LITERATURE: BASS 2007 – Solid Wood

Ah, I don’t know.  I’m beginning to think that Stephen King made this issue an homage to a few well established, well published, well credentialed authors and while of course the stories are good, I’m not exactly jumping up and down with the creative end of it.

Solid Wood by Anne Beattie again begins in a setting that brings to mind the Great Gatsby and such in both character and environment.  A man and his sister, both evidently in their late fifties, early sixties, going away on a vacation.  No, I know people still do that, but the weave of widowhood and past relationships and names such as Maurice and Doris just placed it back a few generations.

That brings me to another little quirk, the opening:

The year Wright Kemzell published his book about my former colleague, friend, and mentor, Jacob Foxx Greer, I found myself with my sister in Key West.  At first we thought we’d take a cruise that boarded in Ft. Lauderdale and continued to St. John’s and Tortola.  But instead we decided to do something simpler and flew to Miami and rented a car and called the tourist information center, who put us in contact with the Key West Hilton, where two rooms were available. (p. 41)

To be honest, I’m not sure that the amount of detail we are given in the story concerning health issues and background really cover the the supposed importance of the opening line regarding the book about this man, and how the characters tie in with the history.  And I found this list of names and places distracting.

There is a meeting of the narrator with his friend’s daughter whom he has known since she was a child, and who obviously resents her father though she cares well enough about her aging, widowed mother.  There is a bit of mystery surrounding Doris, the narrator’s sister, but the secret is revealed early enough and the story appears to play more on the letting go of the influence of secrets than about anything else.

And the end?  Well, I must admit I scratched my head.  However, with the obvious validated talent of the writer, I must say that it is most likely that I just missed the whole point here.