books (The Feast of Love)
by Charles Baxter
Charles Baxter wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to take a stroll around the neighborhood. He makes his way to the local football stadium where he spies a young couple making love on the fifty yard line. So begins The Feast of Love.
Mr. Baxter's old friend Bradley is at the heart of this novel, a kaleidoscope of converging stories and characters. Bradley has been married twice. Once, to Kathryn (who leaves him for a woman), and once to Diana, who leaves him for David, the married man whose wife just left him. There's Esther and Harry, Bradley's elderly neighbors, academics despondent over the disappearance of their mentally-ill son. And there's Chloe and Oscar, the young cashiers in Bradley's coffee shop, who are young and in love and unable to comprehend just how difficult life can be. In alternating chapters, each of these characters confess to sins, admit their failings, and eventually, they begin to intersect in unexpected ways. To tell you more would ruin the surprises.
This is one of the best books I've ever read. Seriously. One of the best things going for it is how distinctly Baxter presents the voice of each of his characters. There are no chapter-headings to reveal who is speaking when, but there's never any confusion. The voices are that distinctive. And I do think that Baxter's post-modern convention of including himself as a character is a little forced and, ultimately, of no importance to the proceedings, but it doesn't take away from the beauty of the story (or stories) being told.
Heartbreaking, funny, compassionate, and wise, The Feast of Love will be ranked as one of my all-time favorite books.
"Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in your possession. That's the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day."
"... I don't care about that at all, not really, because at least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing."
"Some mistakes are both simple and huge. The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness."
"You can't dictate to yourself what you want. You either want it or you don't."
"Every day is a new day when filled with dawn feeling, a virgin day, until it gets fucked up by human activity and becomes history."
"As my mother once said to me, They're quite crazy, dear--men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you."
"...I had this image of myself: I was the tree that a drunk driver slides off the road into. The tree doesn't move. It doesn't do anything except stand there. It kills the person just by standing there. That would be me. I've got my attitude: lethal neutrality and immobility."
"People don't go to psychiatrists and pay good money to talk at length about how happy they are. Talking can spoil it. As a rule you don't settle down at the end of the day with a beer and tell your friend the particulars of how you lucked out and how well the day and the week and the year went, unless you're the gloating type. You just don't do that. It's provocation. You find some other neutral ground. If you're smart, you keep happiness to yourself."
"To this day i don't know exactly what she loved about me and that's because I don't have to know. She just does. It was the entire menu of myself. She ordered all of it."
"The crazy ones are mostly crazy because love made them that way. I believe that. Dan Cupid's arrow can make you one bubble off-level, is what I'm saying. Love has some ingredient for flat-out lunacy in it."
"You can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need--truer words than that have been spoken, but mot much truer, and for sure not in my lifetime."
Charles Baxter wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to take a stroll around the neighborhood. He makes his way to the local football stadium where he spies a young couple making love on the fifty yard line. So begins The Feast of Love.
Mr. Baxter's old friend Bradley is at the heart of this novel, a kaleidoscope of converging stories and characters. Bradley has been married twice. Once, to Kathryn (who leaves him for a woman), and once to Diana, who leaves him for David, the married man whose wife just left him. There's Esther and Harry, Bradley's elderly neighbors, academics despondent over the disappearance of their mentally-ill son. And there's Chloe and Oscar, the young cashiers in Bradley's coffee shop, who are young and in love and unable to comprehend just how difficult life can be. In alternating chapters, each of these characters confess to sins, admit their failings, and eventually, they begin to intersect in unexpected ways. To tell you more would ruin the surprises.
This is one of the best books I've ever read. Seriously. One of the best things going for it is how distinctly Baxter presents the voice of each of his characters. There are no chapter-headings to reveal who is speaking when, but there's never any confusion. The voices are that distinctive. And I do think that Baxter's post-modern convention of including himself as a character is a little forced and, ultimately, of no importance to the proceedings, but it doesn't take away from the beauty of the story (or stories) being told.
Heartbreaking, funny, compassionate, and wise, The Feast of Love will be ranked as one of my all-time favorite books.
"Every relationship has at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there's always that day. That day is always in your possession. That's the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day."
"... I don't care about that at all, not really, because at least with pets, and for all I know, people too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have nothing to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing."
"Some mistakes are both simple and huge. The worst mistakes I've made have been the ones directed by sweet-natured hopefulness."
"You can't dictate to yourself what you want. You either want it or you don't."
"Every day is a new day when filled with dawn feeling, a virgin day, until it gets fucked up by human activity and becomes history."
"As my mother once said to me, They're quite crazy, dear--men are. What you look for is one of them whose insanity is large enough, and calm and generous enough, to include you."
"...I had this image of myself: I was the tree that a drunk driver slides off the road into. The tree doesn't move. It doesn't do anything except stand there. It kills the person just by standing there. That would be me. I've got my attitude: lethal neutrality and immobility."
"People don't go to psychiatrists and pay good money to talk at length about how happy they are. Talking can spoil it. As a rule you don't settle down at the end of the day with a beer and tell your friend the particulars of how you lucked out and how well the day and the week and the year went, unless you're the gloating type. You just don't do that. It's provocation. You find some other neutral ground. If you're smart, you keep happiness to yourself."
"To this day i don't know exactly what she loved about me and that's because I don't have to know. She just does. It was the entire menu of myself. She ordered all of it."
"The crazy ones are mostly crazy because love made them that way. I believe that. Dan Cupid's arrow can make you one bubble off-level, is what I'm saying. Love has some ingredient for flat-out lunacy in it."
"You can't always get what you want but sometimes you get what you need--truer words than that have been spoken, but mot much truer, and for sure not in my lifetime."