Reading McLarty

I wrote these comments a while ago when I first read The Memory of Running: I liked it so much that I read it all over again after reading it once, and I wrote to the author to share my thoughts about it:

In no particular order, the first pleasure was the recognition of place. My sister and her family lived in Barrington, R. I. for many years: she died there and she and her two children are buried there, in the town cemetery, a stone's throw from the beach. You mentioned so many streets, roads and areas I know, where I ran miles and miles, and you made them come alive for me again. You touched me in many personal ways. My sister's son, like Bethany, was a victim of mental illness and died in California, and Merwin and I traveled there to help celebrate his life at the center that had tried to help him recover.

I loved the structure of the novel, the travel, Smithy's (Hook's) growth from obesity to knowledge, the fishing, the baseball (and the way it shaped Smithy's family life), the deaths and how people recover from them. Your novel recalled to me Simplicius Simplicissimus, the 17th century German picaresque novel, which I read as an adult when I returned to college many years ago. The frustration of Hook's not being able to defend himself, to explain himself, to people in authority who always suspected the worst, his finally succeeding in doing so near the end of the book, his fixation on breasts but his sexual shyness. The satisfying structure, knowing that Norma was always going to be there and would be in reality at the close. The characters with a shtick, like the dirty jokes that Uncle Count can't help telling, the refreshing goodness of some people, the losses that people suffer, the many voices you let us hear. All these nuances made for a most important experience for me. Thank you so much. I am looking forward to Traveler and Art in America.

I read the next two books soon after and will write about them in another post. They were both wonderful in their own way. I also was moved to read Joseph Andrews as another example of a picaresque novel with good and misunderstood characters. McLarty is much better! Well, what can we expect: Fielding began the genre in English; McLarty perfects it.

The day began like most others: after a three-shirt night (night sweats), I got up feeling energetic, thinking of SPIN, the class I enjoyed so much up through Labor Day, but soon enough the usual fatigue takes over. I am smiling though. I am surrounded at my desk with materials for the essay I am writing, and I am happy about it.

Later,
Love to all,
Bernice