Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant – Anne Tyler
The Bright Book of Life – Harold Bloom
The Book of Power – ed. by Mitch Horowitz
The Deep Blue Good-Bye – John D. MacDonald
Nightmare in Pink – John D. MacDonald
I don’t know how it took me so many years to first hear about the Travis McGee series. Written by John D. MacDonald in the 60s, they’re a combination of James Bond, “Inherent Vice,” and all the continuing series characters that followed. McGee is a beach bum who resides on his 50 foot houseboat, the Busted Flush, in Fort Lauderdale. He’s permanently unemployed, and makes his money thru unconventional arrangements. Part repo-man, part private detective, he will recover any lost or stolen fortune, as long as he keeps half. They come to him because these fortunes were the result of illegal/ quasi-illegal enterprises.
For 1964, this series is pretty groundbreaking for its love scenes and depictions of the brand new world of the pill and abortion (which was only legal in some states at the time). As the narrator, McGee is well aware of this new trend of casual sex, and partakes, but he’s admittedly too much of a romantic to be a womanizer. Explicit without being crass, MacDonald writes these scenes with taste and a poetic sensibility. Here’s one example that’s almost universally applicable to any new couple falling in love:
“It is a rare thing, that infatuation which grows with each sating, so that those caresses which are merely affection and the gratitude of release and sleepy habit turn in their own slow time into the next overture, the next threshold, the next unwearied increment of heat and need, using and knowing, learning and giving, new signs and signals in a private and special language, freshened heats and scents and tastes, sweetened gasps of fitting thus, knowing this, learning of that, rediscovering the inexhaustible here, the remorseless now.”
“Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant” chronicles the dysfunctional Tull family, from its earliest beginning when Beth, the matriarch, was wooed as an old bitty to her death 60 years later. Each chapter adopts a different vantage point, varying from Cody, the troublesome child and successful adult businessman; the dreamy momma’s boy Ezra; Jenny, the unlucky in love daughter; and Beth herself, both as a young woman and on her death bed. The father runs away from the family while they’re still young, a fact Beth denies for years. It’s a heartfelt and funny story, but damn, they are an unlikeable bunch.
“The Bright Book of Life” is another entry in a favorite genre: books about books. Bloom was famous Yale professor and the preeminent American literary critic of the last 40-50 years. This book has a less academic feel than his previous works, but it’s still dense reading. Each chapter recollects his thoughts and feelings on dozens of books, spanning centuries, ranging from Shakespeare to “Ulysses” to Ursula LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness.”
“The Book of Power” is an anthology of works on self-improvement, personal power, and strategy. This is the sort of book that appeals to prisoners and holds good resale value. It opens with Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” and ends with Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” but stuffed in between are much more modern works by Edward Bernays (inventor of propaganda), Wallace D. Wattles, Genevieve Behrend, and others. The tenor of these essays resemble Napoleon Hill, focussing on the law of attraction and visualization.
The most intriguing of these is Horowitz’s own “The Power of Sex Transmutation.” His central thesis, bolstered by ancient teachings and esoteric practices, contends that the sexual urge can be redirected into any endeavor, imbuing it with creativity and force. The essay finishes with a thoughtful meditation–that same creative force which has propagated our species and made the universe ultimately courses thru you, seeking an outlet.
Easy Trouble 