Customer Reviews

Winslow in Love

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Winslow in Love opens with a picture of a failing poet in the throes of alcohol, fatigue and depression. While working his way through a college teaching job he fell into for a semester (and with the threat of unemployment and poverty looming), Winslow meets a female student who exhibits a sort of depression-by-numbers portrait of a young liberal arts creative writing major. The two change each other's lives through a hazy series of drunken arguments and quiet moments in motels along the highway throughout Montana, Utah and Arizona. In the end, I was certainly left with a gray cloud hanging over my head for a few days. And certainly the ability to evoke emotion-- of any kind-- is one of my criteria for good prose.

Canty is a beautiful and concise writer who can bring out some amazing dialogue from his characters. In one scene, Winslow and his soon to be ex-wife are meeting the dean of the college he is about to teach at:

"'We live in a commercial world,' said Walrath, "It's the only denominator we have anymore, success and money. The only way of keeping track. Once upon a time you could be virtuous, or daring or great. You could even keep score using poetry--look at Keats, never had a nickel, died a happy man, more or less. Now it's all money.'"

As graceful as Canty is, I couldn't help remembering the praise other authors heaped on this book on the back jacket. The word "Cliché" popped up twice, both times assuring readers that this book was not clichéd. However, this might be the thousandth book that started out with the failing artist with alcohol problem having their lives changed by (the middle-aged male ego fantasy of) the troubled woman falling in love with them. Sound familiar? This is Bukowski, this is Tomcat in Love, this is any Steve Martin movie. While a unique plotline is not the end-all be-all of a great book, I was left with the impression every few pages that this is territory I've seen before. From Canty's descriptions of Winslow's life, his inner monologues, Ericka's life, Winslow's gruff teaching style, this story and its components are familiar and derivative.

For style, I would highly recommend Winslow in Love. For substance (or if you're simply looking for something fresh) try Stranger in This World instead.

This is an absorbing novel. My being a Canty fan, incidentally, may make me more, not less, credible. That's because, for me, Canty has a higher and higher bar to clear with each successive work. I thought "Nine Below Zero" was a very strong novel, and I think "Winslow In Love" is similarly compelling. I wish Canty would write books every two weeks, like Joyce Carol Oates. Then again, if he did, maybe his characters wouldn't stick in your head after you finish his work. I still think about Winlsow from time to time, weeks since I've finished the novel. Of course, that may just mean it's time to check myself into the hospital to have my meds tweaked again? Read this book. It's powerful.

This is quite the novel, bordering on brilliant at times.

Winslow is a down and out, unemployed, alcoholic poet who gets a substitute teaching position as a sabbatical replacement at a Montana college. Shortly after arriving there from Oregon, his wife packs her bags and leaves him.

In and out of his alcoholic stupor, he becomes obsessed with a female graduate student who is emaciated and has multiple piercings. They begin an affair but the relationship is difficult for both of them because they each have so much baggage and Winslow is much older than she is. Because of these things, it is often difficult for them to connect.

Through a series of tragic and life-affirming events their relationship ends but Winslow is forever within her circle and we are led to believe that she is saved from herself.

With it's feeling of whimsical melancholy, Winslow in Love is an often touching and poignant account of a "fat and unlovely" middle aged college professor whose sense of regret and unhappiness overwhelms a life that could have been better. Richard Winslow is fat, bald and drunk, a failed poet and a self confessed failure at life. He's the troubled and deeply unhappy main protagonist at the center of this charming, spirited, and sprightly novel by Kevin Canty.

The story begins on one rainy, windswept Oregon afternoon when June Leaf, Winslow's flighty, disaffected wife suddenly informs him that he's been given a semester long teaching opportunity in Missoula, Montana. With his creative juices dried up, drunk most of the time, and with a face that is peppered with melanomas, he takes up the offer. While teaching Rilke to a bunch of incongruent students - who aren't sure what to make of their muttering, misanthropic teacher - he meets Erika Johnson, a troubled, distressed student, "a waif so riddled with piercings," who, at thirty-five years younger, is just as worse off as he is.

Erika, battling with anorexia and depression, forges an uneasy friendship with the emotionally embattled Winslow. Becoming an unlikely duo, and partaking of one paper cup of Johnnie Walker at a time, they eventually embark on a road trip across the America where they learn much about themselves, each other, and the wild, untamed nature of love. Constantly drunk and chain-smoking, Winslow is probably literature's ultimate anti-hero. He relentlessly refers to his life "as a long illness." Where once he sensed that the world belonged to him, he now knows that feeling has gone from him forever and life is just one disappointment after another.

Richard Winslow may put off some readers - he's just such a dour, sulky, and self-pitying old retch. And although he doesn't imbue much sympathy, this reader was readily able to admire his observations on life and the illusive nature of love. As he ponders life as a failed poet, he reflects on the thousands of pages of wasted words, years of heart and soul and discipline for what? Ships in bottles, one after another. But Richard is also realistic enough to know that in some kind of existential sense, he just has to go forward and let things turn out however they turned out.

