Book Look: The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles

                  

]This is a hard book to review. The title and plot description would have readers believing that this is a light-hearted "road trip" story, and indeed many of the tropes of road trip novels are present: a gang of chums crossing the U.S. on a quest, encounters with eccentric characters, misadventures, etc. Towles has a particular gift for creating beguiling characters: a weary veteran endlessly riding the rails in a futile attempt to flee the consequences of his pride, a luminous constellation of washed-up burlesque performers, an Emerson-quoting farmer destroyed by the very "self-reliance" he covets. This is a literary feast of evocative descriptions and poignant interludes.

However, it doesn't take a degree in literature to see that Towles' tale is operating on multiple levels. Early in the novel Towles introduces "Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers," complete with an empty chapter standing at ready for the Professor's young readers to record the tale of their own "hero's journey." Hard to imagine a more overt invitation to reflect upon the ways in which fate and hubris shape the lives of ordinary folk too! Certainly they shape the lives of the protagonists of this tale, each of whom is burdened by vagaries of fate (an unjust accusation, an accidental death, an ill-timed encounter with a police officer) as well as "fatal flaws" embedded in their natures: Emmett's quick temper, Billy's naivete, Duchess's cheerful immorality, Woolly's guilelessness. One by one, our protagonists are tested, some - a la Ulysses - achieving redemption, others tragically destroyed - a la Achilles or Caesar - by their fatal flaws.

I get that some are upset by perceived inconsistencies in the final chapters of the book, but one could argue that these resolutions merely hammer home the point that even those heroes who achieve redemption rarely emerge unchanged by their ordeal. In the words of Professor Abernathe: 'How easily we forget - we in the business of storytelling- that life was the point all along.”

By all means enjoy this book's many delights - the lucid storytelling, the beguiling characters, the evocative descriptions. But as you go along, you may wish to take Towles up on his invitation to reflect upon the fact that while none of us are immune from the manipulations of fate, the measure of our character is in how we respond to the adventures and perils that are set in our way.