Himself, Herself
Born in Pittsburgh in 1960, Stewart O’Nan is on an impressive literary run. His first novel was published in 1987, a short story collection in 1993. Since then he’s had 17 novels and two works of non-fiction published. Recently, a copy of his latest, Henry, Himself (2019), came my way. It is a third person account of a WWII combat veteran who turns 75 during the narrative. Like O’Nan before he turned to writing, the protagonist was an engineer. The action is set in the Steel City largely in 1998, the year that marks the 49th anniversary of his wedding. He and his wife Emily have good marriage. They are decent folk, church-goers. What is remarkable about the book is that the author is able to make the minutiae of every day life interesting. He nails the psychology necessary to sustain a long union and the anxieties of day to day living. My patience was threatened only once, the enumeration of a long list of items from which the couple must choose one each to donate to a church auction. They are blessed, their only real travail the substance abuse struggle of their daughter, a mom of two on the brink of divorce. Although the narrative details mostly the small stuff of life, it occasionally dwells on the inevitable that all dread. Here are two lines I found particularly salient. During a Sunday service Henry muses: “Once you started listing your sins, there was no end to it.” And, in general: “There was a mysterious continuity to life that was reassuring, if the true significance escaped him.” The prose and dialogue are solid, although there were instances where I wasn’t sure who was being cited. I was frustrated at not learning much about the past of Henry’s older sister, who lives alone. Then, in researching O’Nan’s other works, I realized her life may have been covered in two previous novels. Most of the chapters are brief, some not even a full page, and each has a heading, i.e. the last, Signs and Wonders. 369 pages, I’d guess its appeal is restricted to those who appreciate literary fiction. It’s heartening to know that such work makes it into print these days when attention spans seem so low. 112 users at Amazon have rated Henry, Himself, forging to a consensus of 4.2 on a scale of ten. I’ll go with 3.5. In 2011 he’d had Emily, Alone published. How interesting that it came eight years before Henry, Himself.
Headline from foxnews.com: “AMA faces backlash after opposing putting sex on birth certificates.” Some members fear that marking a person’s sex would encourage ‘marginalization.’” I guess they figure the animus they’ve incited will fade. They’re probably right in that regard.
My thanks to Wolf, who swapped three books in Russian for a Norman Rockwell pictorial and a Wham CD on this unusually cool, gorgeous August day; and to the young mom who bought Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss and Fly Guy and the Alienzz by Tedd Arnold; and to the mother and daughter who selected The Doomed City by Boris and Arcady Strugatsky, Loser by Jerry Spinelli, and Mort Ziff Is Not Dead by Cary Fagan; and to the lovely young woman who took home a thriller in Russian. Strugatsky sounds like a made up name lampooning a character in a story about Italian-Americans.
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