Two Books
Fri., June 15, 11:00 AM
I don't think I would have commented on these books at the same time, had I not just happened to read one right after the other. I've been carrying around The Crazyladies of Pearl Street for almost three months, managing just a few pages each day. As soon as I got the new eye drops, I finished the book.
Then I picked up Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays and finished it in two days. Granted, this is a much smaller book; nevertheless, I actually accomplished something I haven't done in months.
To my astonishment, despite their differences, these books have a lot in common. 700 Sundays is a short book — at least compared to The Crazyladies. Billy Crystal's book about his parents, especially his father, is nonfiction. Trevanian says his book is fiction, though there is no doubt that it is autobiographical.
Perhaps best known as the author of The Eiger Sanction, Trevanian published this, his last (known) novel, shortly before his death. A novel allows the author some flexibility, but the book's genuine experience could only come from one who had been there. It covers, from a little boy's perspective, a period from 1936 to just after World War II — before the world changed.
I read about Luke and his young mother's struggle to care for her two small children, in the midst of the Depression and with their father absent. I found myself thinking, “if Frank McCourt had been in Albany instead of Limerick…” Even though I was born a little later, I could connect with many of Luke's memories — the corner store and the products available there, as well as the shopkeeper waiting on each individual customer; the programs on the radio; the popular songs. (Yep, I know most of those songs. I may decide to use the book for some of the data in my Song Project.) I learned to write with ink using one of those old scratch pens, and I struggled with the Palmer method too. Luke was a bright and observant child — though he didn't much care for school — and very imaginative.
The best clue that the book is more or less true is that, at sixteen, Luke leaves home. In a novel, that would probably be the end of the story. But Trevanian goes on to explain what he did in later life, as well as what happened to the other members of the family.
It was a struggle for a while, but I stayed with that book till I finished it.
700 Sundays, on the other hand, is light reading. If you're a fan of Billy Crystal's, you may have heard some of the anecdotes before. Billy is enough younger than I that I remember some things from a different perspective. Most of the book is comical, so funny that I laughed out loud. Other parts had me sobbing; I leave it to others to decide if they were really that sad or if my emotions are closer to the surface these days.
I've always liked biography as well as well-researched historical fiction. When I read enough of that material, I start matching up places and times: “that happened when Chester Arthur was president,” or “that was during the Spanish-American War.”
Once I started doing that, history — which I had dispised as a school subject since high school — got really interesting.
There isn't anything earthshaking here. Except, of course, that I am absolutely thrilled to be reading books again.
