Basic Information:
Author: Amor Towles
Edition: epub on Libby from the Mountain View Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781101517062
Start Date: June 8, 2022
Read Date: August 14, 2022
335 pages
Genre: Fiction
Language Warning: Medium
Rated Overall: 4 out of 5
Fiction-Tells a good story: 4 out of 5
Fiction-Character development: 5 out of 5
Synopsis (Caution: Spoiler Alert-Jump to Thoughts):
The story takes place during the year of 1938 with a touch of 1940/41. Katey and Tinker bump into each other. This starts a three way relationship which includes Eve, Katey’s roommate. When Eve gets badly injured in a car accident, Tinker takes her in out of a sense of obligation.They become more of an item, leaving Katey out.
But this gives Katey an entrance into society. She becomes acquainted with people, hanging on with them. Because of her straightforwardness and intelligence, she is accepted and several of the men want to date her. Some are lucky.
One time when Katey is browsing around Tinker’s apartment, she sees a short compilation by George Washtington, 110 rules of civility. She now thinks she understands where Tinker’s manners and style comes from.
The story follows with the discovery of who Tinker really is and the source of his income-it may not be what you think. This turns Katey away from him.
In the end, Tinker’s life falls apart, or maybe more aptly that his life is reduced to the core of who he is and the trappings of his assumed life is removed. Katey gets married to one of her rich friends. While not forgetting Tinker, he does recede in memory until two things happen-a chance sighting of Tinker as well as two photos of him at an exhibition.
Cast of Characters:
- Valentine (Val) Hollinsworth : Katherine (Katey, Kate) husband. Met in 1938 giving Katey a ride into town from a party. 9 years later, they meeting up.
- Katherine Kontent: Story told through her eyes. She loves books.
- Tinker Grey (Theodore or Teddy): story revolves around him. Looks like a wealthy young man who works at a bank as a broker. Has class.
- Eve Ross: Katey’s roommate and accomplice. From the Midwest, running away from her rich background. A beauty.
- Hank Grey: Tinker’s brother. Painter.
- Alley: Katey’s work mate at Mason Tate’s office and co-conspirator to make it so Tate has to keep both of them.
- Mason Tate: Magazine editor
- Dicky Vanderwhile: Rich young man who is the brother of a co-worker at Pembroke Press.
- Anne Grandyn: Wealth benefactor, manipulator of Tinker and Katey. Introduced as Tinker’s godmother, in reality, she has power over Tinker.
- Miss Markham: the head of the typing/clerical pool at Quiggin&Hale.
- Bucky: Tinker’s childhood friend from Connecticut
- Wyss (Wisteria): Bucky’s wife. Katey at first does not think highly of her.
- Wallace Wolcott: Rich friend of Tinker. Setting up Katey for something romantic. Gets talked about in Lincoln Highway. He is a stutterer.
- Terry Trumbull: friend of Tinker’s
- Nathaniel Parish: Book editor of 19th central fiction and religious texts. Katey works for him for a short time as a clerk.
- Bitsy
Houghton: Her brother and Wallace are close school friends.
- Recommendation: Osher Book Club
- When: May 2022
- Date Became Aware of Book: 2018
- How come do I want to read this book: OSHER Book Club Pick. I have also read two others of his books. One book I thought was great, the other I thought was average. I am interested in seeing what this book is like.
Thoughts:
Note: This is Towles first published book.
This book is like a prequel to Lincoln Highway. Wallace Wolcott does not play a part in the Highway. But his summer house does, along with his nephew. One book can be read separately from the other without loss as the stories are not really connected. But like understanding a place you visited helps to enlarge the visit.
Also I would read the Appendix first to understand some of the background. The Appendix is George Washington’s 110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour.
Towles likes to play with the chapter titles. Why the seasons and why 26 chapters? I thought it might be an acrostic of each letter in the alphabet, but I did not see it. Is there a connection with the 26 lights at Quiggin&Hale related to each typist? Does not appear to be, In the Guardian, there is a quote from Towles where is says: "The book was designed with 26 chapters because there are 52 weeks in the year and I allotted myself two weeks to draft, revise and bank each chapter."
One of the main things in this story is the competition and love between Eve and Katey. They both want Tinker, or at least what they think is Tinker, but in the end, both reject him. There is resentment on Katey’s part when Tinker takes care of Eve after the car accident. But Eve recognizes that Tinker does not love her, but Katey. There is this one-upmanship between the two of them.
I wonder how much living together and sex without commitment was being done in the 1930’s.
Preface
Takes place 28 years after much of the story. Katey and her husband see two photographs of a friend of Katey-Tinker Grey. From this, the story gives a slice of Katey’s and Grey’s life in 1938. Two of the pictures in the exhibition are of Tinker Grey. The rest of the book tells the story of how Grey goes from being on the rise to finding himself.
