Down and Out in Denver

So one of my perpetual complaints about Denver is that people don’t really seem to read.  Books. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever you like; just something other than magazines and newspapers and the interwebs.  I like to read.  A lot.  I’ve also always had a fantasy, if I weren’t doing what I do now, of opening up a little bookstore where I would stock the shelves with all the things that I like to read and develop a community of like-minded readers here in D-Town.  Maybe I’d even call it Blake’s Book Nook. In that spirit, I am inaugurating a new feature here at DOD.  Every once in a while I will post about a book that I think people might enjoy reading, just as I did in the very first weeks of DOD.

We begin this literary venture with the latest from Stephen McCauley, Insignificant Others. McCauley is the author of five previous novels, most famous among them The Object of My Affection, which was made into a movie starring Jennifer Aniston and the ever-dreamy Paul Rudd.  I first read McCauley when I was an undergrad and just coming to terms with the gay thing.  He writes novels that are quite funny but also often poignant. Combining these two elements isn’t always easy, but at his best McCauley makes it look so.  In my estimation his most recent two have not been as good as his early work, but he returns in fine form with Insignificant Others. It is the story of HR Director Richard Rossi, who is having a long-term affair with a straight married man but is also partnered with Conrad (who Richard has discovered is also having an affair of his own). Richard suffers few moral qualms about all this; he just doesn’t want to upset the precarious balance that has been established. The thing to know about McCauley is that you can’t take it all too seriously; his characters often do not.  The book is slightly implausible, but often ridiculously funny for being so. In addition McCauley is just so astute in his observations about people and life in general that the implausibility ceases to be a problem.  It’s also pretty clear that McCauley knows he’s writing some pretty absurd characters.  In sum, it is just hard to believe that people making such foolish choices could simultaneously also be this lucid or self-aware.  But it’s great fun for the reader that they are! I leave you with some gems from Insignificant Others.

This is a musing by Richard after being overheard by a small child:

From what I can tell, the chief distinguishing factor between children and adults is that children hear everything while appearing not to and adults hear nothing while pretending to listen.

This is the reaction of a female friend after Richard has lied to cover up his male friend’s own lie:

She frowned at me.  ”I won’t hold it against you for trying to back up his lie, Richard.  It seems to be the main purpose of male friendships.”

“Versus women’s friendships,” Conrad said amiably.  ”Which are all about discussing the lies the men in their lives tell them.”

About a personal trainer who has taken to spray tanning:

As people demand less and less be done to their food chemically, they seem to be insisting that more chemicals be applied directly onto or into their bodies; painted tans, injected lips, pharmaceutically elongated eyelashes.

And finally, in discussing golf:

It was all about letting loose your aggressions in a calculated way and then watching the effects on a helpless little ball, which perhaps explains the popularity of the sport among Republicans.

Add to all these witty observations a plot, and characters about whose fate you care, and it’s clear that Stephen McCauley is back in his element.  All the better for us!