Three for the Road

Some ostensibly very different works of fiction are discussed  here, Ian McEwan’s Sweet Tooth, John Updike’s The Maples, and The Portable Library of Jack Kerouac.  But they are tied together in some ways, particularly as I read them somewhat concurrently over the last month or two -- mostly during our trips to Alaska and Seattle -- and each in its own way has struck a chord in me.

After reading McEwan’s Saturday which I thoroughly enjoyed, everything taking place in one day (Saturday, naturally), I read his Solar -- a good story but not in the same league as Saturday.   I had never read Atonement, his highly praised and ultimately filmed novel, something I must get to doing.  I was looking for something a little lighter from McEwan for our recent trip to Alaska and Seattle, and I stumbled upon his Sweet Tooth, a mystery and a love story, and written from a woman’s first person point of view.  Much in the novel is about writing itself, a novel within a novel with detailed outlines for some short stories as well, all fitting together like a literary jig saw puzzle.

It takes place during the paranoid cold war 1970s when a young Cambridge graduate, a mathematician by training but a compulsive inveterate reader by avocation, Serena Frome, joins the M15, the British intelligence agency.  Ultimately she moves up the ranks and is given a “soft” assignment, nothing too dangerous, of following young British writers, ones that M15 might think would benefit by clandestine financial support, in the hope that their writings might have some use in the macro setting of the cold war.  So, the beautiful Frome is assigned to bestow a grant to a young writer, Tom Haley.  How was she to know that they would fall in love, his never realizing her association with M15 (thinking she represents a nonprofit group that bestows literary endowments)?  Where there is such a secret there are the underpinnings for tension throughout the novel and McEwan capitalizes on every twist and turn.  To say any more is to give away an ingenious ending to the novel, where everything finally coalesces.

But how real life enters and is transformed by fiction is at the heart of the novel.  As an example, Serena and Tom discuss probability theory (as a reminder, Serena is a trained mathematician).  Tom doesn’t get it.  But ultimately it enters one of the short stories he is writing   He gives it to Serena to read.  She fails to see how it coalesced in the creative process until she tries to go asleep and in that state finally realizes how Tom did get it:  As I lay in the dark, waiting for sleep, I thought I was beginning to grasp something about invention. As a reader, a speed-reader, I took it for granted, it was a process I never troubled myself with. You pulled a book from the shelf and there was an invented, peopled world, as obvious as the one you lived in…. I thought I had the measure of the artifice, or I almost had it. Almost like cooking, I thought sleepily. Instead of heat transforming the ingredients, there's pure invention, the spark, the hidden element. What resulted was more than the sum of the parts…. At one level it was obvious enough how many separate parts were tipped in and deployed.  The mystery was in how they were blended into something cohesive and plausible, how the ingredients were cooked into something so delicious.  As my thought scattered and I drifted toward the borders of oblivion, I thought I almost understood how it was done.  Just a wonderful description of the creative process, how life is reflected and filtered by a writer’s story.

This is a page turner, somewhat of a classic spy story, besides being a primer on writing itself.  Ian McEwan is becoming one of the more interesting writers of the 21^st century.

But I return, now, to a different kind of 20^th century story (actually stories), having had the pleasure of concurrently reading Updike’s The Maples Stories. Although these were published during his lifetime, they have been posthumously issued as an “Everyman's Library Pocket Classic” in hardcover, a volume to treasure.  I had read most of these before, but to read the eighteen stories that span from 1956’s “Snowing in Greenwich Village,” to “Grandparenting” published in his favorite venue The New Yorker in 1994 is to view the life of the great literary man himself.  It took Adam Begley’s brilliant literary biography, Updike, to see that “the Maples” were in fact Updike and his first wife Mary.  The closest Updike had delved into autobiography was his work Self-Consciousness: Memoirs, published in 1989 but that is greatly about his growing up in Shillington, PA. 

The Maples chronicles the jealousies, infidelities, the love and the hurt, and the intimacies and the breakdown of his marriage.  Consider the aching beauty of his writing, so finely crafted in this description of when Richard Maple picks up his wife Joan in his car to finally go to court for their no fault divorce:  She got into the car, bringing with her shoes and the moist smell of dawn. She had always been an early riser, and he a late one. 'Thanks for doing this,' she said, of the ride, adding, 'I guess.' ‘My pleasure,' Richard said. As they drove to court, discussing their cars and their children, he marveled at how light Joan had become; she sat on the side of his vision as light as a feather, her voice tickling his ear, her familiar intonations  and emphases thoroughly musical and half unheard, like the patterns of a concerto that sets us to daydreaming.  He no longer blamed her: that was the reason for the lightness. All those years, he had blamed her for everything - for the traffic jam in Central Square, for the blasts of noise on the mail boat, for the difference in the levels of their beds. No longer: he had set her adrift from omnipotence. He had set her free, free from fault. She was to him as Gretel to Hansel, a kindred creature moving beside him down a path while birds behind them ate the bread crumbs.