I wonder why 1938? Looking at Wikipedia, I do not see a lot going on which is relevant to the book’s storyline.
Walker Evans-a real photographer. There really was a 1966 exhibit of Many Are Called at the Museum of Modern Art.
Katey’s thought of the exhibit was that for those of us who were young at the time, the subjects looked like ghosts.
Wintertime
Chapter One
On New Year’s Eve 1937, Katey and Eve Ross were celebrating. Meets Tinker Grey in a bar. Tinker is looking for his brother Hank. Did not find him. They make New Year's resolutions for each other. Eve’s for Tinker was for him to get out of his rut. When they leave, Katey ends up with Tinker’s lighter.
Chapter Two
Eve and Katey hold the lighter hostage for a date. They sneak into a movie. Then to a speakeasy.
Tinker observes that Katey seemed comfortable being alone. She says she goes into a cathedral when she wants to do that.
The question is, whose will Tinker be? Katey or Eve’s? Tinker sets up another date.
Chapter Three
Life in the law firm of Quiggin&Hale where Katey worked as a typist and clerk. There was a lettered light for each typist. Isn’t this rather limiting on the number of typists you can employ? What happens if you need 27 typists?
be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you. What a downer of a statement.
America may be the land of opportunity, but in New York it’s the shot at conformity that pulls them through the door. Interesting as everybody wants to be different, but not out of line. Tinker finds Katey eating-this is not her alone place. They talk and make plans for the three of them.
Katey has found that a well placed and well timed question will lead to respect, and gets a clue about if there is a need for further inquiry. She also found that the best response to a good question is something put simply without hesitation or inflection.
Chapter Four
Eve is upset at Katey because of Tinker going to lunch with her. They go out on a date on Tinker’s terms. Eve gets out of her mood. They meet Anne Grandyn who is introduced as Tinker’s godmother.
Milk truck hits the car which Tinker is driving. Eve is hurt badly. Katey and Tinker a bit bruised.
January 8
Dialogue with surgeon and Tinker at the hospital.
Springtime
Chapter Five
Katey has moved into a single. Two reasons. First, Eve is now recuperating with Tinker and second, Eve’s father has sent Katey money which Eve wants no part of. This has enabled Katey to do certain things. Katey is learning contract bridge.
Tinker calls and asks if Katey can take care of Eve-Tinker needs to go to the office this evening. (We will find out why Tinker really needs to go out later in the book.)
Katey reads Hemingway to Eve. Eve says to start beyond the beginning as beginnings are always so boring. She starts at page 104. So she will always start a book there.
When Eve goes to sleep, Katey looks around Tinker’s apartment. She comes across George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation and realizes this is exactly who Tinker is.
Katey wonders how well she would bear up if she was in Eve’s place. I sometimes wonder about people who behave courageously.
Eve wakes up and takes Katey to the top of the building. To see the city from a few hundred feet above the riffraff was pretty celestial. I feel the same way on top of a mountain peak or in a new fire lookout.
What are closed kitchen eggs? Looked like an omelet, at least a slender one with just cheese.
Old times, as my father used to say: If you’re not careful, they’ll gut you like a fish.
As Katey was departing, Tinker kissed her.
Chapter 6
Tinker and Eve are at Key West.
Katey meets a woman on the subway from her work. The woman leaves an important contract behind when she leaves. Katey tracks her down and gives her the contract. She stops at a news stand and bumps into someone. The paper seller says: That’s the problem with being born in New York, …. You’ve got no New York to run away to. When you are where you want to be, you have no place to run too.
Chapter 7
Eve invites Katey to a get-together with a few friends. Eve and TInker have returned from Key West. Katey notices that Eve is wearing a pair of crystal earrings.
Talk is about hunting. Wallace Walcott is paired up with Katey. Offers to take her shooting.
Chapter 8
Katey runs into another co-worker and gets invited out for a drink. The bar says No Women, but her co-worker goes in anyway. She gets in an argument. Turns out one of the men arguing is Hank Grey, Tinker’s brother. While Hank was trying to mimic beauty, he did not want to go traditional. He was trying to put Hemingway onto a canvas. Katey’s appraisal was They were gloomy, arrogant, brutish, and most important, they were unafraid of death—whatever that means for a guy who spends his days in front of an easel.
Fran also takes Katey to the horse races. Actually to the pre race warm ups. She meets up with Anne Grandyn. Anne comments about Eve that I don’t see any advantage to her living with Tinker. In my day, a girl’s opportunities were rather limited, so the sooner she secured an eligible husband the better.
