Customer Reviews

Ninety-two in the Shade

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

When I'm reading a McGuane novel, I have to remind myself that we are dealing here with a writer on another plane altogether. Someone so immersed in his art that to expect 'normalcy' in terms of language, plot, characterization -- the things we've become comfortable reading and reacting to -- is like expecting Picasso to do paint-by-number. It's just not how McGuane operates. And it works for me just fine. Take, for example, 92 in the Shade: A journey of personal discovery framed within a classic Hollywood-Western plot that just so happens to take place in a small community of Key West fishermen. It is the tragic story of Thomas Skelton, a biologist-turned-fishing guide who finds himself increasingly unable to cope with the deliquescence of his version of America: A landscape, Skelton laments that is gradually becoming nothing more than "Hotcakesland" -- a vague but effective reference to Big Business, greed, and mass-marketeering at the expense of the individual. (In his case, literally.) The story is populated by a wealth of eccentric characters who represent a cross-section of Americana. McGuane throws in just about every Type in the encyclopedia of the American Myth--cowboys and outlaws, sex-starved cheerleaders and cut-throat entrepreneurs to name but a few. This may sound hokey, but as depicted by McGuane the eccentrics are smoothly knit into the narrative, lending it a heightened sense of farce while, as with all stereotypes, maintaining a tiny kernel of truth. Written in McGuane's unique virtuoso style where technique and voice are numero uno, the plot of "92" fits - surprise! -- into well-defined story arcs. It's as if the normally disjointed rhythm of a McGuane story was forced to follow the same type of inevitable death march that Skelton is drawn into by his down-on-his luck alter-ego, Nichol Dance. In typical McGuane style, his protagonist is challenged to take his own unique path to salvation with a variety of outlandish and often hilarious wolves nipping at his heels. The high-noon-showdown ending is delicately built, although its conclusion remains (appropriately) anticlimactic. With all that's going on here, you never lose track of Skelton's personal struggle to 'do what he ought.' While his laments on the state of 'the Republic,' may seem dated or even annoying to 90s-boom-time readers, Skelton himself remains a likeable enough guy. We want him to win out, and in that sense McGuane remains conventionally grounded. With all the political and social overtones here, this is basically a story of personal rather than national morals. "Live free or die" is, in the end, a personal standard. This all works well enough in "92," but what really raises the novel above and beyond its dimestore plot and Freeman politics is McGuane's humorous and intellectual narrative style. There's a smile on every page and a surprise in every paragraph. Someone once said McGuane invented his own literary genre. I don't know if that's true. I summarize it this way: He wraps the sublime in the ridiculous and delivers it in a witty, smart package. When it works, it works very, very well.

This book is a lot of fun--observant, dramatic, very funny at times. It is a meditation on competition, capitalism even, where an upstart with his own peculiar reasons for wanting to enter the fishing-guide trade confronts an established competitor who simply won't tolerate anyone horning in on his trade. Their is mutual admiration-and mutual homicidal thoughts. An elegant dance ensues and escalates into real menace. McGuane writes often about outdoorsy sports like fishing, and his prose on these elements of the story is quite rich.

While this novel portrays exotic behavior and Key West fish guiding (talk about redundancy), murder, crime, it is not really a comic novel, a crime novel or even that elusive genre - the "Keys Novel." Maybe it can be classified as an "Old Hippie" novel; certainly there is a touch of that, but there is also a touch of the "Old Florida" novel with eccentric, elderly relatives with cash and the political fix. The tale progresses in a halucinatory mix of events. Simply stated young conch wants to get into the guide business, faces dual problems of not enough room for more guides and cost of boat, from which conflict flows. There are some nice scenes of excess in passion and alcohol. There is also the desperate, ends of the earth, behavior of island inhabitants: in this case people do what they say they will do, which can be a very bad thing. What plot there is can best be described as ecclectic. Read it and remember the eighties.

Not only does 92 in the Shade sum up an entire generation, but it gives serious fiction readers the opportunity to read the language of a genius. Tom McGuane once told me in an interview that he made more money investing in real estate than in his career as a novelist. That sad statement amplified itself several years later when I was seeking a literary agent for my own pursuits. The first one I approached told me she had never heard of Tom McGuane after I explained that he was one of the few American novelists I really admired.(I didn't hire her.) 92 does an excellent job of illustrating the troubled fishing guide's state of mind, the lifestyle of the denizens of Key West, and the pathetic state of the country at the time. His brilliant prose provided me with an engrossingly twisted story. The style is distinctively McGuane who is a master of language and tough guy dialogue. He lives in a world all of his own. Many people don't understand his cynicism and negative take on every day happenings. All of which makes his work better that most others. I reread at least part of 92 each time I go to Key West, still, despite its commercialization, one of the greatest zany hang-outs in the history of the world.

