The Pregnant Widow

The Pregnant Widow

By Martin Amis

There is a right way and a wrong way to introduce yourself to an author with a long and illustrious career. When I read John Updike's Rabbit, Run a few weeks back, that was an example of how to do it. Start somewhere near the beginning of their career and work your way forward. The Pregnant Widow is a perfect example of how not to do it. Finding the most recent novel by said writer and hope to catch up by the end of that book. It's just not fair to the writer or yourself.

It is difficult to express the range of emotions that Martin Amis' most recent novel, The Pregnant Widow, evoked in me. I am not a member of Amis's generation. I wasn't even alive during the 1960s and AIDS closed the door on the hedonism of the 1970s when I was just starting elementary school. The fact that I grew up in a suburban town in Canada only increases the disconnect. It was hard for me to fully empathize with the characters in this novel, though the themes within are timeless and the autobiographical nature of this novel is heartbreaking I finished the book feeling like I missed something. I would suspect it would be the first 30 years of Martin Amis's career, but I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Like Amis's career, The Pregnant Widow is a novel that spans four decades. Much of the action in the novel centers on the summer of 1970 at the height of the sexual revolution. Keith Nearing (aka Martin Amis in literary disguise) is spending the summer cloistering himself in a castle in Italy with his girlfriend, the ever dependable Lily, and a host of other young, nubile people, including Scheherazade, an impossibly statuesque beauty that Keith falls hopelessly and madly in love with.

The story progresses in classic comedy of errors style (with elements of Philip Roth-esque depravity and discomfort with a touch of Three's Company style humor). The story is rife with sexual tension as Keith stumbles and bumbles in his attempts to bed the recently "liberated" Scheherazade who, like the other women summering at the castle, is known to prance around the pool topless (and often bottomless). But Keith's litany of neuroses and hang-ups are his undoing. Upon "striking out" with Scheherazade the story flies wildly off the rails in search of a meaningful ending (and if there is one fault with this book it is the last third, much of which I questioned the need for). It was at this point that I felt I was lacking some of Amis's prior work as color for this particular novel.

Along the way, Amis introduces us to a parade of interesting characters including a 4 foot 10 inch accident prone Italian, a gold digging socialite and, my favorite, Jorquil, a foppishly hilarious count who (I imagined) walks around the pool with neck-straining medallions and a hairy chest that would make Tom Selleck blush.

At its heart The Pregnant Widow is a novel about narcissism. The narrator of the novel is none other than Keith (and, by extension, Martin Amis's) superego. What could be more narcissistic than a novel narrated by one's superego? This is my first Martin Amis novel but from what I understand, Amis has explored the narcissist on several occasions in previous works, so I think he's got a good handle on the subject matter. There's a reason Amis's generation is called the Me Generation and it is unapologetically on display in this novel, not that there's anything wrong with that. Keith represents Amis who, through this story seems to be self-examining and re-evaluating his past from the perspective of a man with a lifetime's worth of regret.

This novel may not do much in helping the reader decide who they are in the present tense but it does do a good job of examining who we were (and when I say we, I mean those of my mother's generation mores than my own). There is a sense within this novel that the sexual revolution of the 1960s was a panacea our ailing, stiff collared society. Sexual liberation was to be the "end of history" in a sense and everything thereafter would be different. Of course, almost half a century we know this is categorically not the case. In fact, the latter third of the novel explores the notion that not only did sexual liberation not herald Arcadia, it also served a soupçon of its own problems in return.

One such sexual casualty is examined the pulsing subplot involving Keith's sister Violet. While only hinted at during the first half of the novel, Violet returns over and over in the latter half of the novel as a (perhaps) anti-thesis to the notion of narcissism.  In 1970, Violet is an psychologically under-developed young girl with the beginnings of very real problems with alcohol and promiscuity. As the novel progresses, Violet fleshes out into a full blown tragedy. Along with Keith's parade of failed relationships and marriages, Violet is the very essence of how the 1960s went all wrong.

(Tangentially, Violet is a thinly-veiled (one might say not veiled at all) depiction of Martin Amis's real life sister, Sally Amis, a woman and tragic case who has been characterized in many of Amis's novels. In this sense, Violet is a perfect example of a victim of the sexual revolution).