Chapter 9
Eve picks up Katey in a Bently for a surprise lunch. Katey’s thought about Eve: Giddiness implies a certain element of surprise. A giddy girl can’t tell what’s happening next. Eve has everything which would make a person giddy, but Eve is very calculating. A bit later, Katey observes that there are tens of thousands of butterflies: men and women like Eve with two dramatically different colorings—one which serves to attract and the other which serves to camouflage—and which can be switched at the instant with a flit of the wings.
In the club where Eve took Katey two, there was a whole wall dedicated to Shackelton and the Endeavour.
I didn’t ride cabs very often, but when I did, the goal was the shortest distance between two points. The idea of taking the long route home had never come up. This strikes me as a journey or destination question. The more I hike, the more I enjoy the journey.
Chapter 10
Katey is taking a lunch break in the park when she sees Anne Gandyn walking. She follows her and gets invited up to her suite. They talk for a while, a low level verbal sword battle.
Tinker and Eve have gone to Europe.
Katey reflects on her Russian father. Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee.
Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane—in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath—she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger. And … One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements. Katey’s answer to these simple pleasures? In retrospect, my cup of coffee has been the works of Charles Dickens.
Chapter 11
Working late. Boss calls Katey into the office. Gives her a promotion to lead clerk. The next day was her birthday. She used much of the money from Mr Ross and splurged on herself.
Katey’s father: To him, restaurants were the ultimate expression of ungodly waste. On the other hand, a fine dinner could revive the spirits, thought Katey.
When Katey’s father came to America, he and his brother started to make a go of it. At that point He combined the bills with his own and then he burned them in a soup pot. This made it so there was no going back. That sets the tone for the rest of this story.
The next morning, I woke at the crack of dawn. I showered and dressed. I brushed my teeth. Then I went to the quintessential offices of Quiggin & Hale and quit. This was without a job lined up.
June 27
This small section illustrates why Eve and Tinker are incompatible.
Summertime
Chapter 12
Katey conceives a way to talk with Nathaniel Parish, who was once a preeminent book editor, but now favors only books which few people would read-last century’s Russian authors. She makes sure he sees a book he would be interested in. She starts to work for Pembroke Press. Parish notes that this place is behind the times-Katey notes that they were, such as Not only did they have manners, they thought them worth preserving. And that they with all the loving care that we normally reserve for things that matter. She also noted that the pay was half of what she was making before.
She meets Dicky through one of her co-workers. Dicky is her co-worker’s brother.
Katey gets introduced to Mason Tate, the editor of an up and coming magazine on New York. Interviewed, sort of eccentric. She gets hired, temporarily, as one of his assistants.
Delmonico - also talked about in Lincoln Highway.
In just a few short hours, her whole life turned around.
Chapter 13
First day working with Morgan Tate. She learns to be as rude and arrogant as Tate is-Tate encourages this so that there is no going around the barriers he wants. Alley and Katey are in the business of trying to make each other equal.
Katey goes out with a group of socialites. They burst into a high level party.
New York was a city where the improbable would be made probable, the implausible plausible and the impossible possible
She bumps into Wallace who invites her to go to his hunting club and learn to shoot. Dicky is trying to put the moves onto Katey.
Chapter 14
Time with Wallace. Wallace is a superbly talented person with hesitant social skills. Wallace takes her to learn to shoot. Shooting, at least for the moment, gave her confidence. If only someone had told me about the confidence-boosting nature of guns, I’d have been shooting them all my life.
Katey notices that Wallace knows everybody’s name. He has gotten that down that no matter what status in life you are, Wallace treats you as a person.
Wallace is OK with silences.
Wallace invites her out again to a museum this time, a collection of guns.
When Bitsy is told Katey had been in a car wreck (with Tinker and Eve), her response was I’ve never been in a car wreck. Though from the way she said it, you got the sense she had been in other kinds of wrecks—like in an airplane or motorcycle or submarine. An adventurous woman.
Wallace visits Katey in her apartment and comments on her books. Is this the . . . Dewey decimal system? —No. But it’s based on similar principles. Those are the British novelists. The French are in the kitchen. Homer, Virgil and the other epics are there by the tub.
Teaches Katey honeymoon bridge.
Maybe it was because we found being in each other’s company so effortless. (Wallace and Katey’s.)
Chapter 15
Describes Tate and noting that the preciseness of what he wanted is what made him give a sense of purpose.
The entire medium [photography] is founded on the instant. If you allow the shutter to be open for even a few seconds, the image goes black. We think of our lives as a sequence of actions, an accumulation of accomplishments, a fluid articulation of style and opinion. And yet, in that one sixteenth of a second, a photograph can wreak such havoc.
Wallace told Katey that he was going to enlist in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans. Many people had their reasons for enlisting. For Wallace, there was also the small matter of having been given too much. Interesting that Wallace felt he needed to earn what he had been given. Maybe this was why he was so accommodating to others with his advice. I think this would have let Katey know she was not his love interest as this was more important. But in the meantime, they were playing cards with Bitsy and her husband. They also slept together during the weekends.
