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osprey_archer) wrote2022-01-07 08:59 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-01-07 08:59 am
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Book Review: The Lincoln Highway
After I finished Amor Towles’ The Lincoln Highway I had to sit with it a while before deciding, rather cautiously, that indeed I did like it, although I did not always enjoy the process of reading it.
Actually, I liked most things about the process of reading it: the main character Emmett and his relationship with his much-younger brother, Billy, a sturdy and earnest eight-year-old; the girl next door, Sally, whose acerbic voice made for one of my favorite POVs in the book; in fact, the rotating POVs in general, which gave a kaleidoscopic view of the story, and also allowed glimpses into nooks and crannies of mid-twentieth century America that we would have missed if the book stuck strictly to Emmett’s POV.
And I very much enjoyed the book’s portrait of America in the early 1950s, which is not a time that historical fiction often visits. (I like the old standbys like World War II as much as anyone, but it is nice to get off the beaten track every once in a while.) Towles has a gift for evoking times and places, and the premise of this book (a road trip on the Lincoln Highway) gives him a virtuoso canvas on which to evoke many places, and even (in the form of flashbacks) a number of different times.
HOWEVER. There was one fly in the ointment, and unfortunately he was a big fly - a horsefly, if you will - as his actions propelled much of the plot. That fly is Emmett’s former jailmate, Duchess.
So when the book starts, Emmett has just been released from a work farm for juvenile offenders. The warden drives him back to the family farm (which has just gone under on the mortgage, but that’s fine with Emmett, whose plan was already to get the heck out of Nebraska) and drops him off… at which point Emmett discovers that two of his jailmates escaped in the trunk of the warden’s car.
These are Woolly (a sweetheart, exactly as fuzzy-brained as his name suggests) and Duchess, a charming conman, who has come up with a plan to steal Woolly’s not-inconsiderable inheritance out of a safe at Woolly’s family’s summer home in the Adirondacks. He tries to entice Emmett into giving them a ride by promising to cut him in on the take.
When that doesn’t work, Duchess steals Emmett’s car, which just so happens to contain all the money Emmett has in the world to make a new start with his little brother Billy.
Over the course of his picaresque adventures, Duchess:
- beats up a guy with a two-by-four, putting him in the hospital
- drops by a retired warden’s house and smashes his head with a cast-iron skillet as he naps (don’t worry, though! He’s not dead, at least not by the end of the book)
- impulsively gives away Emmett’s car (because he thinks he’s secured a better one, BUT STILL)
- slips Emmett a mickey so Emmett can lose his virginity to Duchess’s kindly prostitute friend. Duchess is convinced this is an act of great generosity even though Emmett has expressed no interest in losing his virginity to anyone, certainly not the kindly prostitute friend.
Duchess relates these incidents in the manner of one relating a series of boyish hjinks. He is, in fact, very charming, so charming that it sometimes takes a while for the actual purport of what he’s recounting to sink in (“Wait, did he just beat up some guy he barely knew with a two-by-four?”), and I have read so many books and seen so many TV shows where characters do horrible things and get let off the hook because they are just so goshdarn CHARMING that I fully expected that to happen here, hence my mounting dread every time Duchess committed yet another “hijink.”
“He’s going to do all this shit and get away with it scotfree,” I thought bitterly, an expectation that only grew stronger after we visit the orphanage where Duchess’s father dumped him for a couple of years (look, there are reasons Duchess is awful, and they are even sympathetic reasons, but can we agree that no reason is good enough for beating up a stranger with a two-by-four and roofying your friend) and the nun in charge tells Emmett that what Duchess needs is a friend. I mean, this is the word of God, right? That’s why Towles put it in the mouth of a nun.
Anyway, a lot of stuff happens, Duchess and Woolly finally reach the house in Adirondacks, Woolly commits suicide (for non-Duchess reasons, I hasten to add), and when Emmett at last catches up with them, Duchess is… trying to break into the safe with an ax. Emmett is all, “We need to inform someone about Woolly’s death, like for instance the cops,” and Duchess! grabs a rifle! which he points at Emmett and then at Emmett’s eight-year-old brother Billy!