This novel was at point blazingly brilliant, at others a meandering slog, but perhaps this was my fault. As an introduction to the work of Martin Amis, I'm not sure this was the best choice. When tackling an author with a canon as large as Mr. Amis one is perhaps not advised to read his most recent offering. I continuously thought I was missing out on parts of this novel that I couldn't possibly understand without having read his previous novels. Having done a little research I confirmed that The Pregnant Widow is an extension of a lifetime of work. It's an excellent book, no doubt and it should have been short-listed for the Booker Prize, but if you haven't read any of his previous work, I would suspect that you, like me, will come away from this book slightly unfulfilled.

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Shout Out

Since I am completely dedicated to the continuity of this blog (I really like that all my blog posts coincide with a book finished) I am forced to put this little idea of mine down at the bottom of my posts (to paraphrase Jesus: Nobody fucks with the continuity). I want to start adding a link at the end of my blogs to other bloggers who are currently peaking my interest. A glance into what I'm surfing. If you've read this far, I strongly urge you to visit these blogs.

First up, the sublimely eclectic Books & Bowel Movements. I honestly think this is one of the most ingeniously written blogs out there. Check it out. You won't be disappointed.

Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run

By John Updike

How have I managed to spend almost 37 years on this planet, living, breathing, ingesting pop culture and literature without reading John Updike? What's more, when I broke the spine on Rabbit, Run earlier this week, aside from the title, I knew absolutely nothing about the plot of this novel. I recently listened to an old interview with Updike and that spurred me to read it but other than that, he has never been on my literary radar. Somehow, John Updike's entire literary career (which was well and truly established when I was born) has remained obscured... until now.

For the few of you that have never read Updike's seminal 1960s American novel, Rabbit, Run, it chronicles several months in the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a former high school basketball standout in a small town in Pennsylvania. In his, albeit brief, adult life, Rabbit has not met with the same degree of success and adulation. His job, demonstrating a new kitchen gadget for housewives, is demoralizing and his pregnant wife struggles with alcohol problems. This aren't turning out as Rabbit has planned. Well, that's not entirely true. Rabbit never had a plan to begin with, but things are not turning out as he had imagined they would (and why would they without a plan?).

His wife, Janice, returns home one day in an alcoholic haze having left their car at her parents and their son at his, Rabbit sets out to pick up both. When gets to the car, instead of driving over to his parent's place, he sets out for, of all places, Georgia.  Over the course of a long night of rather aimless driving (as far as West Virginia!), Rabbit ultimately returns to to his hometown, but not to his wife. Instead, he seeks out his former high school basketball coach, Mr. Tothero, because he always knew what to do. What follows is the mother of all existential crises.

But before I get into that, I wanted to draw a few comparisons. Over the course of this exquisitely written novel I found myself comparing Rabbit to other characters in other novels from (roughly) the same era in American literature. Rabbit seems to encapsulate (in my mind) three other classic protagonists:

1. Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye: This comparison was obvious within the first ten pages of the novel. I couldn't help think that Rabbit was a small-town version of Caulfield had Holden somehow finished school and started a family before completely unravelling. Like Caulfield, Rabbit seems to lack a fundamental understanding of what it means to be a responsible adult. He's stuck in the past, trying desperately to relive his high school glory without any thought for the very real consequences of his actions in the present tense. Like Holden, there's a sense that Rabbit seems to think he has his affairs in order when it is vividly apparent that he does not. I wanted to reach into the novel and shake Rabbit by the shoulders and tell him to grow up. I had the same inclination the last time I re-read Catcher in the Rye.

2. Peter Keating from The Fountainhead: Peter Keating is the very definition of a mommy's boy. Keating is the artist turned architect (at the behest of his overbearing mother)who obsesses over material wealth at the expense of artistic integrity. Keating depends on the ideas and talent of Howard Roark to further his own career and never acknowledges his contribution. In fact, Keating goes out of his way to discredit Roark. It takes a decline of epic proportions for Keating to learn any sort of lesson from his egoism and even then, one wonders if he truly understand what it is he's done wrong.

