartons upstairs, had given up their phones to save money. If Anna and Rosemary had to do that, this call might be–but Rosemary wouldn’t think of that.
“Hello?” A man’s voice. The wrong man; the greasy roommate, Harvey.
“Hello, Mr. Mandel. This is Rosemary Moore.” She thought she heard a woman’s voice in the background, a complaint.
“Oh. Oh, yes. I’m sorry about your dad.” He rushed his words, breathing hard.
Rosemary shuddered. Poor Jeff, having to live with someone like that. Mr. Mandel was a teacher, no less. He must have called in sick just to–“Thank you. Is Jeff there?”
“No, he’s out. He said he was going to Chas Parker’s office, and then to Max’s.” Out of the way, so Harvey and his lady friend could have privacy. Did Harvey ever leave so that Jeff could . . .?
“Thanks. Good-bye.” She hung up before he could reply and reentered the hallway.
Chas Parker. Jeff was already arranging to direct another play. Rosemary wasn’t a moment too soon.
As she turned the doorknob, she stopped short. Those boxes under the bed were her siblings. They couldn’t adore anybody, and you couldn’t talk to them or play with them or button their coats for them, and they wouldn’t look up to you. But they were Dad’s children, not Anna’s. There was something to be said for that. And maybe she could care for her latest and last sibling, in a way.
The phone started ringing. The other night, when Anna was in a particularly foul mood, she’d suggested that she and Rosemary stand in Sheridan Square, handing out postcards that read: “I knew/didn’t know Brendan/Mr. Moore well, and/but I’m sorry for your loss. I promise not to waste your time and patience by calling/coming over/reciting righteous platitudes. Signed, _________.”
Dad would have been the first to laugh. Rosemary closed the door firmly on the ringing phone.

 

© Larry Zuckerman, 2016

Elegy for a Town: Long Man

28 Monday Mar 2016

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Review: Long Man, by Amy Greene
Knopf, 2014. 272 pp. $26

Come August 3, 1936, the east Tennessee town of Yuneetah will cease to exist. On that day, the Tennessee Valley Authority, part of FDR’s New Deal, will unleash the Long Man River, and the dam built at its headwaters will submerge the valley. Most residents have left the land their forebears had settled for centuries, whether because the hardscrabble soil couldn’t feed them or, more recently, they bowed to the government’s eviction notices. But Annie Clyde Dodson, who can trace her lineage in part to the Cherokees who hunted this valley, isn’t going anywhere. She’ll stay, even to risk her life and that of her three-year-old daughter, Gracie, even to say goodbye to her devoted husband, James, who’s found a factory job in Michigan.

TVA sign from the Roosevelt Museum at Hyde Park, New York (Courtesy Billy Hathorn via Wikimedia Commons, 2015; public domain)

TVA sign from the FDR Presidential Library at Hyde Park, New York (Courtesy Billy Hathorn via Wikimedia Commons, 2015; public domain)

From the first words, you see Annie Clyde’s mindset, as she overlooks her limestone ridge at sunset:

She would watch with her knees gathered up as the last light mellowed into dusk, falling down the piney bluffs. Before half the homesteads were razed the lowering sun would stain the tin roofs of houses and barns, deepening the rust to oxblood. Gilding wheat sheaves and tobacco rows, shading red clay furrows. Last summer she might have heard a farmer calling in his cows. . . . But now there was only stillness and silence besides the tree frogs singing as twilight drifted toward night.

Such spare, potent prose brings life to these age-old themes of blood, land, and power. That power comes in two forms. One is the electricity the dam will produce, new to eastern Tennessee, and in which everyone will share. The other is the power to take homes away, wielded by bureaucrats who have nothing but contempt for the people who live in them.

But though Long Man treads perilously close to a self-righteous tale pitting salt-of-the-earth farmers against evil city slickers, Greene takes the high road with her main characters. Annie Clyde, as you may have guessed, is almost fatally stubborn, the type who refuses to listen to anyone. So when James announces his intention to move to Michigan, she cuts him dead, and he tries vainly to fight off the conclusion that she’s never loved him. When he finally gathers the courage to confront her, she won’t discuss it, which only hurts him more. But just as she fears leaving Yuneetah would mean abandoning the best part of herself, what she loves about the land, her property, and her ancestors’ graves–her life, in other words–he has his own story.

It’s not just that James hates farming–eating dust, watching the heat burn the corn, and hoping that the next heavy rain won’t wash away what little topsoil is left. Rather, the valley frightens him, for he watched his father drown in one of many floods that the Long Man inflicts on the long-suffering population. Even if they could stay–if the dam didn’t make that impossible–James wants a life where he need not fear for himself or his family, where earning a living need not be such a struggle, where the hard environment won’t kill them before their time.

Nevertheless, as the deadline looms, James realizes that if he goes to Michigan, Annie Clyde will stay behind with Gracie. But during a heavy rainstorm, Gracie disappears, and suddenly the whole population joins the hunt for a child whose spirit and cheerfulness have made her beloved. It’s as if everyone tacitly believes that if she were to die, there’d be no hope left in the world.

Long Man offers many pleasures, not least the subtle symbolism, which feels almost biblical in scope. It’s like the Flood that will sweep away an old world; but there’s no ark, no Noah, and, most important, no God to watch over anyone. I also like the name Yuneetah, which reminds me of a famous biscuit, an ironic similarity–you need this dam. But Annie Clyde thinks she doesn’t, and she’s betting that the new world the water brings will be worse than the old.

I also like Greene’s characterizations. Besides the two principals, the most memorable is Amos, a drifter from Yuneetah who’s mean, unpredictable, and the definition of passive-aggressive, but who thinks he has the charismatic spirit everyone else lacks–and may be right. However, Greene sometimes interrupts her narrative for backstory about a minor figure, and though I understand her desire to give everyone his or her due, that can go too far. I also find it unbelievable that the only social prejudices belong to the bureaucrats, and that nobody talks about race–this is 1936, after all, in the South.

Still, Long Man is a terrific book.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.