A compelling story, much better than the overrated Catcher in the Rye to which it is often unfavorably compared. This novel, which I read years ago and pulled off the shelf and reread this week, really upended my romanticized notions of the 1950s. Growing up watching reruns of Father Knows Best, The Life of Riley, and Leave It to Beaver left me believing that the '50s were squeaky clean and so much more appealing than the sordid '70s. Intellectually I knew that was wrong, but in my heart I harbored this halcyon days fantasy. Until this book, that is.
On the subject of sitcoms, as I read memories were stirred up of my favorite sitcom of the era, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. The illustration on my battered old Bantam paperback, featuring a flat-topped blond youth wearing a short-sleeve button-down shirt, reminded me of Dwayne Hickman in that beloved old series. The literary and introspective Raymond Euripides Trevitt was the dark side Dobie. The more I read, the more I began seeing other parallels: the ugly poet Zock as Maynard G. Krebs, Harriet as Zelda Gilroy, and Annabelle and Terry as twin sirens and star-crossed objects of desire like femme fatale Thalia Meninger. Add in the long-suffering father and doting mother, and one could almost suspect Max Shulman of creating a franchise out of sanitized versions of Goldman's characters. Even the sitcom, like Goldman's book, dedicated the better part of a season to the protagonist's adventures in the Army, arguably drawing upon Trevitt's ill-fated stint in chapter 5 (of course Dobie's hitch was more Buck Privates than Full Metal Jacket!).
The book, like many novels, is better the second time through. Reading is rereading, right? Knowing where Trevitt would end up made sense of the many missteps he took to get there. I read wincingly, knowing this would end badly, as it invariably did. But I kept reading. It was like watching a car crash--oops, spoiler alert!--in slow motion and not being able to alter the inexorable events or to turn away from them, even when you desperately wanted to.
The book is episodic, with one chapter transitioning smoothly even if not seamlessly into the next. William Goldman revealed in interviews that his original draft was accepted by Knopf on the condition he double its length, which he dutifully did. As I read through it this second time I tried to discern what was added to pad and puff the book to the requested length. Where were the "false noses" on the narrative? My guesses were the Army chapter, the ill-conceived marriage to Terry (coupled with Raymond's mother's meandering romance and marriage to Adrian), and Trevitt's hasty return to college that amounted to nothing. These plotlines from the latter third of the book didn't seem as thought-through or tightly woven into the overarching story.
Same goes for Trevitt's playing Pygmalion with Terry when she asks him to educate her. There are some throwaway lines about her reading through the literary canon, but nothing ever really comes of it. My personal theory is that Goldman, an admitted theater-buff, drew inspiration from (i.e. swiped) the plot of the 1956 play Bells Are Ringing when writing about Trevitt and Terry. (Corroborating evidence--or more charitably, Goldman's winking to the cognoscenti--is that Terry's job was answering phones for the Red Cross.)
And speaking of influences, Dickensian coincidences abound. From Trevitt visiting Harvard and just happening to see his father's obituary in the New York Times to his later chancing upon his old friend Felix Brown, who high hats his old school chum and thus taps a rich and roiling vein of race-hatred in Trevitt. Neither of these scenes rang true, however, since a Eurpides scholar at a small-town Illinois college would be unlikely to rate an obituary in the Times (with a photograph yet!), and earlier in the novel Trevitt demonstrated admirable brotherhood-of-man colorblindness towards Fee. Okay, the obituary was a crutch to get Trevitt away from Harvard and heading back home, but I couldn't understand why Goldman included the ugly scene with Fee unless simply to show Trevitt was unwittingly burning every bridge at home to ensure that only scorched earth remained so boomeranging "home" as he had done several times would never again be an option.
I admire Goldman for featuring a thoroughly unlikeable protagonist and somehow making him sympathetic--at times. I felt like a yoyo as I went from cheering on Trevitt to wishing he got all he deserved and more. I was very invested in this young man. It's an admirable feat for a first-time novelist, and illustrates why Goldman went on to become a many-times novelist (and a screenwriter, to boot). I plan on taking up and reading a few more of his early works: Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow, his highly acclaimed "long novel, Boys and Girls Together, and The Thing of It Is. But The Temple of Gold is the fountainhead from which flowed all that followed. Great book. Indeed.