While Rabbit is by no means a successful professional, he reminded me of Keating in the way he allows others dictate and control his life (willingly), even when he thinks he is in control. When Rabbit returns home after his aborted drive south, he finds his former high school coach, Mr. Tothero, because he was an authority figure in his life that can tell him what to do. Rabbit is constantly manipulated by his mother, mother-in-law, Eccles, Tothero and, to a lesser extent, Ruth and Janice but rarely thinking for himself. When he does think for himself, he treats those around him with a gross disrespect, giving little thought to the consequences of what he says and what he does. When the inevitable damage is inflicted, he looks to others to clean up his messes.

3. Sal Paradiso in On The Road: I admit, I nicked this comparison from an interview I heard with Updike a few weeks prior to reading this, but it stuck and I noticed it. Kerouac and Updike wrote Rabbit, Run and On the Road at roughly the same time. Kerouac writes about Sal Paradiso, a man completely unhinged from the mainstream society. A man living his life minute to minute without much thought for responsibility or consequence. Paradiso takes off and simply wanders aimlessly across the country without much care for money, family or, well anything, really... except for kicks.

Rabbit is the Anti-Paradiso. His short foray into the world of Kerouac is comical, at best. At the beginning of the novel Rabbit drives off in the hopes of reaching the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, the farther Rabbit gets from his hometown, the more anxious he becomes. He is hopelessly lost and confused. His small-town mind has trouble digesting the larger world around him. I liked what Updike said in interview about this comparison when he noted that if everyone up and unhinged themselves from society as Sal Paradiso did, there would be nobody left behind to get things done. I'm not sure whether Rabbit was the best person to leave behind for getting things done, but not everyone is cut out for the road, least of all, Rabbit.

Another thing that troubled me about this book (in a good way, I assure you) is the time immediately prior to the first page of this novel. The disintegration of Rabbit happens so quickly and completely that one has to wonder what exactly was holding Rabbit together for the first two years of his marriage. Certainly the troubles that lead to him leaving his wife existed the day before he left her and probably the month before and the year before. Why then and how come he seems to unravel further as the novel progresses. What sort of wall was holding that angst within him for so long?

Like Holden Caulfield, I managed to muster very little sympathy for Rabbit throughout this book. but I reserved my greatest disgust for the character of Eccles, the minister who feels it is his duty to repair the broken marriage between Rabbit and Janice. I abhor people who find it their business to mess with other people's business. I suppose in a deeply religious small-town this might be more commonplace, but the idea of unsolicited involvement in the affairs of others is disgusting and borders on voyeurism. In the process of meddling into the familial affairs of people in the community (not even one of his parishioners!!!), Eccles sets up the pins for the novel's great tragedy. Ironically, while others in the novel give and take their blame for said tragedy (I'm not playing spoilers here) nobody gets off easier than Eccles. He simply walks away, unscathed. That's organized religion for you.

Oddly enough, the character with which I identified most was Mrs. Eccles. She seems to see through not only her husband's litany of bullshit but also Rabbit's. This ability to cut through their personalities and understand them at a more primal level (Updike sets her up as the voice of rationality as a dichotomy against her husband's faith) sets her apart as one of the only characters in the book that can honestly wash her hands of the affair and consider herself blameless. She has her husband pegged as a gossip hound from the start and fundamentally understands the train wreck that is Rabbit at first glance. One has to respect that sort of foreknowledge.

Rabbit, Run is the sort of novel that merits a lot more than a simple blogpost and I'll be mulling this novel over in my brain for years to come. It raises all sorts of issues concerning the nature of small-town America, it's struggle between tradition and modernity, religion and reason, and the nature of right and wrong. Above are just a few of the notes I made about this book while reading and certainly not an exhaustive interpretation of the novel (I am not equipped to do such a thing in the space provided by Blogger). I shudder to think what I might write if I waited another two or three days to organize my thoughts further.

If you haven't yet read Rabbit, Run, do so. Whether you like it or hate it, it's the sort of novel that must be read. It's a benchmark literary work that has influenced so much American literature since its publication. I will be revisiting this novel more than once in the years ahead.