Because Wallace would not be home for Christmas, they did Christmas shopping in August. The gifts were given to his attorney to be delivered on Christmas Eve. Wallace had a special gift for his godson-his father’s officer watch. The mystery was solved when, with the last of the presents wrapped, Wallace cut a small rectangle of paper and then took his father’s black-dialed watch from his wrist. This plays a part in Lincoln Highway.
They looked at a school class photo. Wallace was just the sort who blends into the background of the school photo (or the greeting line at the cotillion) but who, with the passage of time, increasingly stands out against the lapses in character around him. Tinker was also in the photo-twice, on each end of the photo.
Tinker’s story comes out about his father losing all of the money and how Tinker was expelled from school because of lack of funds. Tinker had worked his way back up the economic ladder.
Wallace goes to Spain. The United States was a party to the Non-Intervention Agreement. This agreement said that other countries would not take part in the Spanish Civil War.
Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall- Refers to the changing of the store display. But also notice the parts to the story are divided the same way.
She meets Wyss and gets the news that Tinker and Eve are still in Europe after the other couple left. Tinker was getting Eve and engagement ring.
Chapter 16
Attends a Hollinsworth party, this time invited. She hears a bit more about Wallace. She found one of Tinkers/Eve’s ear-rings in the bathroom. So she knew they were back. She then hears from Bitsy how Tinker and Eve were on a boat and got stranded.
Katey does not want to stick around. One of Hollinsworth’s sons, Val, drives her back to her place.
Billie Holiday singing “Autumn in New York” On the radio during the drive back.
Chapter 17
Katey is woken up by the police. Eve has been found drunk in an alley. It’s a purposeful irony of life, I suppose, that we never get to see ourselves in that state. The state is down and out.
Eve says that Tinker proposed and she did not accept.It was on the boat and she did not accept on the spot. Eve says that TInker and her do not even like each other. She had gotten pregnant and she “took care of that.” It was like she’d said all along: She was willing to be under anything, as long as it wasn’t somebody’s thumb.
Eve says she is going back to her home in the MidWest. But she was not on the train which she said she would be on. She had continued on to Los Angeles.
As far as I was concerned, the notion of Tinker rising alone for a sunrise that he wanted to share, and of Eve showing up at the very last minute from the other side of a night on the town, spoke to the very best in both of them. Sometimes what is considered the best may not be the other persons.
Chapter 18
Tinker invites Katey to Wallace’s family camp-this is a two story mansion, which could only be called a “camp” if compared to something bigger. Also the setting for the last scenes in Lincoln Highway. There are pictures of Wallace and his family lining a hallway.
Tinker needs someone to talk with after breaking up with Eve. They sleep separately. Tinker takes her out hiking to Pinyon Peak-Not a real place. Katey has not been hiking and you can tell she is not up to it. When they talk of Eve, Tinker does not seem to have any scarring.
Chapter 19
Katey calls in sick. She went to get her hair done. A hiker and a talker! It was a season of personal discovery. She has lunch with Bitsy. She spots Anne Grandyn who is with Tinker. It was not a godmother type of lunch, but as a gigolo. He tries to explain, but Katey would not listen. She spills the whole story to Bitsy. She reveals that she is not a society girl. Bitsy’s response: keep it up.
Back in her apartment, Katey has time to think. It had left me in a scientific mood,
On the Road to Kent-not sure if this is a made up game or not. One person describes all which they see on a trip. Other players have to describe it exactly as the first player said.
Tinker had read many of the Rules on Mr. Washington’s list quite closely. Maybe he had just never gotten this far-that would be rule number 110: have a conscience.
The next morning, Katey found at work a wheelchair with a red cross emblazoned on the back. Editorial satire from Tate.
September 30
Hank and Tinker meet. Tinker tries to give money, but Hank refuses with a right hook.
Fall
Chapter 20
Katey has been reading Agatha Christie mysteries. She notes that they please because they are both part of a formula making them familiar, but yet they are different. Mrs. Christie doles out her little surprises at the carefully calibrated pace of a nanny dispensing sweets to the children in her care. But I think there is another reason they please—a reason that is at least as important, if not more so—and that is that in Agatha Christie’s universe everyone eventually gets what they deserve. And that is something which is not true of reality. In Christian thought, nobody gets what they deserve, else we would all be in agony. We have pleasure because we have a God who gives out grace.
For the most part, in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justice exists. But just because God is merciful, does not mean there is not justice. It just may take longer than we impatient humans want.
discover that before the end of the weekend all assembled will get their just deserts. But when we do so, we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company. And this is the part which is true, each of us, including myself like to think we are not as bad as the next person. I do more than the next person, so I must be better. But I think our world does not grade on a curve. I am just as bad as the next person, just bad in a different way.
