I have become an Amor Towles fan. Last April I authored a review of Towles’ A Gentleman In Moscow. Occasionally, I have to sue crooked fiduciaries who have breached their duties to my clients. In these instances, I’ve never researched the background of opposing counsel. My attitude has been “I don’t care what others say about you, I like to form my own opinions.” The same is true with authors. I don’t want to be prejudiced by the author’s background or what others say about the author’s personal life. I care about the writing and through the writing I can make my own assumptions.
I just finished Towles’ Table For Two, and I must say I loved it. However, I cheated. Halfway through the book, I knew him. His writing told me a lot about his probable background. I guessed he was an Old New England Upper East Side WASP. Even though I’m just a poor sharecropper’s son, I seem to know a lot of these folks including good friends who fit this profile. Thus, I felt a connection and familiarity with the author even though we’ve never met.
It's an unorthodox book in that the first half consists of 6 short stories taking place in New York. The second half could be its own best-selling novel, a single-story work taking place in 1930s Hollywood.
Pleasant. That’s the singular word I would use to describe Towles’ writing. While Hemingway wrote in short brutal sentences, Towles’ writing has a lyrical quality. Words can be put together in many different patterns to convey thoughts with clarity, but when beautiful words are used to illustrate a descriptive scene or an individual’s inner thinking, there’s an aesthetic, and that’s what makes Towles’ writing “pleasant.” The porridge has to be just right, not too hot and not too cold. We all know writers who use excessive polysllabics, yet instead of painting a Monet, we get a Rorschach paint splattering. Flowery doggerel just doesn’t cut it, one just wants to throw the book in the fireplace. Towles creates the right balance. Clear, descriptive and soothing.
One short story is about a Russian immigrant coming to New York. Another concerns a budding novelist who accepts a job at a rare book specialty store. Sounds boring, right? Well, it wasn’t and there’s a good life lesson to be learned. Then there’s the gregarious man at the airport. Read the story and you will learn why he was this way and perhaps gain a bit of marital appreciation. There’s the Upper East Side family, a story which teaches us that sometimes it’s best to just let things be. In another story there’s a very nice man and a very anal investment banker whose lives cross. Two good people with different personalities and some additional life lessons that all of us could be more mindful to remember. It was upon reading the last short story, The DiDomenio Fragment that I had to check Towles’ background. The story centered on a senior member of a very patrician, New England and Upper East Side family. When Towles wrote about a generational family compound in Maine, I immediately thought “you don’t write about this kind of stuff unless you’ve experienced it.” A branch of my ex-wife’s family, Harvard and Yale types, have an island in Maine that’s been in the family multiple generations. I felt like I knew the characters, could almost see them and this story brought back nice memories of 700 Acre Island off the coast of Camden, Maine.
All of the New York stories resonated with me, especially as I have walked about every block in the City during the past year. I knew exactly where the Russian got off the boat. I knew exactly where the rare bookstore would be and even ate dinner at an excellent restaurant on the very same block earlier this year. Within the past year, I’ve been to or stayed at all the various clubs Towles mentions, and have been a guest in a number of Upper East Side residences. My favorite part of Central Park is where a pivotal scene took place. Because of these experiences, all the stories came alive with unusual clarity.
I was disappointed after finishing the first 6 stories and moving on to Eve In Hollywood; the second half of the book. I wanted to stay in New York! I wanted more New York stories! But once again, for me at least, the story took place in places I’ve been to multiple times, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and where a good bit of the story took place, the Beverly Hills Hotel.
If you trust an author, you stick with his narrative because you know there’s a reason behind his prose. I had no idea where the Hollywood story was going. Hint: it involved an actress who appeared in Gone With the Wind and her friend “Eve.” If you are like me, you try and guess where a story is moving and what the conclusion will be. How many times have we all done this with a bad movie? Predictability zaps all the fun out of a story. There are multiple character development chapters in “Eve,” but trusting the author, one knows that the character will resurface and is central to the story. Here again, the porridge has to be just right. One doesn’t want an Encyclopedia Britanica on the character. One wants a bit of nuance and the opportunity to keep pondering. The story morphs into a kind of detective/suspense story with of course, as with all such stories, a climatic ending. There’s an art to this genre. Endeavor Morse is a British detective show taking place in 1960s Oxford, England. Very watchable for capturing the period and the complex personalities of its characters. The murderer is never who you think it should be, it’s always a surprise, but a farfetched surprise that sadly cheapens the episode. In order for the shock surprise element to work, the author has to lay the necessary bread crumbs to give the conclusion credibility. Towles does a good job keeping the reader on his toes wondering if the good guys are really the good guys. The plot takes some twisty turns, and I loved the fact that at the end I am so intrigued with Eve that I am longing to know more about her.
If something is really good, I feel no reason to try and find something to criticize just for the sake of assuaging my critic ego. Bad form. If you have a great meal at a restaurant, but the waiter was a little slow bringing you the check, there’s no reason to even bring it up for a nanosecond. You tell your friends that the restaurant is awesome and recommend it whole heartedly. Table For Two is awesome, and I recommend it whole heartedly. For my friends who have read the book, call me. There’s one issue having to do with a gun where I wouldn’t have written it the way Towles did, but that’s just me, and I’m wondering if anyone else picked up on it or had the same reaction I did?
I am an Amor Towles fan. This is a great front porch book. A book you read as your neighbors walk by and the cool breezes of a summer evening carry the smell of honeysuckle into your consciousness. There’s still enough sunlight to knock off another short story and when you can no longer see, you close the book with satisfaction knowing that tomorrow night you are likely to have an equally pleasant reading experience.