“Grandparenting” which takes place well after the Maples divorce is an act of atonement for Updike as it brings together the now divorced Maples one last time to participate in the birth of their first grandchild  It ends with the plaintive “Nobody belongs to us, except in memory,”  Indeed, Updike is for the ages.

a "beat" copy

And what could be more different from Updike than Jack Kerouac’s Portable Library which I managed to fit in here and there, making it mostly bedtime reading.  I read On the Road ages ago so that and his other writings in the Portable Library edition seemed new to me. Oh, man, this is the beat generation, a step before mine, but I remember it well as it played out in the late 50s and 60s.  Kerouac writes with a pulsating persistence, almost stream of consciousness, as if he just cannot fit enough life on a physical page.  It throbs with energy as he tries to absorb the “real” underbelly of America in every place imaginable, with the help of drugs, alcohol, sex, and, man, cool beat music.  It’s almost as if he did not live in the same world as an Updike who crafted his sentences like a sculpture.  No, Kerouac was more like a Jackson Pollack, frenzied by getting the colors of life just right (to him), writing in riffs like Charlie Parker (both mentioned by him in his writings). 

Here is just one breathless paragraph from his Jazz of the Beat Generation (1949) after hearing a rendition of “Close Your Eyes:”  Up steps Freddy on the bandstand and asks for a slow beat and looks sadly out the open door over people's heads and begins singing "Close Your Eyes." Things quiet down for a minute. Freddy's wearing a tattered suede jacket, a purple shirt with white buttons, cracked shoes and zoot pants without press; he didn't care. He looked like a pimp in Mecca, where there are no pimps; a barren woman's child, which is a dream; he looked like he was beat to his socks; he was down, and bent, and he played us some blues with his vocals. His big brown eyes were concerned with sadness, and the singing of songs slowly and with long thoughtful pauses. But in the second chorus he got excited and embraced the mike and jumped down from the bandstand and bent to it and to sing a note he had to touch his shoe tops and pull it all up to blow, and he blew so much he staggered from the effect, he only recovered himself in time for the next long slow note. "Mu-u-u-u-sic  pla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ay!" He leaned back with his face to the ceiling, mike held at his fly. He shook his shoulders, he gave the hip sneer, he swayed. Then he leaned in almost falling with his pained face against the mike. "Ma-a-a-ke it dream-y for dan-cing"-and he looked at the street out-side, Folsom, with his lips curled in scorn-"while we go ro-rnan-n-n-cing"-he staggered sideways-"Lo-o-o-ove's holi-da-a-a-ay"-he shook his head with disgust and weariness at the whole world-"Will make it seem"-what would it make it seem?-everybody waited, he mourned-"O-kay." The piano hit a chord. "So baby come on and just clo-o-o-o-se your pretty little ey-y-y-es" -his mouth quivered, offered; he looked at us, Dean and me, with an expression that seemed to say "Hey now, what's this thing we're all putting down in this sad brown world" -and then he came to the end of his song and for this there had to be elaborate preparations during which time you could send all the messages to Garcia around the world twelve times and what difference did it make to anybody because here we were dealing with the pit and prune juice of poor beat life itself and the pathos of people in the Godawful streets, so he said and sang it, "Close-your-" and blew it way up to the ceiling with a big voice that came not from training but feeling and that much better, and blew it through to the stars and on up-"Ey-y-y-y-y-y-es" and in arpeggios of applause staggered off the platform ruefully, broodingly, nonsatisfied, artistic, arrogant. He sat in the corner with a bunch of boys and paid no attention to them. They gave him beers. He looked down and wept. He was the greatest.

Old home, still essentially the same

It was only after reading The Portable Jack Kerouac that I realized I have some ‘six degrees of separation’ with him.   Over a period of 12 years he lived within two miles of where I lived as a kid (92-18 107^th Street, Queens, NY), first at his parent’s house at 133-01 Cross Bay Blvd, Queens, NY and then for five years at 94-21 134th Street, his frequently hanging out at Smokey Oval Park on Atlantic Avenue, where I used to practice with the Richmond Hill HS baseball team. This park was later renamed the Phil Rizutto Park as Rizutto played at Richmond Hill High School, and was a classmate of my father’s. 

