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]