dual personalities

Well, I tiptoed through the first week of classes without disturbing anyone’s lingering summer reverie. I kept up with my paperwork and even managed to read Amor Towles’ The Rules of Civility, a witty and sometimes sad trip to 1938 Manhatten, in which Katey, our female protagonist, attempts to secure a place among society’s movers and shakers.

1938 Vogue cover

The book was hard to put down, and I hated to see it end. If you want a plot summary, you can read the NYT review , though in my view the article is pretty superficial. Suffice it to say that Towles writes lovingly of his fully realized characters. The Rules of Civility is not the too clever, too knowing depiction of despicable rich people that we have come to expect from modern literature.

Walter Evans photograph

There are no real villains in this book, only imperfect but fundamentally decent people making their way in the world. That some of them are rich and privileged does not prevent them from having character or depth. How refreshing.

Like his second book, A Gentleman in Moscow, Towles’s first novel offers both insight into human nature and plenty of good advice. Take, for example, this passage in which our heroine reminisces about what her father told her as as he lay dying:

“Whatever setbacks he had faced in his life, he said, however daunting or dispiriting the unfolding of events, he always knew that he would make it through, as long as when he woke in the morning he was looking forward to his first cup of coffee. Only decades later would I realize that he had been giving me a piece of advice. Uncompromising purpose and the search for eternal truth have an unquestionable sex appeal for the young and high-minded; but when a person loses the ability to take pleasure in the mundane—in the cigarette on the stoop or the gingersnap in the bath—she has probably put herself in unnecessary danger. What my father was trying to tell me, as he neared the conclusion of his own course, was that this risk should not be treated lightly: One must be prepared to fight for one’s simple pleasures and to defend them against elegance and erudition and all manner of glamorous enticements.”

Yep, it’s those simple pleasures that really make life worth living. Remember that! One also has to love a heroine who reacts this way to her first experience target-shooting (another of life’s simple pleasures!):

“If only someone had told me about the confidence-boosting nature of guns, I’d have been shooting them all my life.”

1937 skeet shooting champion — looks as if she’s been shooting all her life.

And this passage reminded me of another dear Katie…

“Katey’s the hottest bookworm you’ll ever meet. If you took all the books that she’s read and piled them in a stack, you could climb to the Milky Way.”

1930s BLOND WOMAN SITTING BY WINDOW READING MAGAZINE PROFILE VIEW PLANTS IN BACKGROUND WINDOW SEAT

Oh, yes. There’s nothing quite like a good book to boost morale when the turkeys are getting you down. Try Amor Towles — you won’t regret it.

*Johnny Burke, “Pennies from Heaven”