Words&Dirt

Summary:

Amor Towels’s The Lincoln Highway is a coming-of-age novel set in 1950s America. It follows a group of young men––and one delightfully-feisty young woman––through an improbable but not entirely unbelievable series of (mis)adventures that take place over ten days. Each character is seeking some version of their personal American Dream; sometimes these visions fit nicely together, and other times they create bitter conflict. Towels’s excellent prose and strong literary voice drive The Lincoln Highway, a novel that is lighthearted, profound, exuberant, optimistic, and tragic all at once.

Key Concepts and Notes:

• Much of the story explores the relationship between luck/fate and intelligence/rationality, especially how this tension intersects with crime, forgiveness, and redemption.
• The meaning and nature of manhood is also front and center, with most of the main characters seeking to embody some viable version of American masculinity with varying degrees of success. The dynamics of duty and loyalty in friendship are heavily in play.
• Emmett and Duchess are a well-wrought pair of foiled protagonists, with the former representing considered calculation (written in the 3rd person) and the latter representing impish impulsivity (written in the 1st person). Their interactions and divergent perspectives make for a lot of great moments.
• Probably my favorite aspect of the novel is the way in which Towles lovingly conveys the tactile and sensory details of mid-twentieth-century America. The book is teeming with descriptions of sundry old-timey items and obsolete technologies that help the reader feel embedded in the setting.
• Somewhat mysteriously, the plot of this book just never clicked for me. I actually had a hard time making myself sit down to read it, even though I understood that the book had a lot of laudable qualities. My wife put it this way: “Great characters, dull journey.”
• Sally ended up being my favorite character, so I was annoyed that she didn’t get more chapters.
• Overall, I think The Lincoln Highway offers a fine spread of fun moments and nuggets of literary wisdom (see below), but the novel as a whole felt like it was missing something. After a discussion with a friend who also read the book, I became more convinced that the novel is probably better than I was able to give it credit for.

Favorite Quotes:

The willingness to take a beating: That’s how you can tell you’re dealing with a man of substance. A man like that doesn’t linger on the sidelines throwing gasoline on someone else’s fire; and he doesn’t go home unscathed. He presents himself front and center, undaunted, prepared to stand his ground until he can’t stand at all. (88)

Well, that’s life in a nutshell, ain’t it. Lovin’ to go to one place and havin’ to go to another. (151)

Because young children don’t know how things are supposed to be done, they will come to imagine that the habits of their household are the habits of the world. If a child grows up in a family where angry words are exchanged over supper, he will assume that angry words are exchanged at every kitchen table; while if a child grows up in a family where no words are exchanged over supper at all, he will assume that all families eat in silence. (169-70)

Galileo, da Vinci, and Edison were not heroes of legend. These were men of flesh and blood who had the rare ability to witness natural phenomena without superstition or prejudice. They were men of industry who with patience and precision studied the inner workings of the world and, having done so, turned what knowledge they’d gained in solitude toward practical discoveries in the service of mankind. (240)

You cannot live another man’s life for him. If a man has got the least bit of pride, he wouldn’t want you to. (276)

If I learned anything in the war, it’s that the point of utter abandonment––that moment at which you realize no one will be coming to your aid, not even your Maker––is the very moment in which you may discover the strength required to carry on. The Good Lord does not call you to your feet with hymns from the cherubim and Gabriel blowing his horn. He calls you to your feet by making you feel alone and forgotten. Only when you have seen that you are truly forsaken will you embrace the fact that what happens next rests in your hands, and your hands alone. (330)

––I have read a great deal. I have read thousands of books, many of them more than once. I have read histories and novels, scientific tracts and volumes of poetry. And from all these pages upon pages, one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in human experience for every single person in a city the size of New York to feel with assurance that their experience is unique. And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been experienced quite as we have experienced it…

––However, he continued, having observed that there is enough variety in human experience to sustain our sense of individuality in a locus as vast as New York, I strongly suspect that there is only just enough variety to do so. For were it in our power to gather up all the personal stories that have been experienced in different cities and townships around the world and across time, I haven’t the slightest doubt that doppelgängers would abound. Men whose lives––despite the variation here and there––were just as our own in every material respect. Men who have loved when we loved, wept when we wept, accomplished what we have accomplished and failed as we have failed, men who have argued and reasoned and laughed exactly as we. (422-3)

If the will to move is as old as mankind and every child can tell you so, what happens to a man like my father? What switch is flicked in the hallway of his mind that takes the God-given will for motion and transforms it into the will for staying put?

It isn’t due to a loss of vigor. For the transformation doesn’t come when men like my father are growing old and infirm. It comes when they are hale, hearty, and at the peak of their vitality. If you asked them what brought about the change, they will cloak it in the language of virtue. They will tell you that the American Dream is to settle down, raise a family, and make an honest living. They’ll speak with pride of their ties to the community through the church and the Rotary and the chamber of commerce, and all other manner of stay-puttery.

But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems not from a man’s virtues but from his vices. After all, aren’t gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying put? Don’t they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you’ve built up around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man’s home maybe his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.

I do believe that the Good Lord has a mission for each and every one of us––a mission that is forgiving of our weaknesses, tailored to our strengths, and designed with only us in mind. But maybe He doesn’t come knocking on our door and present it to us all frosted like a cake. Maybe, just maybe what He requires of us, what He expects of us, what He hopes for us is that––like His only begotten Son––we will go out into the world and find it for ourselves. (463-4)

When we’re young, so much time is spent teaching us the importance of keeping our vices in check. Our anger, our envy, our pride. But when I look around, it seems to me that so many of our lives end up being hampered by a virtue instead. If you take a trait that by all appearances is a merit––a trait that is praised by pastors and poets, a trait that we have come to admire in our friends and hope to foster in our children––and you give it to some poor soul in abundance, it will almost certainly prove an obstacle to their happiness. Just as someone can be too smart for their own good, there are those who are too patient for their own good, or too hardworking. (495)

Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side. Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities. Proceeding into the world, he pursues exploits in grand company, accumulating honors and accolades. But at some untold moment, the two rays that define the outer limits of this widening world of hail companions and worthy adventures simultaneously turn a corner and begin to converge. The terrain our hero travels, the cast of characters he meets, the sense of purpose that has long propelled him forward all begin to narrow––to narrow toward that fixed and inexorable point that defines his fate. (502)

How easily we forget––we in the business of storytelling––that life was the point all along. (506)

Rating: 7/10