That Old Cape Magic
by Richard Russo
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard RussoEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2009-08-04
ISBN: 0375414967
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Knopf
Product features:
- First Edition
- Signed by Author
Book Reviews of That Old Cape Magic
Book Review: The Bridge to Somewhere: Russo's Musings on Marriage...
Summary: 3 Stars
Richard Russo's latest novel begins with a clueless Jack Griffin spending time alone at his parents' and his old haunt on Cape Cod. It is supposed to be, as his wife of decades labeled it, "a night out with the boys," but in Jack's mind this means being alone. It soon becomes evident to the reader as well as Jack himself, that his seemingly enviable life to date has been led from the peripheries - he has been, in fact, alone for a long time. This is a story of one man's journey to stand on his own rather than submit to the family legacy of avoidance and finally to assume the responsibility for "being there" in his wife's life rather than continue to live by the "script" of the shadows lurking in his disordered memory. The "bridge" to his ultimate understanding is The Sagamore on the Cape, and it represents the connection between past and present as Griffin at last acknowledges the truth of his life apart from the long-lived fantasy he has created in his own mind. The "magic" of the Sagemore and the Cape is at last healing as Griffin's ruminations coalesce into self-acceptance and he ventures out of the "script" his life has been toward the possibility he desires. This is a heavy book, full of psychological self-examination and some redundancy, but it is forceful in its commitment to the theme of self-understanding.
The title refers to his parents, both college professors from elite academic backgrounds, when they improvised on the old Sinatra tune, substituting "cape" for "black" as their annual Cape Cod vacation began. Each summer when his parents and he crossed the Sagemore Bridge their lives achieved an escape from the "Mid f-ing West," as they so petulantly referred to their academic experience at an Indiana college. Theirs was an open marriage and Jack, their only child, was burdened by the sense of not being wanted, as if he were a superfluous "portfolio" his father had the obligation to peruse without the accompanying pleasure. So overlooked in the family scheme of things, Jack's pivotal experience of his youth is the fateful, rich "summer of the Brownings," when he for once felt part of a family and close to someone his own age. Upon looking back, Jack realizes this is the one time he had a pronounced connection with life, even feeling an adolescent lust for the attractive Mrs. Browning. However, even then he displayed the character flaw that doomed him as a lover and husband - the urge, albeit the necessity - to withdraw when the moment became intense, demanding an intimacy and presence he was not comfortable with. This "script" of avoidance and consequent projection, the legacy of his parents, defines his life until the moment his wife answers a pertinent question.
Jack is 57, his mother, still living, is 85 and confined to an assisted living home, from which she calls him at all hours, heckling him in the same way she did her husband and presumably everyone. It was his mother who always sang the "magic" song as they crossed the bridge, and so it is the mother's image that haunts him even as he comes to terms with his wife and daughter and the truth of their personalities, for once. His father, too, is present in this vigil of manhood since his ashes reside in an urn in the trunk of Jack's car. He has yet to scatter them and he doesn't understand why the task is so hard to accomplish. One would think putting another's ashes to rest would mean the lessening of a burden, but Jack seems willing to carry the load interminably rather than admit its heaviness, its bulk, the sheer obligation of it all. Can you legitimately lay someone to rest when the mystery of them and yourself still lingers in the air as palpable as the white powdery residue itself?
It is hard for Jack to acknowledge his parents' effect on him because his wife, Joy, came from such a happy, close family. He has always felt suffocated by that group of fawning siblings, the kind that enjoy Monopoly on a rainy day, but his psychological journey on the Cape reveals to him that their kind of closeness is what most people treasure, even if for him such intimacy has always been uncomfortable. He repeatedly recalls the agreement his wife and he had when they first visited the Cape as newlyweds. They agreed they would have a home, a normal family life, the conventional goals of most young marrieds. Yet he has always felt hoodwinked by that original compact and so has altered "the script" as time went on, drifting away from its obligations so as to be his own person. Instead, he unconsciously forges a life without a "home," much like his parents, who borrowed others houses and left them in shambles. He has thus resided outside the sphere of his own family life, immersing himself in academia and in the writing of B-rated movie scripts with an old buddy. He laments the original marriage terms upon which his wife insisted, resenting the responsibility he has had to assume to meet those conditions. When his agent suddenly dies, he is reminded of his own mortality as well as the fact that his life is thin, without substance, much like that of his academic parents.
