Despite considering myself to be an avid reader and the reputation
and work of Mr Roth this is the first novel of his that I have read.
In quick summary the novel is the story of a young man
Eugene Cantor, called Bucky, raised by his grandparents in the Weequahic
neighborhood of Newark, NJ in the summer of 1944. He is very athletic, and teaches in the local
school and runs the neighborhood playground.
And he wears thick glasses due to eyesight that keeps him out of the
war. A polio epidemic erupts and
eventually he leaves Weequahic for a summer camp job in the mountains. And polio strikes at the camp as well
including infecting Bucky. He ends up
cutting off his dreams of a career in teaching and marriage.
The writing style is very much a style I like; at least it
felt familiar and comfortable despite this being the first story of his that I
have read. The story is set decades
before I made an appearance on city streets, playgrounds, neighborhood stores
and lots, but still there is a connection of being a boy in similar settings
and I think helped keep me in the story.
And I needed the help.
While Mr Roth’s writing style felt familiar and welcome the central
character Bucky became someone that provoked strong feelings of dislike and
aversion.
My identification with the characters stayed firmly in
Bucky’s shoes. That may not be uncommon,
for the reader to stick with the central character, particularly in a short
novel like this one. The other
characters are not neglected but also only really seen through the main
character until the very end where we see Bucky through the eyes of the
narrator who is finally named. However,
I usually find myself clicking with one or more of the supporting cast as well
but not in this story.
It is only now thinking back that I think I realize all the
points of similar experience I have with Bucky.
By the time I was in my early twenties I was no longer in a setting like
the streets of Weequahic but the streets and empty lots of Winter Hill were not
so dissimilar. Our stand up guy, our
neighborhood guardian was still in his teens but older, stronger and more
confident than us. And our playgrounds
were mostly empty lots but we played stick ball endlessly, witnessed and relied
on our guardian’s protection and mentorship in the games and the ways of the
world as we experienced it. I went to
college with hopes of giving back to society.
I know what it feels like to be classified as ‘unfit’ for military
service. And I know what it is like to
watch others go off to fight evil while you are safe at home with loved
ones. And my grandfather too often looms
large in my life although he’s long since past.
So what bothered me about Bucky? Of course it wasn’t a fault with Bucky it was
my own ideas about who Bucky should be.
And because of all the connections listed above and the skill of Mr Roth
in bringing a character to life when Bucky didn’t met that ideal in my head it felt
a little too much like my own internal judgments of myself when I fail to live
up to my expectations.
I liked Bucky at first, how could I not, a young man who
responded so well to the love of his grandparents after the death and departure
of his parents, giving back to his local community, giving and getting joy from wholehearted efforts in athletics. When
he stands up to the teenagers from another neighborhood and feels the presence
of his dead Grandfather he and I shone with the light of good and wholesome
manhood. Living up to the standards
handed down by our fathers and grandfathers as well as mothers and grandmothers.
I never have had to face an epidemic the way Bucky had
to. And like him I expected him to meet
it in a certain way. He and I share a
sense of duty that is integral to being a good man clearly there was only one way
to respond and at first it seemed he did.
Then after one of the kids he saw as another fine example of
developing manhood dies and another cracks under the pressure his own fear
becomes clear to him. And his girlfriend
who is away working at a children’s summer camp is afraid for him and arranges
for him to come join her where there is no polio epidemic.
He says and thinks all the right things to continue to live
up to his and my idea of the man he should be, yet as if his body has
absolutely no regard for our ideas of what should be done he agrees to take the
job at the summer camp and leave Weequahic.
This was the point at which I could not forgive Bucky. He was abandoning the kids, letting down his
boss, leaving others to take care of his grandmother, reacting contrary to what
he and I knew to be the right thing, contrary to the standards set by his
grandfather.
At the summer camp he waffles on going back which of course
in my eyes only made him seem weaker, less and less sympathetic. He does finally settle in and finds another
young man who like Alan and Kenny back at the playground appears to be the very
text book example of a developing good man who Bucky can help usher fully into
the world as he imagines it. This boy,
David, is the first to fall to polio at the summer camp and Bucky falls not
just to the disease but falls right out of the world although he survives the
disease.
What I mean by falling out of the world is he can no longer
reconcile the world as is with the world that he thinks it should be. If God is responsible then he decides he must
be outside god’s plan and if not God then he must be responsible. Again I dislike this character for thinking
himself so self important and so blind not to see how he is the one trying to
cut out a little bit of the world for his very own and harming himself and
others with those cuts.
He survives but his body is no longer the well chiseled
athletic machine that it was; he is wheelchair bound for some time and later
makes progress in recovery but still needs assistance of a cane and experiences
pain. And for that weakness he ends his
dream of being a teacher. And he cuts
off his relationship with his fiancé.
He ends his engagement to “save her” he says it is his “last
opportunity to be a man” he thinks. I
see her as the braver soul, no not brave not only brave, the more wise soul
fully loving him as he is both strong and weak, kind but humorless and willing
to keep her heart open to him. He won’t
have it, THE FOOL!
The father of the first playground regular to die, Alan,
says of his son, “Alan’s life is ended, and yet, in our
sorrow, we should remember that while he lived it, it was an endless
life.” Bucky is called humorless
in the end and I think that is fitting. And I think Bucky too had moments like Alan living his
endless life. When he dives and
when he throws the javelin. The narrator
recounts Bucky and Marcia’s first time having sex together and afterwards he
opens up to her in a way he hasn’t to anyone else, “I was the son of a thief...It
wouldn’t have been hard to end up a bum.”
For a moment the world of possibilities opens up and he gives his story
and his possible stories to her and himself.
And yet he still wanted to fit all
his life into a package that could be held.
Someone must be responsible and to be responsible for something it has
to be definable, containable. Bucky kept
finding the world wasn’t fitting into package he made for it and so cut away
all he could to make it fit.
I think I too wasn’t able to stop
cutting away at Bucky to make him fit the package I had made for him.