Then, another association from my past: a close friend early in my high school years, Paul Ortloff, apparently began a relationship with Kerouac’s daughter, Jan, when he was attending Cooper Union for art.  For the first nine years of Jan’s life Kerouac had denied being her father but after a blood test he acknowledged the fact.  She only met her father two or three times.  As one might imagine, Jan, was psychologically damaged by this rejection which haunted her for her entire short life (died in her mid 40s) but as a teenager she fell head over heels in love with Paul.  I can understand why.  He was charismatic, bright, and as Jack Kerouac was to the Beat generation I suppose Paul was to psychedelic and tattoo art.  I wrote about him when I first started this blog, trying to capture some of my personal history (reading the entry today somewhat distresses me, because of the lost opportunities and its candor):  He was a rebel with a James Dean aura. In later life Paul became a psychedelic artist. His road to that distinction was paved when he first learned to carve simple tattoos into himself using India Ink, graduating to having professional tattoos injected all over his body. He and I would go off to a Coney Island tattoo parlor on the subway for those. For some reason, I hesitated doing the same (probably because I was very allergic to pain!). When I read John Irving's haunting and enigmatic “Until I Find You” I couldn’t help but think of Paul.

Paul on right; Me second from the left

Paul and I lost contact well before we graduated from high school, his going his way into psychedelic art, ultimately moving to Woodstock, NY, my going the so called straight and narrow.  Reading about him in James T. Jones’ Use My Name:Jack Kerouac's Forgotten Families brought up a lot of memories, but his relationship with Kerouac’s daughter was unknown to me at the time.  Of course I cannot verify any of this other than Jones’ account.

Interesting where reading takes you. All three of these books brought me inward, a self examination at this stage of my life.  So in spite of their differences, to me there is commonality other than the fact I read them sort of concurrently and mostly during our trip to Alaska and Seattle.  Simply put, they spoke to me very personally, one about writing, one about the marriage and craft of the short story by a writer I deeply admire (and miss), and the other about a parallel universe, one of which I was aware, but only lived through tangentially.

Seattle Stay

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, when a man is tired of Seattle, he is tired of life.  Of course Johnson was referring to London’s rich artistic and intellectual life.  Seattle has its theatres and museums (not like London of course), but it has an outdoor life that is the city’s pulse, everything centered on its bays, sounds, rivers, and lakes.  So if you love water, boating, and enjoy eating at fine restaurants, buying the freshest produce, every imaginable kind of fish and magnificent bouquets of flowers at Pike’s Market and other grocery stores, this is the place to live. There is an idiosyncratic almost hippie vibe to the city, mixed with the high tech nature of its business focus.

Our goal during our brief five day visit was to see as much of Seattle as we could after our Alaska cruise.  We were able to enjoy the city in all its dimensions in such a short period as the couple who we met on our river cruise last year, Edna and Mark, said if we ever visit Seattle, call us. We did.  They are inveterate Seattlephiles. Younger than we, they are active outdoor people and showed us the Seattle that few tourists can see in such a short time, not to mention negotiating the nightmarish traffic of the city. 

We also did some of the obligatory “tourist stuff” on our own, sparing Edna and Mark the ignominy of it all, a visit to the top of the Space Needle, a ride on the 175 foot ferris wheel extending over Elliot Bay, and even, embarrassed to admit this, a Ride the Duck tour – on a refurbished WWII amphibious landing craft.  In our case, one made by Studebaker! (How many remember that distinctive, but long-gone automaker?)

To understand Seattle, one must know its waterways, Puget Sound leading to Elliot Bay to the west of the city, Lake Union leading to one set of locks to the Puget Sound at the north, and Lake Washington to the east. Waterfront is king in the city and one may view the city from all different waterfront angles, ferries constantly running to Bainbridge Island to Seattle’s west.  There are many distinct neighborhoods in Seattle, each with its own unique characteristics.   Edna and Mark took us for a tour of several, again, something a mere tourist could rarely see without a car.

