Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Ah! the reverie of the Noir Thirties.  It’s still the favorite time of my life.  Ginger Rogers’ “Gold Diggers of 1933”; Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’-Train”; Raymond Chandler’s “Big Sleep”;  Ruby Keeler’s “42nd Street;” and of course, “the ever popular,”  Mae Busch.

So, yes, this book successfully takes us back a few years in time, when there was hope. 
Life was sucky because most people were out of a job; there were wars all over the world; people were oppressed, suffering, and dying.  But the music, literature, movies, and other aspects of life, all held hope for a better world.  We don’t have that today: things are getting worse.  The planet is being destroyed, and technology has no answers; nations are still at war, and politicians have no answers; half the billions of the Earth are mesmerized by a sillycon soma chip, but find no joy nor answers in its pixels.  This month President Obama has called for installing hope and civility in the Middle East, as though we had spare boxes on the shelves of Safeway.

Back to the book.  I’m there with the author on plot, characters, period, and style.  There was concern as the action turned dour.  But the author’s admonition after the accident, “She’s going to be OK“, rested my fears.  I was back in fantasy-land, when Joan Crawford picked up Norma Shearer in the Bentley after shopping down Fifth Avenue[1].  “She poured herself a double.” “Whoa, don’t you think you should be pacing yourself?”  With perfect Chandleresque bon mot, Crystal replies “Don’t worry.  I’ve been practicing.”  I knew I was going to be rewarded with a Mary Astor in Napoli ending[2].

As the plot develops, protagonist Katey brings to my mind tallish Eve Arden[3], as a solid, reliable best-friend with acerbic wit and tongue.  The plotline is classic 30’s Broadway – smart, talented girl from the country goes to the big city to find … 

If I ever write a novel, that’s my plotline.  It’s my mother’s story as a small town Nebraska girl; her parents run the local newspaper; she graduates from Oberlin College as a Psych major in 1934.  What’s next?  Somehow she finagles a job with an advertising agency in Detroit as a bookkeeper for $12.50 a week.  Ten years later we’re in the midst of a war.  Detroit is the right city for the times; she married an up and coming Ann Arbor man who is now the sales manager for a key wartime machine tool business; she’s gone from Tillie’s girl’s boarding house at $6/week to a swanky Grosse Pointe mini-mansion raising two kids with the help of a day maid.  It’s my great American novel.

My mother prepped at Monticello Ladies’ Seminary, “When you educate a man, you educate an individual; when you educate a woman, you educate a family.”  She studied French and the piano, basic components at the time for civility. 

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[1] The Women, 1939 [stage 1936]

[2] Dodsworth   1936  [stage 1934]

[3] Stage Door, 1937  [stage 1936] 

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

For me, the summer harvest of new books has been splendidly verdant this year; or am I just reading more, and lucky?

This understated slow-paced crime novel was brilliant, as the British say.  The author holds a steady focus as she thoroughly explores the persona of Yvonne Carmichael.  The author uses the first hundred pages of this 300-page psychological study to slowly spin the web of a mid-life crisis affair.

Yvonne is happily married in a “normal” and stable relationship.  The married couple is each an upper middle class research scientist in the medical field.  The affair spins out of control in the second hundred pages and is finalized in the books last third, which takes place around The Old Bailey.

I love these books where the writing is mostly the thoughts of the main protagonist.  This is probably because I live alone and I am introverted, spending most of my waking time in thoughts about the activity around me.

Part of the out-of-control spin in the middle of the book has to do with Yvonne being raped by a co-worker.  She explores the possibilities of reporting the crime, but decides against that course of action.  Eventually she arrives in court for murder.  One of the reasons I loved the book so much is exemplified by the following scene, where she and her husband are talking to a $1000 an hour, cocky barrister who appears dismissive of rapes reality.  The cocky kid has just said, “The big problem in prosecuting sexual assault cases is the women never seem to fight back. It makes our job rather difficult.”

 

 

 

 

 

I am staring at Laurence so fiercely that it is only from the corner of my eye that I see Guy rise and turn.  Then I see that he has plucked a knife from the magnetic strip behind our stove and is holding the knife against Laurence’s throat. Laurence has frozen with his chin tilted upward. He has both hands raised slightly from the table. 

Guy’s voice is very calm. “What are you thinking now, Mr. Walton?”  There is silence. Lawrence has clearly decided it would be a good idea not to respond.

“Shall I tell you what you are thinking?” Guy says helpfully. “Would you like to know what is going on, right now, inside your head, biologically, I mean?” Laurence remains silent and completely frozen – he doesn’t even gulp.  Guy continues. “Here is how your brain functions in a situation of threat.  In your medial temporal lobes, you have a group of nuclei known collectively as the amygdala.  It’s part of the limbic system, but let’s not concern ourselves with that now.  In a situation of threat, the amygdala’s function is to tell you, as quickly as possible, to act in the way that will ensure one thing and one thing only: your survival.” “You also have a cortex that controls logic, but that doesn’t work as fast as the amygdala, as you are now finding out. Let me explain.” 

Guy doesn’t even draw breath. It’s how he lectures, I’ve seen it, point by point without a pause. “The logical part of your head knows there is not the remotest possibility that I am about to cut your throat,” He continues. “A: lots of people know where you are.  B: we are in my house and there would be blood everywhere.” “C: how would Yvonne and I dispose of your body? D: isn’t she in enough trouble as it is?

The logical part of your head knows that I am doing this only to make a point. But your amygdala, the instinctive part of you, is saying, screaming in fact: freeze, just in case, do the instinctive thing that will save your skin.  As I said, the amygdala works faster than the cortex, that’s how we’ve evolved.  In a situation of threat, particularly a situation where we are taken by surprise and there is no time to logically assess our chances of living or being killed, we are programmed to do whatever will ensure our survival. All we want to do is live, bottom line.  In any situation where the level of threat is unknown, the amygdala will trump the cortex, every time.”