Journal of a Sabbatical

November 2, 1999

guy stuff

Today's Reading: Thirty Years by John Marquand

A good writer can get you inside the head of someone who is nothing like you. John Marquand excelled at bringing his readers into the lives of privileged young men - the prep school followed by Harvard types of an earlier era when social class mattered more than it does now. As I was finishing Thirty Years, Ned asked me what I was reading and I summarized it "guy stuff". Yup, there I was sitting in the coffee shop reading about men, wars, coming of age, generals, male bonding, wars, father-son relations, wars... and liking it. I felt like an anthropologist watching an alien culture through a one way mirror.

The pieces in Thirty Years are a sort of random collection of Marquand's early work that was published in magazines or delivered as talks at some Tuesday night literary club in Newburyport. There are a few essays, travel pieces, and humor but the heart of the book is the short stories. All but one of them kept me interested through beginning middle and end. The one that didn't was set during the Civil War. The stories had a tight obvious structure - you could almost use them as short story templates - and strong characterization. As these stories were written long before the death of narrative, they are unashamedly plot-driven. That's what kept me reading.

The best story in the book is End Game, which uses chess games throughout the narrative as metaphors for what's going on in the narrative itself. The metaphors are multilayered, standing for the intricate game of family relationships - that whole father/son thing - and for world events on the larger scale. A story about an Old China Hand at loose ends in New York wraps around a story about a young military brat's rebellion against his authoritarian father. The Old China Hand and the grown up rebel military brat meet over a chess game at a penny arcade. Their stories end up connecting in other ways. More than that would spoil it for the reader, so I'll leave it there. I loved this story.

The book ends with an essay on the novel. Marquand makes some excellent points about what makes a good novel and what the academic "rules " are for a novel and how those are not necessarily the same thing. He's big on learning how to write by experience rather than by instruction. I loved the section comparing learning to write with learning to play golf. An upper middle class choice of metaphor to be sure, but an apt one. When he's on the golf course watching golfers get fabulous scores while doing everything all wrong, it's so clear that technical proficiency and individual habits developed by experience can both get you to the same place. Maybe I'll throw out all my books on how to write a novel and just write it.