An important motif is weddings - the marriage of his daughter's close friend and his daughter's as well. Both ceremonies remind him of what marriage is and should be - its advantages and its disadvantages. He studies the guests at both weddings, seeking the truth of those relationships, the compromises the various marriages required to endure. He recognizes the complexity of intimacy and senses his own failures in that regard, but unless he resolves the legacy of his parents he cannot gain the understanding necessary to cross the bridge back to where he and Joy began their married lives in the shadows of his parents' empty rituals. His mother's ghost reminds him that "Memory is all you have," somehow affirming the value of memory, no matter how sordid or unsatisfying. Her recollection of the Brownings' differs from his, and that causes him consternation. When he realizes that his buddy Tommy found his long sought biological mother and then agreed mothers weren't necessarily that important and that his friend is nevertheless capable of true intimacy with Joy, he is just starting to understand that something is missing in that regard in his own marriage. This propels him to recognize that one can overcome a deficiency of background, if he's willing to try.
If he has in fact made Joy unhappy, as she claimed, maybe he can do something about it. For a year, he has remained aloof, enjoying other women, but now he feels the rumblings of truth very near the surface and he wants more in life than vague intimations of happiness. When Joy claims that Jack has always retreated from happiness, he has to consider that possibility. When she compounds her claim by suggesting that he was always "congenitally unhappy," he is forced to glimpse his life outside the "script" - the intentions, the conscious behavior - into the deep heart of his actions, actions that always speak louder than words. It is here that the astute reader realizes she is dealing with metaphor. Jack is married to Joy, a synonym for happiness, that which he and Everyman seeks. Yet true happiness and connection have eluded him. Why? Perhaps, Russo implies, it is because as a professor, he has lived in the clouds, been too intellectual and as a result has been separated from the mainstream of life in all its passion and desire. He has been torn between the life of a professor and that of a script writer, but in the end he has lived outside the pulse and throb of ordinary life However, that connection with the deep vibrations of everyday life is what Joy wanted, as his daughter, Laura, wants for her own life. Joy notes that Jack is still absorbed with the unhappiness of his parents' lives, even though he insists, "My parents are outside the picture." Obsessed by his parents inadequacies, he is dumbfounded when his mother informs him that she and his father "were lovers till the very end." This gives him pause: How much do we really know about our parents? Although his mother claimed, "Only stupid people are happy," Jack realizes Joy's family of knitted adults is not stupid and they are happy enough. Similarly, Marriage, if not perfect, allows for all sorts of variations and permutations and sometimes just needs to endure, wrinkles and warts and all.
Russo is wise about marriage, reminding us of its truths through the metaphor of buying Christmas trees, a seemingly futile ritual of Jack's parents. None of the trees was ever perfect; the entire quest for the flawless one always ended up with Jack's father hacking off the top of the tree anyway. Like the imperfect Christmas trees, marriage is a complex relationship, fraught with hazards and disappointment. As the tree seller so wisely notes when Jack's mother has rejected another tree because it wasn't good enough, "Holes are spaces; otherwise the tree would be all wood." Don't you get, it Lady, he's saying, all trees have their shortcomings, like any relationship. It's all in the eyes of the beholder anyway. One's perception of his marriage is what it is.
