A Tale of Two Worldviews: Alice McDermott vs. Tim O’Brien

Tim O’Brien

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know by now that I love Tim O’Brien. In fact, reviewing Going After Cacciato showed me that if I looked hard enough, literary language was all around me. So when I bought July, July, I knew it wouldn’t sit for long on my too-read shelf. I knew he was going to be playing with time and a myriad of characters and I couldn’t wait to see what he did.

I hated it.

Don’t get me wrong, the book is very well written. The characters are interesting, O’Brien plays with the edges of magical realism, and he does this thing with interspersion of space in the last few pages that blew my mind. But it was a miracle that I made it to the end of the book, because from the very beginning I just wanted out of the miserable lives of the characters as they sat at their college reunion rehashing all the horrible things that ever happened to them and all the horrible things they ever did to each other.

I realized that what the book jacket described as “a portrait of a generation launched into adulthood at the moment when their country, too, lost its innocence” was maybe too good of a portrait. And I wasn’t sure that most of them were adults. They were selfish, damaged, and childish. I recognized some of their behaviors as my own and it terrified me. The book made me want to hug my husband. Forever. And maybe not leave the house again.

I read the book in one night because I do adore O’Brien and I was looking for some redemption (for the characters, for me). But when I read that last period, I knew I was going to need to get out of bed and fetch myself a palate cleanser.

Alice McDermott

By contrast, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott has sat on my shelf for I don’t know how long. The sticker on the front says the used store bought this copy in 2000 and I could have been shifting it around since then. But it was just what I needed Saturday night after closing July, July. I know it was just what I needed because I fell asleep twelve pages in. My brain had finally found a place where it no longer felt assaulted and I could relax.

That does not mean the book was boring. Nor was it especially uplifting. The book actually starts in a bar following a funeral as neighbors pass around gossip about the deceased (Billy) and his widow sits almost entirely offstage. I did not know what to expect. What I found, though, was this tightly-knit world of several generations of Irish-Americans. Their lives are not idyllic and many of them are alcoholics. But they love each other and they act in each others’ best interest. The book shifts back and forth in time–covering more than half a century–and I fell so hard for these people.

The writing is good and sometimes quite pretty, but it was McDermott’s spirit that captured me.

The Quest for Happiness

“Billy didn’t need someone to pour him his drinks, he needed someone to tell him that living isn’t poetry. It isn’t prayer. To tell him and convince him. And none of us could do it, Danny, because every one of us thought that as long as Billy believed it was, as long as he kept himself believing it, then maybe it could still be true.” – Alice McDermott

My generation is really busy right now trying to figure out what’s going to make our lives happy. We’ve been told we can be anything, except there aren’t really all that many jobs. We’ve been told we are special, except that few people want to pay us to be special. In contrast, when Billy’s cousin and best friend, Dennis, comes of working age in 1937, his father gets him a job at Con Edison because “The greatest city in the world will always need electricity.” This is a man who knows that having enough money to feed your family is happiness. There aren’t a lot of strivers in this book and I found that refreshing, especially after reading July, July where the strivers were the unhappiest of the lot. As I think back on it, maybe both books were telling me the same thing, but the positive example was a lot easier to listen to.

Maybe it’s a generational thing–the Greatest Generation vs. the Baby Boomers. All I know is some of the brightest minds of my generation are either setting up jobs completely on their own terms or they are walking away entirely. They are working part time or using their Ivy League educations to set up farms and grow enough food to feed their families.

Ain’t Capitalism Grand?

The other thing I watch in my everyday life is how we all talk about the economy, waiting for it to get better. And we’re told the best thing we can do to make it better–the best thing we can do to create jobs for those who don’t have them–is to buy more and save less. We have to put our money to use. We have to want more things.

I don’t know about you, but my house is full. I have so many things I can’t even give them all away. And not a one of them makes me happy. I understand that capitalism is built on growth and that growth is built on consumption, but it feels like all of that rests on a bubble of rapidly-cooling air. I can’t buy a better coat that will last longer because it might put someone out of a job. I can’t buy coffee in bulk bags because those horrible, single-use plastic cups require more manufacturing and cost more money so they equal prosperity (and then even the man at the landfill has a guaranteed income). Oh, and I have to do it all on credit because my income won’t go up until I stimulate the economy.

In Charming Billy, when Dennis asks his step father (Mr. Holtzman) for a loan so that Billy can send for his bride from the old company, he says, “You boys will never have any money if you spend everything you make before it’s earned.” Imagine if the government worked that way. Imagine if we were talking about paying down the deficit instead of raising the debt ceiling. On a good day the best we can muster is balancing a budget so we don’t add to the debt.

A Life Less Ordinary

I thought of Mr. Holtzman today when the repair bill for my car started to approach the car’s actual Blue Book value. As my husband and I discussed the worth of the vehicle, the life still left in it, and whether we should replace it, I was proud that we sounded more like Holtzman than John Boehner. I was glad that my husband agreed the car is worth repairing. I was grateful that it is, unlike so many of our electronics these days, still somewhat cost-effective to repair.

I know that if we all walk away from the malls and refuse to buy the latest iPhone our way of life will change. Our GDP will shrink. The stock market will lose value. People might well lose jobs. But that last one is the only one I worry about because none of these objects I’m supposed to want make me happy.

What does make me happy is to come home every night and snuggle with my husband. Our jeans might be a little ratty. We make coffee in a cheap French press that only gets replaced when I shatter the carafe. And we’re repairing our nine-year-old car like a couple of old fogeys. And maybe that means I’m not ambitious enough, but I don’t care. I don’t care because it makes me feel like an adult to take care of the things I have instead of throwing out something that isn’t perfect. I don’t care because I share my life with friends new and old and not a one of us gives a rip about what material goods the others possess.

I could go into how the impulse to toss out things that aren’t working relates to divorce rates, but you can make that inference on your own. I just know that if I treated my writing like we are taught to treat our material objects and each other, I’d have a waste basket full of shitty first drafts and very little personal development (and very few final products) to show for it all.

So the gift I received this weekend from two very talented authors is the inspiration to dig deep and think about my values. What books challenge you? Do you feel the tide changing like I do or do you think I’m full of it? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

If this review made you want to read either book, pick up a copy of Charming Billy or July, July from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Isla McKetta, MFA

Author of Polska, 1994 and co-author of Clear Out the Static in Your Attic: A Writer's Guide for Transforming Artifacts into Art, Isla writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and BAs in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Washington. Isla makes her home in Seattle where she writes fiction, poetry, and book reviews and has served on the board of Seattle City of Literature and Hugo House. Recent poems can be found at antiBODY, Cascadia Rising, Hummingbird, {isacoustic*}, Lily Poetry, Minerva Rising, and Riddled with Arrows.