Customer Reviews

The Last of the Savages

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Tragic but always amusing tale of two friends, both divided and united by complex issues. Moves quickly, full of style and moments of brilliance. Probably one of the better novels about what it means to be hip, late sixties fashion.

McInerney has always liked creating parallel plots and metaphors in his writing; he does it best in this novel: Civil War, North and South, hip and square, gay and straight, black and white are explored in this very enjoyable if not exactly flawless novel.

McInerney is uneven in his conveyance of the language and taste of the hip, circa 60's and 70's: sometimes brilliant (descriptions of haute hippie home decor) sometimes bad (makes one character say "cut to the chase", a late 80's phrase, in the early 70's). But even when a character or some dialogue doesn't ring true, his writing certainly leads the reader into realms that do.

Patrick Keane is recounting the history of his life, but as he's doing this we realize that really it's the history of his life as it pertains to Will Savage, his best friend and roommate from prep school who went on to become a huge record producer. A bit of the present is thrown into the mix, I guess to remind us that this is, in fact, history, but 95% of the book takes place in the past. At first this is a little strange and you wonder when the REAL action is going to take place, but once you realize that the back story IS the story, it's quite enjoyable.

McInerney makes his way through the 60's, 70's, and 80's, interweaving real events with fictional ones and real characters with fictional characters. It's an exciting read, and the writing style is very much in character for Patrick Keane, the narrator. At times you feel like big vocabulary words are thrown in just to impress, and when Patrick does just that in a letter to Will, it solidifies the idea that Patrick Keane, the grown-up, is the one telling the story. Patrick recounts the life of Will Savage in relation to the Savage family history, almost like a modern-day telling of the life of a prince, asserting that we do still live in times where royal families exist, and lineage does matter, when we're talking about money.

It's a great read, and definitely worth the time.

This novel is the fourth I've read by Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City, Story of My Life, Ransom) and the first one that convinced me that he's actually a very talented writer. Ransom was a mediocre novel (at best), and both Bright Lights, Big City and Story of My Life were written in a meandering, almost intentionally pointless style. Last of the Savages has very well developed characters and tells an interesting story in a fairly complicated way.

This book is highly underrated - I couldn't put it down, as the characters were so interesting and different.

This book does not have the feel of all of the other novels by Jay McInerney. This work deviates from all of his other efforts. It is not as comical as past works. Not too pretensious.

What I like the most about this novel though, is the contrevorsy it stirs over, the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination as well as other historical events which took place during the 30 year span of this novel. It seems there is a little hint at hidden "facts" in this work of "fiction".

A must read for sociologists and contrevorsy theorists, and oh yeah the disciples of McInerney. Be forewarned disciples, this is not the usual Jay.

After more than 10 years of trying (and failing) to write a novel as flawlessly brilliant as Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney has finally penned a work worthy of his talent.Bright Lights is acknowledged as one of the best literary tours de force in the last fifty years because of the quality of the narration and the unfliningly honest look at the main character. With Last of the Savages, JM has come back to what made him a master from the start: Honest character representations and some of the most moving prose to be found since Fitzgerald. Unlike his works in-between these two novels, there is no sense of gimmick or betrayal of either the reader or the character. If you are a fan of modern literature at its best, Last of the Savages is well worth your time. While JM will probably never again match the brilliance he exhibited in Bright Lights (artists only get one masterpiece, after all), Last of the Savages at least has one of the few actual masters writing a work that lives up to his potential. It is full of characters you cna care about, relate to and root for, even in those moments when their actions show them in all their human flaws. McInerney is back, and he brings with him a few more years of life, a lot more experience and an approach as honest as it is beautiful.

I really liked this book. The two characters remained interesting throughout and the story ended believabley. I've read two other books by the author which I enjoyed but this one is my favorite. The writing seems more mature. Yes, it's a little pedantic and I did have to go to the dictionary one in a while, but it didn't mar my enjoyment of the story. The first sentence really grabs you and I was pleased that the rest of the book wasn't a letdown after that. Will and Patrick were dynamic characters and I appreciated the bond which formed between the two of them as one conforms to rebel and the other rebels to conform. On the surface the book is really about "white boy" problems that anyone who makes less than $100,000.00 a year couldn't really care about. But then, this is what Mr. McInerney writes about so the reader should be pre-warned before shelling out his hard earned bucks for one of his books. Once you get past this obstacle, there really is some wonderful writing and character development. I thought the end was especially good when Patrick and Will have their last conversation. I felt they both assumed as youths, that happiness in life required some type of affirmation which ultimately, they both found incorrect. It is the choices we consciously make that determine who we are and we determine the degree of our life's successes. Will and Patrick end up as who they are because of their choices, the only "divine intervention" in the story is the families into which they were born. The only part of the book I found a little ridiculous was Will's post-prep school years when he's off discovering the world. In the last fifty years Somerset Maughm did that "Razor's Edge" thing better than anyone, that man's search for truth, yada, yada, yada. It's old and tired and these worldwide treks should really be edited into a sentence or two. Overall, I'd recommend this book.