As are all Russo's books, this is a powerful meditation on relationships, particularly marriage. If there are too many digressions in the elliptical presentation, it is because the journey toward self-discovery is more important than the plot, as it should be in a literary novel. The characters are interesting and well developed. The dialogue and use of language in general are sophisticated and fluid. The psychological insight is comprehensive and deep. In the final analysis, marriage is what it is: a leap of faith from the beginning to the end and fraught with disappointment and always requiring enormous perseverance. Love is "at once real and chimerical," Russo reminds us in an hilarious tribute to the institution of marriage and human commitment, the quintessential wise observation of a Baby Boomer who is still muddling through after all these years. And through it all, "memory does matter." In the end it supplies resonance and wisdom as subtleties are grasped and misconceptions discarded. Understanding life is analogous to applying oneself, as his mother did, to the task of a "a monochromatic jigsaw puzzle."
Marjorie Meyerle
Colorado Author
Summary of That Old Cape Magic
Following Bridge of Sighs?a national best seller hailed by The Boston Globe as ?an astounding achievement? and ?a masterpiece??Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth.Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father?s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura?s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents? respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that?s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He?d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they?d moved into an old house full of character; and they?d started a family. Check, check and check.
But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura?s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin?s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter?s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
From the Hardcover edition.
Book Description
Following Bridge of Sighs?a national best seller hailed by The Boston Globe as ?an astounding achievement? and ?a masterpiece??Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth.
Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father?s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura?s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took his childhood summer vacations here, his parents? respite from the hated Midwest. And the Cape is where he and Joy honeymooned, in the course of which they drafted the Great Truro Accord, a plan for their lives together that?s now thirty years old and has largely come true. He?d left screenwriting and Los Angeles behind for the sort of New England college his snobby academic parents had always aspired to in vain; they?d moved into an old house full of character; and they?d started a family. Check, check and check.
But be careful what you pray for, especially if you manage to achieve it. By the end of this perfectly lovely weekend, the past has so thoroughly swamped the present that the future suddenly hangs in the balance. And when, a year later, a far more important wedding takes place, their beloved Laura?s, on the coast of Maine, Griffin?s chauffeuring two urns of ashes as he contends once more with Joy and her large, unruly family, and both he and she have brought dates along. How in the world could this have happened?
That Old Cape Magic is a novel of deep introspection and every family feeling imaginable, with a middle-aged man confronting his parents and their failed marriage, his own troubled one, his daughter?s new life and, finally, what it was he thought he wanted and what in fact he has. The storytelling is flawless throughout, moments of great comedy and even hilarity alternating with others of rueful understanding and heart-stopping sadness, and its ending is at once surprising, uplifting and unlike anything this Pulitzer Prize winner has ever written.
A Q&A with Richard Russo
Question: Apparently there is a wedding phenomenon you have termed "Table 17." What exactly is that and how does it relate to this novel?
Richard Russo: A few years ago my wife and I were invited to a wedding and were seated at what was clearly a "leftover" table. It reminded me of the final teams who get into the NCAA tournament. You can tell by their seeding that they were the last ones in, that they almost didn't make the grade. Table 17 works thematically in the novel because being among strangers, not sure whether you belong, may be the main character's future if he can't find a way to slow his downward spiral.
Question: You have said that That Old Cape Magic began as a short story. What was the moment you knew it was calling out to be a novel?
Richard Russo: Griffin, my main character, begins the story on his way to a wedding with his father's urn in the trunk of his car. I planned for him to scatter the ashes (his past), put his future in danger at the wedding (his present) and then pull back from disaster at the last moment. But then he pulled over to the side of the road in his convertible to take a phone call from his mother, at the end of which a seagull sh**s on him. At that moment, in part because Griffin blames her, he and I both had a sinking feeling. You can resolve thematic issues of past, present and future in a twenty page story, but if you allow a sh**ting seagull into it, you?ve suddenly moved on to something much larger.
Question: Why did you choose the Cape?
