Yesterday — a Saturday, although there was nothing, in our otherwise happy solitude, to distinguish it from any other day — was a day of uncertainties. First, there was the uncertainty about food. Kathleen returned from the Pantry with two items out of six on the shopping list. It may be that the Pantry, although scheduled to be open for the remainder of our stay, has reverted to a sort of deli/convenience outlet, and won’t be stocking perishables. It’s not that we’re out of food here, but what food there is is too miscellaneous for the making of satisfying meals. I shall have to think. We shall probably go out.

Then, there was the uncertainty about the weather. Kathleen’s father and Fossil Darling both called with concern, having heard about the tornado that ripped through Breezy Point earlier in the day. That event was quite unrelated to the storm that was headed our way, expected to hit in the evening. The day was sultry but breezy; not too hot, but very humid. Or, should I say, low-pressured, since I felt it more in my joints than on my skin. As the evening gathered, so did the clouds. The wind picked up, and Kathleen decided to stow the lightweight deck chairs. I was in no mood for really bad weather — for the inconveniences of really bad weather, that is. There are very few tall trees out here to be blown through the power lines (that’s what knocks out service in the suburbs), but that’s small comfort when the weather sites on the Internet are blinking red.

I tried to read. Well, I did read. But I did not read from a treasured volume of my choice (to rough up a bit a line of Longellow, I think it was, that was engraved on some ghastly bronze bookends that were handed down to me when I was young). I have surprisingly, read most of the books that I brought out with me, and the ones remaining remain for a reason. No, I read newly-acquired books on my Kindle Fire. I’ve had the Kindle since it came out in December (January?), and I’ve used it now and then, but during this trip it has become a real tool. I’ve bought all sorts of old books for free. Did you know that Hume’s History of England is available? That’s amazing! And now I can get rid of six second-rate Victorian volumes in borderline poor condition. (I want to write an essay about Hume on Edward II.) I bought the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague. Did you know — now, this I got from Wikipedia — that her father wanted her to marry someone by the name of Clotworthy Skeffington? Clotworthy Skeffington! This is a name that must be put to some excellent use! I bought a Lancaster Pamphlet on Pitt the Younger and read quite a bit of it. Did you know that Lancaster Pamphlets are aimed at British students studying for their A-Levels? I expect to build up a collection. All on my Kindle.

I had spent some of the afternoon reading Eleanor Cook’s book about Wallace Stevens’s poetry — another e-book, as was the collection of Stevens’s poetry itself that I’d finally had the wit to download. Eight months, it took me. It took me eight months to grasp that I can carry around my favorite poems without lugging around actual books. If someone had told me that I could do this when I got the Kindle, I’d have nodded, because I’d have understood the theory. But old beasts are slow to put theory into practice. When that finally happens, it is the brilliant mercy of a sure repose.  

Eventually, after dark, there was rain. I should say that, all in all, it rained off and on for a total of fifteen minutes, only half of that time tempestuously. By nine o’clock, the skies were unmistakably clearing. The pressure shot up, too. Suddenly, it was eleven o’clock, and I crept to bed.

***

The actual book that I read yesterday was George Snyder’s On Wings of Affection. George is one of the handful of very nice people whom I’ve met first on the Internet and then face-to-face. When he sent me a copy of his novel last winter, I resolved to read it straight away, but, to an extent never really revealed in these pages, last winter was difficult for a number of reasons (happily, the worst of these was Will’s expertise in germ warfare), and every time I opened Wings, I found it just a bit too light in tone for my frame of mind. It did not take too long for the novel to become a source of self-reproach, a development that makes any book twice as hard to read. In the end — for it did come to an end! — I packed the book for Fire Island and resolved to read it.

Once I got past the first couple of pages, I had no desire to stop. What’s my favorite book? The one that I’m in the middle of right now! So it was with On Wings of Affection. I was engrossed by George’s expert blend of inspiration: antics out of Patrick Dennis marinated in Hollywood noir and infused with with Christopher Isherwood’s metamorphosed regret. The novel is almost always funny, but it is also never not triste.

At his Web log, 1904: The Year Everything Important Happened, George had experimented with his three principal characters, Sam (the narrator), Pam, and Didier, but in the composition of the book he removed every trace of the tentative, and the sketches were replaced by firmly grounded people. (Reading 1904, hadn’t been quite sure that Didier was supposed to be real.) Sam Finch, nearing forty, grew up poor in Ohio, gave New York a try, and now finds himself as a script reader and researcher in West Hollywood. The sister of an old boyfriend, the fabulously wealthy Grace Van Loon, emerges out of the past to ask him to keep an eye on her headstrong daughter, sixteen year-old Agnes, who prefers to go by “Pam.” (It didn’t take long for me to sense that I had cast Rachel McAdams in the part.) But what gives new shape and meaning to Sam’s life is the appearance of the beautiful young Frenchman, Didier Rossingol.

Sam, Pam, and Didier constitute a kind of group lead. It is not what happens between them that keeps the story going, but their intersections with the craziness that is Southern California. Didier, when he makes his first appearance, is the boytoy of a loathsome, wealthy decorator whose death is foretold in the next breath. It turns out that Didier and Pam have some history: in his previous life, Didier was her father’s boytoy (Pam’s mother refers to her gay ex-husband as The Plaintiff), and there was a scandal in St Tropez. Pam’s attempt to defenestrate Didier from Sam’s apartment may forewarn some movie buffs of an impending romance, but never mind; the adventure begins when Didier discovers his protector’s corpse, panics, and runs.

Sam’s attempts to help Didier out are more than comically ineffectual; they take him to Chatsworth (the one on the other side of the hills) for the making of a porn flick. But if the plot keeps the wheels turning, it’s the rueful candor of the writing that makes the scenery interesting. Here is Sam, unexpectedly welcoming a very famous movie actor into his apartment.

I will say, however, that meeting someone you are quite sure you’ve met before but are distinctly aware of having seen more or less naked is a disconcerting experience. You cannot help wondering what you might have been doing when you did seem them naken, and in addition, if you have lived as full and rich a life as I have had, filled with many interesting experiences you can’t always recall afterward, you may have a nagging suspicion that this vivid memory of lack of clothes has to do with something for which you owe an apology, but for the life of you, you can’t remember for what (or when, or where), so all you can do is hope they don’t remember either.

Sam no longer leads this kind of life. The fun part of his life is behind him. At one point, he moons over the trio at the end of Der Rosenkavalier and prepares to give up Didier, but without ever having had him. Sam’s social life nowadays is made up of meetings of “our little social club,” the name of which seems to be the only thing anonymous here. Like one of Louis XIV’s cast-off mistresses, Sam has found religion, and, in his case, sobriety is just the start of it. Beneath the laughter, but never out of sight, lies Sam’s renunciation. The fun is all ours.  

Although I’m horribly embarrassed about having taken so long to read a friend’s book, I’m rather glad to have had On Wings of Affection as a holiday treat. I promise not to let so much time go by before reading the next “Sam, Pam and Didier adventure,” Down the Garden Path.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2012 at 9:46 am.