Katey needed to work her way back into good graces with Tate. So she worked extra hard.
Anne Grandyn summons her. Grandyn sums up the situation. She had not realized that Katey and Tinker had feelings for each other until the previous chapter. We rarely know exactly where we stand in relation to someone else, and we never know where two confederates stand in relation to each other. Grandyn explains her relationship is not based upon feelings rather on money. Sex for money.
Grandyn thought Katey knew where Tinker was. Katey did not.
Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.
if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say.
She meets Tinker accidentally. Tinker wants to explain, but Katey is not going to give him a chance, well maybe five minutes. First Anne wants to explain her situation with Tinker. Now Tinker wants to explain his situation with Anne. I guess there are two sides to every story. And, as usual, they were both excuses. Katey is so angry she cannot see anything about Tinker. In retrospect, he was so obviously a fiction…
Katey rebounds to Dicky. They have sex, but that is the extent of their attachment.
Chapter 21
Katey is still in Tate’s doghouse. But she makes a suggestion on how to get good gossip on celebrities-talk to ex-doormen and wait staff. Her future rides on this bet. This was successful far beyond what Katey thought it was going to be.
John William Warde-real person and did commit suicide like Towles said he did.
Chapter 22
A group including Dicky and Katey go out to a jazz club. Hank Grey ends up being there. They end up talking about Tinker which Hank says Katey has Tinker all wrong. He was not putting on a front. He is intelligent and hard working. They can squash it, maybe; but they sure can’t teach it. —And what’s that? —Wonder. And that right there is something which makes this book worthwhile reading. It mimics one of my favorite GK Chesteron quotes:
For a man really living,
the hardest task of life is not to be interested in everything
--GK Chesterton, The Illustrated London News,
August 10, 1912, "The Death of Andrew Lang"
Well maybe two of them:
It is very difficult to find an unimportant subject or even
an uninteresting subject. I have done through most of my life
looking for an uninteresting subject--or even an uninteresting
person. It is the romance of my life that I have failed to
find either of them yet.
--GK Chesterton, The Illustrated London News,
January 11, 1913, "Bacon and Shakespeare, Again"
when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer. This was in response to a saxophone player complimenting Eve on her ability to appreciate jazz.
Chapter ends at Dicky’s place on a Sunday night. A neighbor is playing a piano. They would like him to play a particular piece. So Dicky goes to work with his talent: making paper airplanes with a message.
Note: Towles I think may have changed Grey’s name from Henry to Hank as part of this chapter he calls him Henry the other prt Hank. Of course, one is a derivative of the other.
Chapter 23
Grandyn visits Katey. For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense. The bottom line Grandyn was trying to manipulate Katey by offering her an apartment, thus getting Katey into her debt. Katey refused it.
Chapter 24
Art show in an apartment with Hank Grey being one of the artists. More working class people. But she was told that Hank had enlisted.
Hank had sold a bunch of paintings-not his own, but Stuart Davis. He must have realized he was not going to make it as an artist.
Time has a way of playing tricks on the mind. Looking back, a series of concurrent events can seem to stretch across a year while whole seasons can collapse into a single night.
Wallace had been killed in Spain. Suddenly, all the people of valor were gone. She counted Eve, Hank and Wallace as these people.
Dicky raises the question, has Katey still fallen for Tinker?
When Katey is at St Patricks, there is a statue of Atlas down the street in front of the Rockefeller building. Could there have been a more contrary statue to place across from one of the largest cathedrals in America?... While back in the shadows of St. Patrick’s was the statue’s physical and spiritual antithesis, the Pietà—in which our Savior, having already sacrificed himself to God’s will, is represented broken, emaciated, laid out on Mary’s lap. Interesting contrast where is Towles going with this? What is he thinking?
If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, he said, then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.
Suddenly Katey knows where to find Tinker, to seek forgiveness.
Chapter 25
Katey goes to find Tinker at Hank’s old room by the harbor. To both Tinker and Hank, this was a place where they could remember their youth. Tinker wants to recount his life for Katey and asks How does that happen? How do you stop telling people where you’re from?
Katey thinks of Tinker: He always looked his best, I thought to myself, when circumstances called for him to be a boy and a man at the same time.
When they went out to eat, she did not remember the food, but the time together. Tinker leaves for whatever life will bring him. Katey brings back a painting by Hank. Tinker left a note saying that each morning he would say her name, an inspiration.
Chapter 26
The cover of the inaugural edition of the magazine was Katey’s idea. She then found out that the person behind her getting her job was Anne Grandyn. Katey gets a Christmas surprise gift from Wallace-a rifle.
December 30
Tinker, the longshoreman.
