Saul and Patsy

Rating:
Summary: A "hard to put down" book whose characters will draw you in
Review: Charles Baxter's new novel, SAUL AND PATSY, may be the longest short story ever written.

Based on two of his previous stories --- "Saul and Patsy are Getting Comfortable in Michigan" from THROUGH THE SAFETY NET and "Saul and Patsy are Pregnant" from A RELATIVE STRANGER --- the novel greatly expounds the title characters' lives and further explores themes of irony and sentimentality across more than 300 pages, yet by virtue of its vivid characters, incredibly targeted prose and insights into married life, SAUL AND PATSY asks to be read like a short story --- in one sitting. It lacks any suspense, but it is still hard to put down. And reading that last page is akin to saying good-bye to old college friends, who stopped by for an all-too-short visit.

Saul Bernstein, a Jewish history teacher originally from Baltimore, and Patsy Carlson, a dancer from Chicago, have recently moved to the town of Five Oaks, Michigan --- one of the many "dusty, luckless midwestern cities tucked away inside the folds of the map" --- out of Saul's youthful idealism: he wants to bring high education to the plains of rural America, to reverse the simpleness of middle-class life. It's an unrealistic, outsized, almost elitist dream, but it's also one of the few things about which he feels sincerely. Yet, as a well-educated Jew in a small midwestern town, he feels hopelessly out of place and unable to relate to his students or even his neighbors.

For the novel's first chapter, Baxter reworks and updates "Saul and Patsy Are Getting Comfortable in Michigan," which ended with an ambiguous car crash, leaving readers with no sign of whether or not the couple survived. In fact, they walk away more or less unscathed to build a home together and begin a family, gradually growing increasingly, if not perfectly, comfortable in their adopted hometown.

When Saul is assigned to teach a remedial writing course, a student named Gordy Himmelman develops an odd fixation on him and Patsy, yet his intentions are unknowable, his motivation a mystery. "On Gordy, blankness had a certain eloquence," Baxter writes. "The boy was profoundly blank." Yet he passively propels the novel's minimal plot, first as a curious stalker who stands under a tree in their front yard for hours at a time, then as a ghost who inspires rebellion in the town's susceptible teenagers.

As this story unfolds, Baxter also introduces us to Saul and Patsy's friends and neighbors --- the McPhees, a couple just out of high school who seem to thrive on "midwestern earnestness"; Saul's widowed mother, who has a scandalous affair with a younger man; and his handsome brother Howie, a tech millionaire whose life may not be as blessed as Saul assumes.

All of these characters pop in and out of Saul and Patsy's life, but the one thing that remains constant is its setting. SAUL AND PATSY is a Midwestern pastoral: Baxter evokes a Michigan whose flatness holds a "sensual loneliness" and whose cities are losing their personalities through the ups and downs of the industries that created them. Like Terre Haute, Duluth, Flint, Grand Forks, or dozens of other similar --- and actual --- municipalities, Five Oaks is one of those "cities you had heard of but couldn't quite picture, cities that called nothing in particular to mind except for an eagerness to be larger and more prosperous than they were, and an all-consuming late-stage boosterism that was mostly insecurity and worry masked by bluster." Even as Saul and Patsy get comfortable in Michigan, Michigan is becoming an increasingly uncomfortable place to live.

Even though he intends this novel to register on a state and even regional level, Baxter maintains the story's focus on its title characters and on their "plain old married love." It has an amiably small, domestic scope, which certainly is no limitation, especially in the hands of a writer who is as fearlessly playful and fiercely intelligent as Baxter. Rather, SAUL AND PATSY is wonderfully and magically life-size.

--- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner

Rating:
Summary: Over-Rated
Review: I've read several of Charles Baxter's novels in the last few years, Saul and Patsy most recently, and I think Baxter is vastly over-rated. For a "writer's writer," he is pretty clumsy, and has the beginner's weaknesses. The very first sentence is a clunker. Take a look at the adjective there and see if it doesn't stick out like an inexplicably sore thumb. It would take a paragraph to fully explain how and why it's wrong, but it's something an experienced reader can probably hear at once.

He does a lot of telling rather than showing. For example, he has Saul stating again and again how much he loves Patsy, but we never see why Saul should (maybe this novel wasn't really meant to be read alone). Baxter doesn't show us a loving relationship; he just gives us Saul's earnest proclamations.

Saul is a self-important lightweight. Early in the book he makes a passionate speech about politics, then never mentions any interest again. There is a literary allusion Saul shares with Nancy, also early in the book, to a poem by Robert Creeley (a poet favored more by alternative than mainstream poets), but I don't think either of them either reads, or mentions a book, for the rest of the novel. The allusion seems to exist solely for Baxter to signal that he and his characters are hip. But in fact Baxter is very square.

Perhaps he is so popular because he affirms the middle-class view of the world so charmingly. On rare occasions one might rant about politics, but it won't have a real place in one's life. One might wish to help others less fortunate, but one will get over this when faced with the ugly faces and tasteless homes of actual less fortunate human beings. As young people the characters may have quoted poetry, but by now literature is merely part of a stereotypical attitude toward being young.

I find it offensive when Baxter cannot stop lavishing fascinated description on the repulsive ugliness of a particular "low-life" woman's face; Baxter also enumerates her tasteless home furnishings -- that we may nod in agreement, our prejudices confirmed? Saul thinks he's a real hero for allowing a kid to stand in his yard, a kid he knocks off his bike and physically threatens. Toward the end he becomes really delusional in his self-congratulations, believing he is single-handedly going to save the young people of the town, when he's shown less than average empathy or understanding. Patsy has her own moment of class condescension in a conversation with a young married woman of "the lower classes," whose marriage Saul has sometimes envied. Patsy quietly, and smugly, takes in that the girl is naive, a victim rather than a lucky woman, as the poor inferior girl imagines.

Baxter seems to have believed far too much in the uncritical praise he's received. Doesn't he know that some of his popularity is based on his affirmation of a certain section of the middle class and its values, not only on his talent as a fiction writer? Does he know that never makes any reader of this class uncomfortable? Yes, he is skilled in creating a fictional world out of often subtle perceptions and physical details. The surface of the fiction enjoyed by the reader is something Baxter excels in. But when all is said and done, the considerable skill seems devoted to rather lame ends. Baxter has been so successful, I think, because he has compromised his art. Nowadays, of course, it is only foolish idealists or losers who do not compromise. Also nowadays, compromised art, if it is literate and fulfills our class expectations, earns rave reviews for its quality.

Rating:
Summary: Astonishing and beautiful
Review: This book is so extraordinary -- I am a fan of Charles Baxter's and was waiting for it, but had no idea what a massive, exciting, heartrending, and gripping story it would be. This is much more than a family story, or a love story, or a beautiful, complex portrait of a marriage, though it's all those things. It's the story of our time and our embattled world. It's an examination, via the lives of a few small-town characters, of a world where terrorism and the spirits of mischief run wild. Love and destructiveness, the desire for happiness and the desire to do damage, the longing for the perfect lives we imagine others to have, and the harm we are willing to do them because of these imaginings...it's all in here.

The characters are so human, the observations about them so wonderfully written and so full of depth and surprises. This novel is a masterpiece, a permanent work of literature. It makes demands on you, but is incredibly gripping. It also has a brilliant, inventive structure that reinforces the themes and events of the book. I was up very late with it, and finished it with such happiness that I had to tell someone (you, whoever you are, who are reading this!) I'm writing this because I long to discuss it with someone, but don't want to give away any of the intricate turns of plot and the great connections.

Oh, lucky readers who get to experience this for the first time, lovers of great fiction, do yourself a favor and read this book!