One of those neighborhoods to the north is Ballard where the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks can be toured.  There are beautiful parks and gardens there as well and, a fish ladder so salmon and steelhead can go upstream to fresh water from the Puget Sound to spawn. We were visiting toward the end of the King Salmon season, but there was still some action and as it was a Sunday afternoon, there was lots of boat traffic returning to their fresh water ports.  (Mark was wearing the same turquoise shirt that Ann said looked great on him last year during the river cruise, and he had remembered, but when we stepped into the car that last Sunday morning in Seattle, Ann made the same observation.  No memory of saying it before, but least she’s consistent -- and observant!)

Our first and second days (and nights) after the cruise were mostly spent with them.  At night we had dinner, they making the choice of the first restaurant and we having the impudence of suggesting the restaurant for the second night.  I don’t think it’s possible to get a bad meal in Seattle.  Each and every place we ate -- from touristy spots to some of the better restaurants -- was outstanding.  The ubiquitous NE clam chowder which is on most menus and at least one of us regularly ordered, seemed to be one of those award-winning soups which tasted equally delicious from restaurant to restaurant leading to our speculation that there must be one central place where it is made in a huge vat and delivered fresh to all of Seattle’s restaurants:-).

Edna and Mark took us to Salty’s that first night, as much for the food, as for the exceptional view of the sunset reflecting off Seattle’s buildings across the Bay.  But we turned the tables on them the second night, visiting the same restaurant we ate at a week earlier on our way to Alaska, Crow.  As they do not live in the Queen Anne neighborhood where our hotel was, and they have plenty of fine restaurants in their own neighborhood, they were not familiar with Crow. 

We had raved about it to them, almost forced them to go, and then began to feel a little nervous – will it be as good as the build up?  Will they be disappointed (and we embarrassed?).  It was as good if not better than our first visit.  They’re going back.  Wish we could too, although we have some fine restaurants within a short distance of our home, including those on Palm Beach.  But it’s the ambiance too (it has a funky upscale warehouse feeling), and they keep their menu limited to only 5 or 6 dishes and then do them supremely well, which makes this restaurant distinctive.  If you ever have a chance to eat one meal in Seattle, eat at Crow!! (No, they don’t serve crow there :-). 

A special highlight was visiting the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum, the miraculous brainchild of the now internationally acclaimed artist Dale Chihuly.  He is from the Seattle area (Tacoma) so this houses some of his most significant works.  It opened in 2012, and it is absolutely breathtaking!  It is right at the base of the Space Needle and all of this was a few blocks from our hotel.  His pieces are outer-worldly in color and artistry and he created an outdoor garden (his first ever) to showcase many of his other glass pieces, these being heavier and thicker for outside display.  Each piece of glass inside the museum is hand cleaned every single day to remove any dust or dirt!  Amazing. 

We ate in the Museum Cafe where we had a delicious lunch (what else in Seattle, including the clam chowder!) and admired all of his collections of antique memorabilia, from Christmas ornaments to toy soldiers, from clocks to teapots, church keys, and accordions hanging from the ceiling. A surprise for me was to see his collection of Edward S. Curtis’ photogravures of the North American Indian, the same ones that I worked on in the New York Public library in the late 1960’s as the publishing firm I worked for in New York was reprinting his entire collection.  I was a Production Manager then, preparing the photogravures for offset printing, ordering the paper (I still remember -- 60# Warrens Patina paper, a high opacity, calendered, cream-color stock, so appropriate for those historic prints). Where did Chihuly have time to amass all these collections while creating such beautiful glass work?  One simply cannot describe it all and hopefully some of the photos do the talking.

Another day we rode the 1962 World's Fair monorail to Pike's market, marveled at all the produce, fish and exquisite flowers, the likes of which we had never seen before, rode on the Ferris Wheel, ate lunch on the water, took a 2 hour informative boat ride on Puget Sound, walked through the Seattle Aquarium and took photos in front of the original Starbucks.

And let's not forget the butterfly collection at the Science Museum where we also "sat for breakfast" (the museum's intention to demonstrate relativity).

The ride on the amphibious vehicle (Ride the Duck) was absolutely campy.  One could not help but get into the touristy nature of it, singing and calling out together at passersbys on the street who accustomed to this frivolity were gracious in their acknowledgement of us crazy people.  The Duck took us to idiosyncratic destinations, tours on the water of houseboats galore, not to mention the infamous Sleepless in Seattle houseboat which recently sold for $2 million.  The tour concludes with a rousing chorus of the Village People’s “Y-M-C-A,” and from my salad days I still remember the hand gestures and joined in the silliness.  Good to be silly in such a beautiful place and a perfect sunny day (the locals propagate the rumor that Seattle is 100% gloomy and rainy to keep the population down).

