Perfect Agreement [Paperback]

Michael Downing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998

Mark Sternum is full of droll observations about the rules that govern our language. A professor who teaches spelling and grammar at Boston's McClintock College ('An odd job for a college professor, ' he is told, 'but no one else seems to be doing it'), he leads a diligent if somewhat detached life. Friends and family try to coax him into deeper involvement, but he keeps his lover at arm's length and screens all incoming calls -- including his eccentric sister's 'word pictures' about the waning days of their comatose mother. Then Rashelle Whippet, an African-American single mother who fails the college's basic skills test for the last time, accuses Mark of 'prejudgism, ' and he is fired. Blown off course, he monitors the ensuing academic skirmish from a distance as his case makes national headlines. In the midst of this mess, his lover decides to move out of town, an anonymous supporter e-mails him daily advice, and his father, Thomas, a photographer famous for his pictures of the Shaker communities that once thrived in America, turns up for a visit. Mark is particularly surprised by this last turn of events: he had believed his father was dead. The mysterious Thomas moves in and begins a tale about Sister Celia and the Negro Jesus who visited the Shakers more than a hundred years earlier. In spite of himself, Mark is mesmerized by the story, which offers him the chance to understand, finally, his father's lonely passion for the Shakers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Over the past decade Michael Downing has acquired a small but passionate readership. His 1987 novel A Narrow Time was praised for its insights into the psychology of fear and guilt, and his 1990 Mother of God shocked critics with its portrayal of dysfunction in the perfect American family. In Perfect Agreement Downing has combined these themes to tell the story of Mark Sternum, a gay man who loses his job as a professor and rediscovers his father, whom he had long presumed dead. Downing's writing is beautiful and astute, and his ability to unravel the human heart and allow us to see--and feel--its innermost desires is astonishing. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"A novel of compassion and wit . . . Downing combines one man’s tale of loss and acceptance, the lost rhythms of the Shaker world, and the delights of the English language." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Downing is better at writing about Shakers than Hawthorne or Melville . . . The feeling for the community and its members ring true." —New York Times Book Review

"Perfect Agreement is as artfully and solidly constructed as a Shaker table . . . Exquisite."
—Newsday

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425166287
• ISBN-13: 978-0425166284
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,818,138 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Laughing on the Train, May 26, 2000

By 

Gillian M. Kendall (Leeds, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Perfect Agreement (Paperback)

I made the mistake of judging this book by its beige/green dull cover of a man working in his garden. So when I pulled it off the shelf, in a hurry to get to the train station, I almost put it back again. A book about a grammarian? And the Shakers? I wondered when and why I had bought this white elephant. Luckily, time was short, and I did not re-shelve it.

The story of Mark Sternum, dismissed from his job for flunking the wrong student at the wrong time for the right reason, soon had me hiccupping with laughter. Yes, there are some insider academic jokes here, but the dead-pan telling of the tale creates moments of comedy that are transcendent. My laughter became unmanageable as Mark, with his mysterious absent (or is it present?) Shaker-obsessed father, his dying mother, his sister with her picture-word messages, tries to cope with his life by not answering the phone. Soon my laughter became that of the awkward, snorting, squeaking variety. People on the train began to stare at me as I wheezed laughs into my bag of potato chips. But I could not stop. The hero's angst demanded that I purge it with my muffled whoops.

It's too true that the section in this book that spirals into Celia the Shaker's story slows the laughter and seems affected -- not quite believable. Celia's odd tale out of an era that Michael Downing, the author, doesn't quite capture, seems out of place here. But it's worth enduring Celia's too-solemn Shaker world to excavate the events in Mark's life that drive his painful and painfully funny tale. And yes, (one more objection), the grammar lessons at the end of each chapter do become a bit arch. But this book should be read, begs to be read. After all, when was the last time you read a grammar lesson and laughed until your nose ran?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too many rabbits, not enough hat, February 20, 2001

By 

Robert H. Nunnally Jr. "gurdonark" (Allen, TX United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Perfect Agreement (Paperback)

Perfect Agreement seems like a compendium of literary devices favored by academics who write. We have the light, airy tone of the main story, a satire upon university academic standards and the new "political correctness" coupled with the rather typical self-absorbed man's search for connection. There's the requisite "story within a story", in this case a story about Shakers, stitched onto the main story with rather unsightly thread. We have intercalary passages of cutesy grammatical humor, popped onto the end of chapters as though it were insight. There's academic politics, rather, odd, misplaced patches of stray violence (in a very brief passage), and even a bit of why-Joanie-can't-read commentary. We even have the literary equivalent of a "who-dun-it", in a particularly obvious use of anonymous notes to our protagonist as a method of communicating commentary.

Mr. Downing has a gift for narrative, and an ability to instill credibility into fairly unrealistic characters. Perfect Agreement is therefore not a bad read. The protagonist, a grammarian teaching remedial classes who loses his job when a student complains that the standards are discriminatory, is someone with whom the reader can find much good ground. It's not that the plot is a bit silly--that's okay in a light comic novel. It's not that the story-within-a-story reads like research repacked in fictional form--that, too is often done. It's not the fact that the reader cannot believe for a moment in the tenuous Shaker/modern life connection--frequently, real life connections are similarly incredible. The problem with this book is that it tries to do too much--it seems as though the author is trying to 'run the paces' with too many traps and devices. The result is a decent read, but not a particularly good novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A perfect change from what pass for today's bestsellers, November 11, 1997

By 

Robert F. Jakubowicz (Pittsfield, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Perfect Agreement (Hardcover)

Do you have difficulty spelling words such as "misspell" or "manageable" or is "managable?" The author offers a brief refresher note after each chapter about spelling, punctuation and diction rules we forget as adults. Downing's protagonist, Mark Sternum, is a punctilious college teacher of spelling and grammer who dares to flunk an African-American unwed mother for her inability to spell. The background issue here is the concern of college educators about today's political correctness on campuses which the author thinks humiliates professors into being overly sensitive in dealing with minority students. Eventually the student proposes to sue all the teachers who passed her because they were derelict in their duties, except to Sternum. The author interweaves the personal life story of Sternum with the Shakers who Downing believes are simply looked upon today as the makers of furniture and not who they really were and what they had contributed to our society. This is an interes