“ALL I WANT IS FOR DUCHESS TO DIE IN A FIRE AND HE’S GOING TO GO FREE PROBABLY WITH HIS SHARE OF THE MONEY AND KEEP BEATING PEOPLE UP WITH TWO-BY-FOURS,” I wailed, deeply distressed, as Emmett knocked Duchess unconscious and then Billy explained that he had figured out the combination to the safe. (A Lincoln-related date.)
BUT IN FACT it turns out that Towles is a merciful god, who loves his readers, and realizes that a character who points a gun at an eight-year-old has passed a moral event horizon. (The gun is not loaded but Duchess doesn’t know that.) After some consideration, Emmett and Billy put the unconscious Duchess (who can’t swim) out on the lake in a rowboat without paddles, with his portion of Woolly’s inheritance in the bow. (Woolly left the money to the three of them equally in his suicide note. Would this hold up in a court of law? Maybe not, but certainly I can see why Emmett feels that if he and Billy take their portions, they’re morally obligated to give Duchess his too, under the circumstances.)
If Duchess weren’t such a greedy Gus, he could have gotten himself to shore safely. But, of course, he is so terminally greedy that he pointed a gun at an eight-year-old boy to get to the money… and in trying to get to that money now, he capsizes the boat and drowns. JUSTICE. JUSTICE. A BETTER FATE THAN HE DESERVED QUITE HONESTLY.
Now that I can rest content on Duchess’s eventual well-deserved fate, I can appreciate to the full the many good points of the book. But as I was reading and adding up an ever-expanding list of debts that I thought he was never going to pay, boy were there moments when reading this stressed me out.
One other thing that I liked: one of the many subplots is that Emmett (and most of the rest of the town) thinks Sally wants to marry him. It’s very satisfying when it finally comes to a point and Sally tells him, NO, she just wants to quit keeping house for her father and get out of that small town and have her OWN place where she will wash her OWN dishes and cook her OWN food and not have to look after anyone else!
This would feel underwhelming as an A-plot (it took a whole book to get to this point? really?) but as a B-plot it’s immensely satisfying. (I suspect Sally will remain in their lives, but as a combination older sister/aunt figure for Billy more than anything else… and if she brings over cookies sometimes it will be because she DAMN WELL FEELS LIKE IT.)
Actually, I liked most things about the process of reading it: the main character Emmett and his relationship with his much-younger brother, Billy, a sturdy and earnest eight-year-old; the girl next door, Sally, whose acerbic voice made for one of my favorite POVs in the book; in fact, the rotating POVs in general, which gave a kaleidoscopic view of the story, and also allowed glimpses into nooks and crannies of mid-twentieth century America that we would have missed if the book stuck strictly to Emmett’s POV.
And I very much enjoyed the book’s portrait of America in the early 1950s, which is not a time that historical fiction often visits. (I like the old standbys like World War II as much as anyone, but it is nice to get off the beaten track every once in a while.) Towles has a gift for evoking times and places, and the premise of this book (a road trip on the Lincoln Highway) gives him a virtuoso canvas on which to evoke many places, and even (in the form of flashbacks) a number of different times.
HOWEVER. There was one fly in the ointment, and unfortunately he was a big fly - a horsefly, if you will - as his actions propelled much of the plot. That fly is Emmett’s former jailmate, Duchess.
So when the book starts, Emmett has just been released from a work farm for juvenile offenders. The warden drives him back to the family farm (which has just gone under on the mortgage, but that’s fine with Emmett, whose plan was already to get the heck out of Nebraska) and drops him off… at which point Emmett discovers that two of his jailmates escaped in the trunk of the warden’s car.
These are Woolly (a sweetheart, exactly as fuzzy-brained as his name suggests) and Duchess, a charming conman, who has come up with a plan to steal Woolly’s not-inconsiderable inheritance out of a safe at Woolly’s family’s summer home in the Adirondacks. He tries to entice Emmett into giving them a ride by promising to cut him in on the take.
When that doesn’t work, Duchess steals Emmett’s car, which just so happens to contain all the money Emmett has in the world to make a new start with his little brother Billy.
Over the course of his picaresque adventures, Duchess:
- beats up a guy with a two-by-four, putting him in the hospital
- drops by a retired warden’s house and smashes his head with a cast-iron skillet as he naps (don’t worry, though! He’s not dead, at least not by the end of the book)
- impulsively gives away Emmett’s car (because he thinks he’s secured a better one, BUT STILL)
- slips Emmett a mickey so Emmett can lose his virginity to Duchess’s kindly prostitute friend. Duchess is convinced this is an act of great generosity even though Emmett has expressed no interest in losing his virginity to anyone, certainly not the kindly prostitute friend.