"The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families. At least that's one way pf explaining my unlikely fellowship with Will Savage." Patrick Keane, a social have-not, meets his prep school roommate Will Savage, a budding revolutionary from a prominent Southern family, in the fall of 1965. They share a common goal -- to distance themselves as far as possible from their families -- but for opposite reasons. Patrick is ashamed of his working-class roots and hand-me-down luggage, while Will shuns his patriarchal father's status and everything he represents. The two become friends, with Will taking on the role of teacher in the subjects of music, issues and civil unrest. Patrick is an eager pupil, but always with an eye out for social climbing opportunities. Patrick is a holdover of the world in which money, power and status are the acknowledged goals; Will rides the wave of the new world which is reshaping itself. As the simpatico but different character are fleshed out in "The Last of the Savages," there's almost the feeling that Jay McInerney is showing us two side of the same coin at once. As he traces their unlikely friendship through four decades, neither man seems a whole person. Together, they almost merge into the balanced, grounded enlightenment that should have come to them individually. As Patrick states it, "I too want to hear the gypsies play and the mermaids sing; I want to drink the magic tea and walk barefoot on the beach in Bali, watch the bronzed dancers dance for me. But I am not strong enough to invent a role for myself outside of convention." When McInerney hit the scene with his first novel in 1984, he was heralded as the Golden Boy of the hip-lit crowd. But if you're looking for another 'Bright Lights, Big City,' look somewhere else. 'Savages' has little of the I'm-so-clever word-play and fast-paced glamour of his earlier novels. What it offers instead is a more complex sense of story structure, characterization and insight. And while he may not be enjoying the exuberance of his early fame, McInerney has grown into a genuine writer.

Jay McInerney has written another captivating novel; this time it is about two boys who meet in the all boy world of New England prep schools in 1965. Will, the wealthy Southern boy and Patrick, the son of a working class family in Massachusetts become roommates and best friends for life, despite their enormous differences. As Will rebelled against his Southern heritage and dominating father, Patrick worked dilgently to elevate himself socially by going to Yale and Harvard Law. Although they took widely divergent pathes; Will became a producer of blues music and heavy user of drugs while Patrick gained the social prestige he so longed for through his ivy league education, their boyhood bond of "best friends" remained a ballast for each of them. McInerney has given us another great story with characters so real that by the end of the book I felt as if I had known both Will and Patrick. Will was the type of boy I would have brought home and Patrick was the kind of boy my father would have chosen for me.

Patrick Keane and Will Savage come together by pure chance as they find themselves roommates at a New England boarding school in 1967. Different in many respects, Patrick from a somewhat ordinary background, a local scholarship boy; Will from a wealthy, privileged and notable Southern States family, yet with an affinity with black soul music and blacks.

The story, related by Patrick, spans thirty years of their unusual friendship. They have no doubt they are best friends, and keep in touch throughout Will's successes and near failures, and his turbulent life as a notable music producer while Patrick steadily climbs to great success as a lawyer. While the story is predominantly about Will, we gradually learn about Patrick too, and the secret he carries and has revealed to few.

While the story progresses more or less chronologically, it also regularly jumps back and forth, but it never confuses. Covering the period from the sixties to the nineties, it is as much a record of social change, of Southern attitudes and prejudices. The story is peppered with the names of the famous musicians of the period, giving it a sense of reality and an identity easy to related to. It is a story of family, of interracial love, but above all the story of a remarkable friend.

The Last of the Savages is beautifully written, there is drama, there is humour, but above all there is the overriding love and affection of a great and enduring friendship.

McInerney provides a fine examination of the influences of family, history, culture, and sexuality in the personal development of two disparate youths and their unlikely friendship in his epic, The Last of the Savages. Keane, a diligent product of a lower-middle-class Irish family, and Savage, the heir to a southern fortune rooted in the spoils of slavery, meet at a New England prep school as roommates in the sixties. Seemingly polar-opposites yet similar in a general, deep-seated eros, the two become close friends and provide support to one another, however dissimilar their methods might appear, over three decades of trying times. Keane is fascinated by Savages interest in and becoming of all things rebellious, while Savage finds comfort and a sense of respect in Keanes upright attitude and vision for the future.

As the two learn of each other, primarily Keane of Savages flamboyant intelligence in the early years, and later Savage of Keane as stability proves a comforting asset, they reach a closeness that transcends their opposing visions for the future and differing views of the present. Savage teaches Keane of women and blues, while Keane tries to impart to his friend the fruits of responsibility and awareness of the establishment. In the end, the prep school roommates alternately draw strength and inspiration from the other, allowing the reader to ballast belief in the empowerment and sustenance that true friendship eventually bears to its essential elements.