Nancy’s Reads & Reels: “The Raven” and “Townie”

What makes you decide to see a movie or read a book? I usually read reviews and one will stick in my mind.

The Raven got lukewarm reviews but I’m a fan of John Cusak and I have an interest in Edgar Allan Poe. Here’s a quote: “The want of parental affection has been the heaviest of my trials.” I was hoping for some insight into his tragic life, but no, the screenwriters decided to have Poe work with police to catch a killer and thus incorporate his most famous fiction into the story. For me, it didn’t work but others might find it at least entertaining.

I enjoyed House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III and so looked forward to reading Townie, his memoir about growing up in a hardscrabble Massachusetts mill town full of drugs and violence. Andre gets himself in shape and learns to defend his friends and family with his fists — perhaps this book is a very bad choice for an old lady who abhors violence. Reading his father’s short stories and reading about the accident that left his father unable to walk got me interested in the son’s life.

After Andre’s parents divorce, the four children all hang out at the mother’s house drinking, drugging and skipping school and the parents either don’t care or don’t inquire as to what is going on in their absence.

Andre seemed so utterly clueless as a young man even though he was a reader.  His father was a baseball fan and yet he never bothers to take his son to a game until the son is an adult and the father has a ticket he can’t use.

Both Andre’s mother and father were highly educated people, which begs the question how they could let their children feel so weak and helpless in the wake of constant bullying and even the rape of Andre’s sister? The violence Andre writes about seems beyond anything I could identify with in my teenage years, but I kept trying to understand it.

Andre and his siblings grow up — help care for their father and have a good relationship with their mother. Their childhood certainly provided the material for Townie and maybe another memoir down the road.