This is a continuation of the previous entry, two other
books I enjoyed reading on the cruise. Rules of Civility is the debut novel of Amor
Towles who in “real life” is a “principal at an investment firm in
Manhattan.” In this regard he reminds me
of a much younger version of Louis Begley, another professional (although a
lawyer), who also stepped across the line into fiction writing. Towles does so successfully as well, managing
to capture a time, place, and social strata with a keen eye, one that makes the
novel compelling reading. Think of the times of F. Scott Fitzgerald, combined
with the insights of Edith Wharton into privileged society, along with some
punchy sentences reminiscent of Mickey Spillane. (E.G.: “The driver put the cab in gear and Broadway began slipping
by the windows like a string of lights being pulled off a Christmas tree.” Or
“The looked like they wouldn’t know skinny if it was wrapped in cellophane and
sold at the five-and-dime.”)
Unusual, it’s a first person female narration although the
novel is written by a man. Our likeable
protagonist, Katey Kontent, with grit and some fortuitous luck, finds herself
navigating from her start in a secretarial pool into the somewhat shark infested
waters of New York City’s upper class in 1938.
The art deco style scene is infested with some very rich people, and she
and her friend Eve – actually roommates at the time – both set their sights on
Tinker, an ostensibly very rich, attractive man. Eve is the Machiavellian predator while Katey
actually loves him. But like much of
life, things are not the way they seem.
Tinker has a dark secret as he follows his guide, the “110 rules”
originally penned by the young George Washington, from which the novel derives
its title, Rules of Civility and Decent
Behaviour in Company and Conversation.
And there is a central theme that ties everything
together in the novel when Katey realizes….
It is a bit of a cliché
to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at
any given time-by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we
influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts,
circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like
that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of
discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York' Do I
join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end
of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later
still?
In that sense, life
is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties,
when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred
indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions-we draw a card, and we must
decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or
discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has
been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for
decades to come.
In that regard, Wallace Stegner (see previous entry) would completely agree!
Rules of Civility
is a noteworthy first novel and I am looking forward to Towles’ next work.
On to a touching work, very original as it is written
from a “first dog’s” point of view. Yes,
dogs can think and write! We just have
to suspend belief and sit back and enjoy. I have my son, Jonathan, to thank for
bringing this book to my attention, sort of a children’s book for adults, a
simple and moving parable. I think you
have to love dogs to read A Dog’s Purpose
by W. Bruce Cameron. Dogs have been a
good part of my life, but, alas, not for the last ten years.
I was about eight years old when my parents picked up my
first puppy, a pedigree Boxer which for some reason, one that I do not recall,
we named Jo-Jo. He was a great watch dog
and but was raised slightly to be slightly neurotic so he acted out some bad
behavior. With my sister and myself he
was like another sibling and we could do anything to him, ride him, dress him
up nonsensically (here we had a sailor’s hat on him and a cigarette dangling
from his mouth), roughhouse with him (he always being gentle with us). But leave him alone and he’d practically
wreck the house. It got so bad that our
family once reluctantly left him in the basement. What could he hurt there? Well, we had an old coal furnace which was
converted to an oil burner and when we returned home he had charged, battered,
and wrecked the furnace. Thereafter, he
had to be left tied up when we were gone.
But I loved Jo-Jo and was always with him, remembering
taking him to the Veterinarian with my parents when he was only eight or nine
as he was ill, watching him be put in a cage, he looking back at me with sad
eyes. The Vet said he should be fine, pick him up in the morning. But he wasn’t and he had died before we
returned the next morning of nephritis, apparently quite common in boxers. I
was devastated and it took a long time to get over it. My parents eventually got another boxer,
named Sock (his white paws looked like socks).
But by that time I was off at college and never really bonded with him.
When Ann and I moved to Westport from New York, it seemed
like everyone had dogs, so we found ourselves doggie window shopping and suddenly
we had a Miniature Schnauzer pup, who we named Lilly. She lived 16 years and was really like our first
child. We spoiled her rotten and loved
her madly. She was the smartest of the
dogs I’ve known (maybe she’s really the author of A Dog’s Purpose :-). She
lived in our first two homes and even was part of our early boating life. When
Jonathan was born, she reluctantly put up with his toddler taunting.