Epilogue
Few Are Chosen
The year 1938 had been one in which four people of great color and character had held welcome sway over my life. In the early morning of January 1, 1940, Katey finds herself in a restaurant. There Hank Grey happened to be as well. That is where this realization came from.
Katey recounts what happened to people:
- Dicky gets sent to Texas, works in oil, serves in the Pacific and marries the oilman’s daughter.
- Eve stays in Los Angeles.
- Wallace is dead of course, but leaves Katey an annual income of $800.
- Tinker Grey, unknown location or status, but set free to be himself.
Hank fills in some of the status of Tinker. Working on the docks, in New York. But He was happy. Katey has a mixture of emotions. But after a time, she stopped looking for him. But at the New York MOMA in 1966, she ran into him.
Katey’s musing (or is it Towles?(: 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.
I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. I wonder what Katey or Towles felt they had lost? Katey knows that choosing Val as her husband meant giving up on Tinker forever.
She had started out as Tinker had, saying his name every morning. But like so much else, that habit had been elbowed aside by life—becoming first intermittent, then rare, then lost to time. But now, she resolves to do that again.
Appendix
Lists Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour by George Washington
Evaluation:
Amor Towles is a craftsman of stories. In A Gentleman in Moscow, he has this man locked in a hotel for the majority of his life. It takes a real storyteller to make the reader want to continue to the end of such a setting. Towles tells a similar story of two people who come from impoverished backgrounds. One finds her fulfillment as she climbs, the other has reached the top and realizes that is not him. I think most storytelling would make this bland, Towles does not.
As you follow a year in the life of Katey Kontent going from being a typist-clerk to an assistant to a New york magazine editor. That is only a minor portion of the story, a background if you will. The story revolves around a chance meeting with a gentleman by the name of Tinker Grey who is Katey’s semi-romantic interest. As the year progresses, she is introduced to his friends and friends of friends, gaining acceptance in his circle.
But that whole relationship starts to fall apart when Tinker proposes to a friend of Katey’s. Also Katey finds out about his background and a secret part of his life. Both explore who they are.
Do yourself a favor, read the Appendix first. It is George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour. It is where the title comes from and some of the way characters act fall in with Washington’s Rules. Then sit back and enjoy Towles version of an entertaining shaggy dog story with some points to ponder.
Notes from my book group:
Towles like to play with chapter names. Why the seasons? Are the references in chapter 15 to the seasons related to the book parts? What part does it hold in the book? Also there are 26 chapters. Is there significance to that number?
Towles starts the book with a teaching of Jesus on a king holding a feast, but few people accept, so he opens up the invitation to all. But some come in common clothes which causes him to throw them out. (Matt 22:8-14). Why does Towles use this piece of scripture to open the book? What is he trying to say? How does it fit the theme of the book?
What do you read in the name of Towles' protagonist's name, Katey Kontent?
Is the year 1938 relevant to the storyline? If so, what happens there which influences how the story is being told? If not, why do you think he chose this year?
How comfortable would you be in making a New Year’s resolution for someone else? Particularly someone you do not know? Or them making it for you? What benefit might there be?
Some of Katey’s best time is being alone in a cathedral. Why is this a good place for her? Why does she need these places? Where is your “alone” place? Later on Katey notices that Wallace accepts silences in a conversation. How do you feel when a conversation goes silent?
Discuss Katey’s thought: be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you. Do you think Towles uses this in his story?
When Katey reads to Eve, Eve requests that she start reading beyond the start. Are there books which you have enjoyed more because you have started beyond the beginning? If so, why does the author write the beginning the way they do?
Katey reads Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation and realizes that this is who Tinker is. Do you think Tinker is the fulfillment of these rules? Is this a plus or minus in Katey’s eyes? What rules do you live your life by? Do you think they are better than or more livable than Washington’s?
Katey thinks that Tinker has forgotten rule 110, Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. Do you think Tinker has? Was his living out Washington's rules authentic or put on?
Trace the story of Eve’s ear rings. How do they influence the book?
Describe Eve. What made her a special friend to Katey? How did Katey view her? Do you think she was good for Katey?
If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, … then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place. How do you know that there is no future for Tinker and Eve? Why does Tinker try to make the relationship go? Why doesn’t Eve accept Tinker’s engagement proposal?
I didn’t ride cabs very often, but when I did, the goal was the shortest distance between two points. The idea of taking the long route home had never come up. Are you a destination or a journey person? Why and what do you think you gain by being that type of a person? What do you miss?
Katey’s father knew that if he had a cup of coffee in the morning, he would make it through the day. What gives your day a sense of grounding and serenity?
Coincidence plays a large part in this book. Name those occurances and how they affect the outcome of the book. In your life, do coincidences occur? Do you think of them as being just one of those things or something special? A sense of direction or carry on as something unusual? How does Katey react to them?