Duchess relates these incidents in the manner of one relating a series of boyish hjinks. He is, in fact, very charming, so charming that it sometimes takes a while for the actual purport of what he’s recounting to sink in (“Wait, did he just beat up some guy he barely knew with a two-by-four?”), and I have read so many books and seen so many TV shows where characters do horrible things and get let off the hook because they are just so goshdarn CHARMING that I fully expected that to happen here, hence my mounting dread every time Duchess committed yet another “hijink.”
“He’s going to do all this shit and get away with it scotfree,” I thought bitterly, an expectation that only grew stronger after we visit the orphanage where Duchess’s father dumped him for a couple of years (look, there are reasons Duchess is awful, and they are even sympathetic reasons, but can we agree that no reason is good enough for beating up a stranger with a two-by-four and roofying your friend) and the nun in charge tells Emmett that what Duchess needs is a friend. I mean, this is the word of God, right? That’s why Towles put it in the mouth of a nun.
Anyway, a lot of stuff happens, Duchess and Woolly finally reach the house in Adirondacks, Woolly commits suicide (for non-Duchess reasons, I hasten to add), and when Emmett at last catches up with them, Duchess is… trying to break into the safe with an ax. Emmett is all, “We need to inform someone about Woolly’s death, like for instance the cops,” and Duchess! grabs a rifle! which he points at Emmett and then at Emmett’s eight-year-old brother Billy!
“ALL I WANT IS FOR DUCHESS TO DIE IN A FIRE AND HE’S GOING TO GO FREE PROBABLY WITH HIS SHARE OF THE MONEY AND KEEP BEATING PEOPLE UP WITH TWO-BY-FOURS,” I wailed, deeply distressed, as Emmett knocked Duchess unconscious and then Billy explained that he had figured out the combination to the safe. (A Lincoln-related date.)
BUT IN FACT it turns out that Towles is a merciful god, who loves his readers, and realizes that a character who points a gun at an eight-year-old has passed a moral event horizon. (The gun is not loaded but Duchess doesn’t know that.) After some consideration, Emmett and Billy put the unconscious Duchess (who can’t swim) out on the lake in a rowboat without paddles, with his portion of Woolly’s inheritance in the bow. (Woolly left the money to the three of them equally in his suicide note. Would this hold up in a court of law? Maybe not, but certainly I can see why Emmett feels that if he and Billy take their portions, they’re morally obligated to give Duchess his too, under the circumstances.)
If Duchess weren’t such a greedy Gus, he could have gotten himself to shore safely. But, of course, he is so terminally greedy that he pointed a gun at an eight-year-old boy to get to the money… and in trying to get to that money now, he capsizes the boat and drowns. JUSTICE. JUSTICE. A BETTER FATE THAN HE DESERVED QUITE HONESTLY.
Now that I can rest content on Duchess’s eventual well-deserved fate, I can appreciate to the full the many good points of the book. But as I was reading and adding up an ever-expanding list of debts that I thought he was never going to pay, boy were there moments when reading this stressed me out.
One other thing that I liked: one of the many subplots is that Emmett (and most of the rest of the town) thinks Sally wants to marry him. It’s very satisfying when it finally comes to a point and Sally tells him, NO, she just wants to quit keeping house for her father and get out of that small town and have her OWN place where she will wash her OWN dishes and cook her OWN food and not have to look after anyone else!
This would feel underwhelming as an A-plot (it took a whole book to get to this point? really?) but as a B-plot it’s immensely satisfying. (I suspect Sally will remain in their lives, but as a combination older sister/aunt figure for Billy more than anything else… and if she brings over cookies sometimes it will be because she DAMN WELL FEELS LIKE IT.)
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I don't think we're meant to think that Duchess is born bad: he's clearly been shaped by a rough childhood with a neglectful conman of a father. I think the argument rather is that just because someone has some good qualities (Duchess clearly feels a genuine desire to make other people happy, for instance), and sympathetic reasons for his bad qualities, that doesn't mean you HAVE to stick by him even after he has amply demonstrated that he's just going to keep burning down your life.
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