I've always had somewhat mixed feelings about McGuane. He's obviously a talented stylist with a sharp moral eye who's capable of creating rich, nuanced characters. But something about his style just rubs me the wrong way. It's hard to describe, almost like an intentionally odd cadence, as if a born poet found himself forced to write prose.

In any case, this is probably the best of the handful of McGuane books I've read. The depiction of steamy, sultry Key West is strong, as is the elemental conflict that bubbles up between Skelton and Dance (those names are indicative of the annoyingly precious tendency of this author's work). The story ends in a satisfactory - if not entirely satisfying - manner.

Bottom line: McGuane is a novelist worth taking seriously but on some levels he is apt to turn off as many readers as he turns on. With that disclaimer out of the way, fans of esoteric fiction might want to give this one a try.

I've been reading Tom McGuane's books over and over since first reading, The Longest Silence. I've been hooked ever since. For me, understanding Tom McGuane, the author, took place when I began to understand him through the element he most often places himself and his work into: the environment of a fly rod.

His books are as varied as the waters a fly-fisherman plys in search of his piscatorial treasure. The nuances of texture, the variables of nature, the agony of whim ... all of these are met in each watery course and are likewise found in each page of McGuane's writing.

Ninety-two In the Shade is a story based in one of the most surreal areas left in our country. A society awash in what seems hell-bent on becoming as amorphous as the aisles in a Wal-Mart Super Center.

Sure it's dated ... and why not ... so much the more for us to see clearly what we have lost in our own uniqueness. And how, in our rush to become all-accepting, we are loosing what made us so American.

So, instead of looking at McGuane's work as some sort of 'stuck in a time warp literary irrelevance' ... why not look at it as a warning mirror - showing us the fading last glimpses of what we have lost... and are about to loose forever.

"Thomas Skelton, whose aim had been to be a practicing Christian, was now a little gone in the faith. But, he thought, no matter; and took some comfort to remember the Gospel according to St. Matthew: Whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell-fire. Upon occasion, a man had to manufacture his on hell-fire, either for himself or others: as one kind of home brew for the spirit's extremer voyages." Ninety-two In The Shade, Thomas McGuane, 1973; p56.

Yes, Tom .. thank you for showing us the need for clear vision - both backward and forward. Maybe we'll miss burning in someone else's own self-manufactured hell-fire. Maybe ....

I was dragged deeply into the chaotic mindset of the protagonist Thomas Skelton in the book, identifying strongly with the youthful desire for fulfilling a career dream, no matter how offbeat. I found the story to be much more strongly constructed than the previous novel of McGuane's I've read, Panama. While I liked Panama for its dream sequences and derailing of any sort of generic plotlines, I was surprised to find myself clinging to the Dance/Skelton/Carter main storyline and thrown off by the sub-plots. Kind of an opposite reaction with this second novel of his. (I am looking forward to my third McGuane novel, Keep the Change.) I found the segements with Skelton's grandfather particularly confusing. Not an easy read, but very rewarding.

I haven't read a whole lot else of Mcguane's material ,but having spent a some time in the region described, I feel that he has captured a sense of the harsh allure of the "back country" of the Florida Bay mangroves, as well as the rugged eccentricity of the old-time Key West "Conchs" and resident/refugees from other parts of the country. I'm not sure that I ever really grasped why it so important to the protagonist to become a bone-fishing guide that he would risk death at the hands of a comptetitor, but he seemed to be controlled by Destiny in a manner reminiscent of a hero of a classical Greek tragedy. I'd call it a good beach book, but anybody who has been to the Keys knows that the beach activity is a bit limited. Find yourself a nice courtyard patio or take a trip to Bahia Honda, cover yourself with sunscreen, and go to it.

This was the first McGuane book I read, some years ago. I was enthralled by his luminous cinematic prose, striking descriptions, juxtapositions, quandaries, and general commentary on human relations in 20th century America.

I could not stop reading this book. Have since read several others by McGuane and just picked up The Bushwhacked Piano. If memory serves, McGuane was one of Wallace Stegner's students in the creative writing program at Stanford years ago. Clearly, McGuane learned his lessons well.

Sphex says it's simple: this book teaches those with an open, literate mind the difference between plot and story. The plot can be summed up in one line: man is warned not to do something, does it anyway, pays the price. But the story: that is something else altogether, encompassing images of America at its best and worst, the quintessence of its individuals and their follies and visions, leading to a glimpse of some possible, much-longed-for (in McGuane's world, at any rate) meaning to this cacaphonous, chaotic place/idea. McGuane is one of Sphex's all-time faves, and if you don't "get" this book, you certainly won't "get" the proctology sequence from The Bushwhacked Piano, so don't even try. So says Sphex.