The people at Pembroke Press Not only did they have manners, they thought them worth preserving. What manners do you think are worth preserving? How do you maintain those manners in our world which does not seem to honor courtesy? Does this fit in with Towles echoing Washington's rules? Where does Morgan Tate fit into Towles' emphasis on rules and courtesy?
Wallace takes Katey to his club to learn to shoot. Afterwards Katey thinks about how confident she felt once she figured out what she was doing. If you have had experience shooting, is this how you have felt? Talk about the self feedback you get from your experience?
As wealthy as Wallace is, he knows the names of those around him. Why do you think Wallace learned to do this? How does it serve him? Do you think it was to use people or as a means to connect? How have you felt when someone remembered your name?
Towles, through Katey, says that the draw of a good mystery novel is that we know that at the end, all will get their just deserts. He goes on and notes that we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company. Why is it easier to see where others are not being punished for their misdeeds and ignore our own?
Anne Grandyn is the mystery character. How does she pop up in the story? What roles does she play? What is her motivation? How does she justify her meddling? Were you surprised at the end to find out the role she played in Katey’s life?
Discuss this Grandyn statement: Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs.
Hank Grey says there is something which Katey missed in examining Tinker’s character: Wonder. Where does Tinker exhibit this? Why is this a key element? What difference does the lack of wonder make in a life? Are there characters in the story who lack this quality?
Why does Hank Grey burn his paintings?
Why is Tinker happy working on the docks when he could have had it all as a banker?
Towles says through Katey: I know that right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. Is this a true statement? What did Katey lose? Eve? Tinker?
Towles notes that in front of the Rockefeller building is a statue of Atlas holding up the world, St Patrick’s cathedral has the Pietà. He asks the question, Could there have been a more contrary statue to place across from one of the largest cathedrals in America? What does Towles see as the opposing philosophies?
For those of you who have read Lincoln’s Highway, how does Towles make connections between the two?
How do you want your life to change because you read this book?
Many of these questions are either from or adapted from LitLovers.
Why the title of Rules of Civility?
Did the ending seem fitting? Satisfying? Predictable?
Which character was the most convincing? Least?
Which character did you identify with?
Which one did you dislike?
Every story has a world view. Were you able to identify this story’s world view? What was it? How did it affect the story?
In what context was religion talked about in this book?
Why do you think the author wrote this book?
What would you ask the author if you had a chance?
What “takeaways” did you have from this book?
What central ideas does the author present?
Describe the culture talked about in the book.
How is the culture described in this book different than where we live?
What economic or political situations are described?
Does the author examine economics and politics, family traditions, the arts, religious beliefs, language or food?
How did this book affect your view of the world?
Of how God is viewed?
What questions did you ask yourself after reading this book?
Talk about specific passages that struck you as significant—or interesting, profound, amusing, illuminating, disturbing, sad...?
What was memorable?
Reading Groups General Fiction Guide
From Penguin's Reading Guide. Link also has a conversation with the author
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
At the outset, Rules of Civility appears to be about the interrelationship between Katey, Tinker, and Eve; but then events quickly lead Eve and Tinker offstage. Are Dicky Vanderwhile, Wallace Wolcott, Bitsy, Peaches, Hank, and Anne Grandyn as essential to Katey’s “story” as Tinker and Eve? If so, what role do you think each plays in fashioning the Katey of the future?
Katey observes at one point that Agatha Christie “doles out her little surprises at the carefully calibrated pace of a nanny dispensing sweets to the children in her care.” Something similar could be said of how Katey doles out information about herself. What sort of things is Katey slow to reveal, and what drives her reticence?
After seeing Tinker at Chinoisserie, Katey indicts George Washington’s “Rules of Civility” as “A do-it yourself charm school. A sort of How to Win Friends and Influence People 150 years ahead of its time.” But Dicky sees some nobility in Tinker’s aspiration to follow Washington’s rules. Where does your judgment fall on Tinker? Is Katey wholly innocent of Tinker’s crime? Where does simulation end and character begin? Which of Washington’s rules do you aspire to?
A central theme in the book is that a chance encounter or cursory decision in one’s twenties can shape one’s course for decades to come. Do you think this is true to life? Were there casual encounters or decisions that you made, which in retrospect were watershed events?
When I told my seven-year-old son that I had written a book that was going to be published, he said: That’s great! But who is going to do the pictures? While the Walker Evans portraits in the book may not meet my son’s standards of illustration, they are somewhat central to the narrative. In addition, there are the family photographs that line Wallace Wolcott’s wall (including the school picture in which Tinker appears twice); there are the photographs of celebrities that Mason Tate reviews with Katey at Condé Nast; there are the pictures that end up on Katey and Valentine’s wall. Why is the medium of photography a fitting motif for the book? How do the various photographs serve its themes?