We were putting an addition on the house and noticed she
was losing her bodily functions on the unfinished floor. She was also going blind and deaf so we took
her on that long ride to the Vet. I
don’t think Ann and I cried so much in our lives. We resolved, never again could we go through
that.
So there was no dog in our life for a few years, no
intent to get a dog, but one day I saw a little classified ad in the Westport News, “Miniature Schnauzer
puppy available to a loving family.”
What harm we asked ourselves to at least see the dog? “Please, please, please” our 12 year old
Jonathan begged, “I’ll take care of her.”
OK, so we called the number and the woman on the line explained it was
her recently deceased father’s dog, actually one of two fully house broken Schnauzer
puppies he had had, brother and sister, named after Morse Code pulses, “Dot”
and “Dash.” The male pup had already
been adopted but we wanted the female anyhow, so she agreed to a “test run,” we
taking the dog overnight and we’ll see how it goes. Well, Dot (who we called “Dotty”) came to visit
and never left.
Jonathan’s promise to feed and walk the dog lasted for a
few weeks and then Dotty was our responsibility. And once he went off to college, it was like
it used to be, just our dog and Ann and me. She was game for anything and spent
many nights and weeks with us on our boat, my rowing her to an island nearby
our mooring to do her business. She went
with us on our most adventuresome trips, finally moving to Florida with us and
finding a new sport, catching geckoes. When
Ann was out, she would always be by my side or on my lap if I was reading or
watching TV.
By the time she turned 14, her health was declining and
we could tell the time was coming for that dreaded ride to the Vet. We couldn’t face it and about that time my
mother died. The day of my mother’s
funeral, poor Dotty looked up at us from her bed, from which she couldn’t rise,
and we knew that when we returned we’d have to make that trip. We checked with the Vet. He’d be there. So when we returned from my mother’s funeral,
we tremulously approached her bed. She
didn’t stir. She had obviously just died,
sparing us on the one hand but, given the day we had just gone through, adding
so much to our grief. I don’t know how
we got her body to the Vet as the tears poured from me as I drove those ten
minutes. I needed windshield wipers for
my eyes. We agreed to cremation and a
few weeks later received a Plaster of Paris imprint of her paws. We still have that, but I can’t bear to look
at it.
We are now resolved, we could never go through that
again.
So there you have it, full disclosure for my reading of A Dog’s Purpose, which as I said, is
written from a dog’s perspective. This particular
narrator is not only one dog, but is reincarnated to truly discover “a dog’s
purpose.” He/she segues from Bailey to
Ellie to Buddy in the novel, three separate but related lives, learning in the
first life the meaning of love, “the boy” as Bailey refers to Ethan, “this was,
I decided, my purpose as a dog, to comfort the boy whenever he needed me.” But dogs (see my own story) do not live long,
and eventually Bailey must “leave,” being reassured by “the boy” as he departs this
life, that “you were a good dog.”
He is reincarnated as a new-born pup, eventually named
Ellie, and trains as a search and rescue dog and during her career makes a
number of rescues, including the emotional rescue of his masters, first Jakob,
and then Maya, “I had a clear purpose – to Find, Show, and save people. I was a good dog. Both Maya and Jakob were focused on work, and
that meant neither one of them could ever love me with the utter abandon of
Ethan.”
Ellie is then reborn as Buddy, but it is a rocky start
for him (first named Bear-Bear by uncaring owners). He is abandoned in the woods by them, and by
the time he finds himself back to civilization – eating garbage along the way,
he is distraught. “I was a dog who had
learned to live among and serve humans as my sole purpose in life. Now, cut off from them, I was adrift. I had no purpose, no destiny, no hope.” However, he finally finds a new owner, is
renamed “Buddy,” and to go into much more detail is to get into spoilers
although I sort of guessed where it was going.
This novel would devour a full tissue box if Ann had read
it. It was touching and one must credit the author, W. Bruce Cameron, for his imaginative tale. It is a gentle reminder that we all need to
find our purpose in life and then find a way to fulfill it. Buddy nee Ellie nee Bailey certainly did.
As Bailey exclaims:
“dogs have important jobs, like barking when the doorbell rings, but
cats have no function in a house whatsoever.”