Canty's prose is gritty and realistic, complimenting characters that are constantly living on the edge. Love for them is either at the bottom of a whisky bottle, a full packet of cigarettes, or an endlessly indefinable destination in the front of a beat up old car. Old, injured, tired, and haunted by matters of love, Winslow feels he is going to die alone. Certainly nobody loves him and if they did, they couldn't live with him. He's constantly wracked with the feeling that he doesn't fit his life - there was some other life somewhere that he ought to be leading and not this one. Winslow discovers that with a failed life, he has nothing to lose, which makes the ending of this story, and his final chance at redemption, all the more heart wrenching, compassionate, and sympathetic. Mike Leonard February 05.

This is the latest book (both in terms of publishing and in order that I've read) that I've added to my "book club", that is to say, my favorite books--books that I think everyone should own, or at least read at least once. This is a very poetical book. Canty's prose is a lyrical prose. It's a melancholy book that has a certain hopeful hopelessness to it. It's the story of an over-the-hill, overweight poet who is past his artistic prime who gets a teaching position in an out of the way school. His marriage is over as is his career. He has lost his talent and his life to alcoholism. While at this school he meets a troubled young student. These two people are drawn to each other and in each other find each other's salvation, of a sorts. It's a haunting story, one that ranks with any of the finest pieces of literature written. This is a book that you simply must read. And the cover art fits the story wonderfully.

Where I saw this review is beyond me. That I read the book is the substantive thing. It knocked my socks off - not as smelly as Winslow's but they still could benefit from a good washing. The 'lump' stays with me. The bursting heart, the beating life, the unknown that comprises the solopsistic circle. It's ok that it's solipsistic. I'm way past my school days. Thank you Mr. Canty. Thank you very much. By the way, Missoula reminds me of Fairbanks, my home town. I wonder if Montana and Alaska both attract the end-of the-roaders or if we're all traveling the same road one time or another. We're all bound to hit the end some time. Hey, it this is autobiographical, try cutting down on the booze. You're too good a writer to kill yourself on that poison.

"We're moving to the North Pole."

"You're moving."

So begins Richard's Winslow's odyssey. A soon to be ex-wife, his reputation as a poet fallen into obscurity, Winslow is a man teetering on the brink of alcoholism. On the brink? Actually, well over the edge. What else can he do but accept a temporary teaching position at an obscure Montana college, currently the only game in town?

Once ensconced with his new class, Winslow finds himself inordinately attracted to a student, the tattooed, pierced and anorexic Erika Jones, possibly the only potentially talented student in the class. They begin a flirtation, sipping drinks together over endless existential observations. When student and teacher embark upon a directionless road trip during school break, they drift from town to town, motel to motel, hangover to hangover. Winslow is happiest on the road with Erika, passing scotch whiskey back and forth, "It was the driving he liked, the beautiful in-between, neither here nor there, the sense of beginning."

Not completely divorced from reality, Winslow is aware of the impropriety of his actions, but so caught up in the moment that he cannot relinquish his fantasy. He makes peace with the fact that he is broken: "How many cast off selves he carried inside him." This protagonist is never at a loss for excuses, his self-destructive behavior a magnet to the equally self-abusive Erika, theirs a slow dance of annihilation, both sinking toward oblivion and grasping at pseudo-love. This is essentially a nihilistic journey; the lie is in the facade of passion that masquerades as life, fleeting moments of emotional frisson merely window dressing.

"He's drunk it's true. But the thing is, his feelings are true." It is this kind of statement that belies the truth of Canty's novel. The author does make an effort to redeem his characters; certainly, Winslow is vaguely reaches toward the light, but is predictably defeated by his own hand. Perhaps Winslow does teach Erika something, sparking a latent curiosity about the world she inhabits. If so, it is more than he ever hopes to achieve, blundering about drunkenly. Erika is drawn to the hopeless, hapless Winslow as to a shadow self, albeit a much larger one, the reversed roles of Jack Spratt and his fairy tale wife.

This journey has no destination, but, as fate would have it, two destinations are realized in a depressing trip across a desolate emotional landscape, each character reflecting the other, treading water until life intervenes, the poignant tedious after too many nights of oblivion. Alcoholism is a recurring theme in Canty's novels. Perhaps Winslow in Love will purge these demons for the next work of a talented writer. Luan Gaines/ 2005.

Ten years ago I read A Stranger in This World and thought I'd stumbled on the next Raymond Carver. That book hit me with the force of a semi crushing a soda can on the interstate.

Ten years and four books later, I keep wondering, what happened? Yes, Winslow in Love (like his other novels) is filled with poetry in prose, razor sharp condemnations and suicide inspiring introspection. It's a good novel. I liked it. I gave it 3 stars. Still, I can't help thinking that the horse so quick out of the gate came up lame. My ticket ain't worth much now.

Read Winslow. I recommend it. But go back and reread Stranger. Apples to oranges or not, you'll find a writer in that volume that delivers not only jabs of poetry, he unloads upper cuts that would make Chekhov proud.