One of the pleasures of writing fiction is discovering upon completion of a project that some thread of imagery has run through the work without your being aware—forming, in essence, an unintentional motif. While I was very conscious of photography as a motif in the book, and the imagery of fairy tales, here are two motifs that I only recognized after the fact: navigation (expressed through references to the Odyssey; to the shipwrecks of the Titanic, Endurance, and Robinson Crusoe; and through Thoreau’s reckoning and pole star metaphors); and the blessed and the damned (expressed through scattered references to churches, paradise, the inferno, doomsday, redemption day, the pietà and the language of the Gospels). What role do these motifs play in the thematic composition of the book? And if you see me in an airport, can you please explain them to me?
Upon completion of this book, one of my guilty pleasures has been imagining how Eve was doing in Hollywood. When Eve says, “I like it just fine on this side of the windshield,” what does she mean? And why is the life Tinker offers her so contrary to the new life she intends to pursue? If you register at my Web site, on the first of the year I will send you a short story on Eve’s progress.
When Tinker sets out on his new life, why does he intend to start his days saying Katey’s name? What does he mean when he describes Katey as someone of “such poise and purpose”? Is the book improved by the four sections from Tinker’s point of view, or hindered by them?
T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is referenced in the book’s preface and its epilogue. Why is that poem somehow central to Katey’s 1969 reflections on her 1938 experiences?
Please don’t answer this last question until the wine bottles are empty and the servers are waiting impatiently to clear your table: In the epilogue, Katey observes that “Right choices are the means by which life crystallizes loss.” What is a right choice that you have made and what did you leave behind as a result?
New Words:
- Pierogies: a small dough dumpling stuffed with a filling such as potato or cheese, typically served as a dish with onions or sour cream.
- Emendations: the process of making a revision or correction to a text.
- Washingtonia: a genus of palms, native to the southwestern United States (in southern California, and southwest Arizona) and northwest Mexico (in Baja California and Sonora).
- hoi polloi: the masses; the common people.
- Dénouement: the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.
- Doyenne: a woman who is the most respected or prominent person in a particular field.
- Vibraphonist: A percussion instrument similar to a marimba but having metal bars and rotating disks in the resonators to produce a vibrato.
- Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain
- Good Earth by Pearl Buck
- Treasure Island
- Robinson Crusoe
- Walden by Thoreau
- A Room with a View
- Inferno by Dante
- Paradiso by Dante
- Great Expectations
- Vishniovy Sad
- Leaves of Grass
- The Call of the Wild
- Robinson Crusoe
- Last of the Mohicans
- Deerslayer
- Treasure Island
- 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
- Assorted Writings by the Father of Our Republic
- How to Win Friends and Influence People
- The Thief of Baghdad.
- Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour by George Washington
- Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie
- Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- When the Cathedrals Were White by Le Corbusier
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
- Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie
- First Line: On the night of October 4th, 1966, Val and I, both in late middle age, attended the opening of Many Are Called at the Museum of Modern Art—the first exhibit of the portraits taken by Walker Evans in the late 1930s on the New York City subways with a hidden camera.
- Last Line: And so I have on so many mornings since.
- be careful when choosing what you’re proud of—because the world has every intention of using it against you. Chp Three
- The best response to a good question is something put simply without hesitation or inflection. Chp Three
- Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane—in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath—she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger. Chp Ten
- One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements. Chp Ten
- Most people have more needs than wants. That’s why they live the lives they do. But the world is run by those whose wants outstrip their needs. Chp Twenty
- if the next thing you’re going to say makes you feel better, then it’s probably the wrong thing to say. Chp Twenty
- when some incident sheds a favorable light on an old and absent friend, that’s about as good a gift as chance intends to offer. Chp Twenty-Two
- For better or worse, there are few things so disarming as one who laughs well at her own expense.Chp Twenty-Three
- Time has a way of playing tricks on the mind. Looking back, a series of concurrent events can seem to stretch across a year while whole seasons can collapse into a single night. Chp Twenty-Four
- If we only fell in love with people who were perfect for us, he said, then there wouldn’t be so much fuss about love in the first place.Chp Twenty-Four
- right choices by definition are the means by which life crystallizes loss. Chp Few Are Chosen
- Preface
- Wintertime
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- January 8
- Springtime
- Chapter Five
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- June 27
- Summertime
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- September 30
- Fall
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- December 30
- Epilogue
- Few Are Chosen
- Appendix
References:
- Publisher's Web Site for Book
- Author's Web Site
- Wikipedia-Author
- Amazon-Book
- Amazon-Author
- Barnes and Noble
- GoodReads-Book
- GoodReads-Author
- New York Times Review
- The Guardian’s Review
- Publisher’s Weekly
- Kirkus Review
- YouTube
- HTML Giant blog
- Book Lovers Book Review
No comments:
Post a Comment