Richard Russo: For some time I've been fascinated with the idea of "a finer place" (see Lucy Lynch and Bobby Marconi in Bridge of Sighs). I'm talking about both fiction and real life. Why do people believe that happiness is more likely to find you in one place than another? It has something with what you can and can't afford, what you think you'll one day be able to swing if things go well. Except that even when they go well, you discover it's still unaffordable, which gives the desired place a magical quality. The faster you run toward it, the faster it runs away from you. I chose the Cape because it's always been expensive and just keeps getting more so, but it could have been any number of similar places. For Griffin's parents, two academics, a house on the Cape would have always been just beyond their reach. One of their many dubious genetic gifts to Griffin is a sense that happiness is always on the horizon, never where you're standing. Very American, I think.
Question: That Old Cape Magic is book ended by two weddings and becomes the story of Griffin's own marriage as well as that of his parents and the impending one of his daughter. Is there some loaded charge to weddings that unleashes the past and threatens the future in a way unlike other events? Or, in other words, what were you up to in framing your story with two weddings?
Richard Russo: It probably won't surprise readers to discover that both my daughters were married during the time I was writing this book, which, if it does well, will pay for their weddings. One of our girls was married in London, which except for the expense made things easier on my wife and me. Living in the states, how much could we really be blamed for things that went wrong so far from home? Our other daughter was married in the coastal Maine town where we live, and her wedding was therefore larger. My wife and I feared that our families, who were largely unknown to each other and living on opposite sides of the country (not to mention the political spectrum), might be fissionable. Mostly we feared for the family of the groom, and maybe even the town, since we hoped to continue living there. In the second wedding of That Old Cape Magic I imagined an absolutely catastrophic wedding in hopes it might act as a talisman against real-life disaster, which it appears to have done.
Planning your children's weddings also gets you thinking back to your own and making the inevitable comparisons. My wife and I were grad-student poor when we got married in Tucson, and our parents were only marginally better off. Our honeymoon was four days in Mexico. We'd booked the sleeper car but managed to arrive late, actually jumping onto the moving train. They'd given our sleeper to someone else and we had to sit in the aisles on our luggage for several hours until seats became available. Neither of us got a wink of sleep and, naturally, when we arrived in Mazatlan early the next morning, our room wasn't ready. We changed into bathing suits, went to the beach and immediately fell asleep under the brutal tropical sun. By the time we woke up we were burned so badly we couldn't touch each other for the rest of the trip. But we were young and the tacos were good and so was the tequila and we'd brought plenty of books and we talked about our future and who we'd be in that future, and pretty damn quick it was thirty-five years later. That's just about how long the Griffins have been married when That Old Cape Magic opens.
Question: Griffin's parents, both academics trapped in what they call the "mid f***ing west," are such wonderful, sometimes maddening, often hilarious, always surprising characters. You've mined the satiric potential of academia before, most notably in Straight Man. Have you been longing to go back there?
Richard Russo: I thought I'd got all the academic satire out of my system with Straight Man, but apparently not. Actually, since writing that novel I've entered another world?movie making?that would be equally idiotic except that instead of academic scrip it involves real money. In this novel, because Griffin's a former screenwriter, I got to compare lunacies. It wasn't a fair fight, of course. Academics are really the only ones in their weight class (heavy).
Question: At the start of the novel Griffin is a man in his mid fifties who seemingly has everything going for him, a great marriage, a great daughter, the career he aspired to, basically everything he had on his wish list when first venturing out in adulthood. Then, within a year, he watches it all come unglued. It?s amazing how quickly that can happen, no?
Richard Russo: That's the other similarity between this book and Straight Man. In both novels we watch men who are tenured in life. Safe, in other words. But there's just this one little thread on the sweater. You know you should clip it, not pull it, but there are no scissors at hand and what's the worst that can happen? The answer to that question, in this instance, is That Old Cape Magic.
Question: Have you actually ever been to a wedding where a guest was trapped in a tree?
Richard Russo: I myself have never been to a wedding where a guest got stuck in a tree, but we're attending a wedding on the Cape this summer and I have high hopes.
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