 

Also in the “campy camp” was a brief visit to Paul Allen’s homage to American Popular culture, the EMP Museum.  Strange to walk through a museum which simply recounts the music and pop “culture” of the 60’s and 70’s (mostly), with a particular focus on Jimi Hendrix memorabilia, years I vividly remember.  Now my memories are museum worthy.  There are so many exhibits to explore there, the most interesting one to me being a giant guitar sculpture consisting of more than 500 musical instruments.

 

We decided to leave Seattle a couple of days earlier than planned.  First, Mark and Edna took us everywhere!  And, from our centrally located hotel, we had accomplished all the touristy stuff and we had matters to attend to at home.  Also, American Airlines had changed our return flight three times, the last change departing Seattle at 6.00 AM, and we’d have to get up at 4.00 AM or earlier to make our flight.    Having arm wrestled with an American agent (couldn’t make the changes on line without ridiculous charges), we were able to get a 12.20 PM flight two days earlier, again through Dallas, making a connection with a 1.50 hour window, and then to West Palm Beach.

We arrived at the airport with enough time to get an early lunch, and then waited at the gate which had an on time departure.  We had already lined up for boarding when the agent at the desk (and I was standing right in front) announced that they just received word that Dallas was experimenting with a new air traffic system and they’ve delayed our flight to 3.00 PM (and therefore we would be unable to make our connection, visions of spending the night in Dallas) and even the 2.00 flight would leave before the 12.20.  Naturally there was pandemonium at the gate, people surging to speak to the agents. One person was screaming at the top of her lungs, “I want to speak to a supervisor!!!” Ha.

As I was right there, I formed a single line for the next available agent (there were two).  Meanwhile the surging, crazy mob pushed and formed two lines not even acknowledging my place. I was on the phone with an American Million Miler agent while waiting and she said they had no information on a delay and therefore couldn’t help.  Meanwhile I was arguing with people on both lines that I would be next at which point I heard the agent at the desk talking on her cell saying, “are you sure, we’re boarding immediately and departing at 12.37?”  I could see her grabbing the microphone to make the announcement so I left the line and got into the boarding line and indeed, the announcement was made.  Again the surging mobs.

The airlines have made everyone crazy, fighting for overhead bin space.  We had two small carry-ons, having checked our luggage, but many people were carrying not one but two pieces of luggage, the maximum size for the overheads.  It’s almost rendering air travel impossible (for me at least) unless we pay up for first class. As the Sunday New York Times noted in “A Recipe for Air Rage” – “pack passengers tightly, add the stress and fatigue of travel, stir well and stand back!”

 

Not the end of the saga though.  Because of the late departure (later than 12.37) and given the size of the Dallas airport, our connection might be in jeopardy.  The pilot said he’d try to make up time.  He could not.  Meanwhile, as we approached Dallas, an American hub, the long list of connection flights and gates was read out. We were arriving in terminal C and our flight was departing from A10 although we were told A9 when we checked our luggage tag, both a long ride on the Dallas terminal-connecting train.  But it seemed we’d have enough time.  We landed and began to approach our gate and the pilot announced another plane was still there and we’d have to wait about 15 minutes, which was about the margin of error I figured for safely making our connecting flight.  To the iPhone I went to check whether our departing plane was still on time.  It was.  But it also reported that the departure gate was A28, not A9 or A10 as announced (conjuring up scenes from the 1980 movie satire of air travel Airplane!).  I showed this to the flight attendant and asked what should we believe, their announcement, my luggage receipt, or what is on the American Air site on my phone?  She said the phone; they frequently get wrong information on the plane!  And she also advised that we hoof it to the gate as it is closer to the one we’re arriving at.  It would be faster than the connecting tram.

After 15 minutes we indeed got to the gate and began our trek.  Well, “close” in the Dallas airport has a different meaning than most places.  It was still a long haul but we found an attendant with an electric cart for disabled people, just waiting for business, and figured as older folk we qualified, and he was happy to take us.  It was further than we had imagined and we pulled up to the A28 (and I had verified the gate by checking the board before embarking on the trek), but the flight sign read Austin, TX!  Our driver inquired.  No, that was the last flight; they just hadn’t posted the soon-to-leave West Palm flight.  So all was well after all, but the needless anxiety.

We finally arrived home after midnight, tired, but thankful to Edna and Mark for sharing their time and love of amazing Seattle with us.