Charles Baxter

Devoured this book. Now I wonder what took me so long to read it, because I've had it on my shelf for a few years now, ever since I happened to see the film adaptation of THE FEAST OF LOVE on TV one night. I loved the movie so much that I emailed Charles Baxter to tell him. He responded graciously, thanking me, but said the film was really rather different from his novel, that he'd had little input into the screenplay.

And now that I've finally read the book - immersed myself in it for the show more past two days; didn't want to put it down - I can't really remember much about the film. Because my head is too full of the book.

The title comes from a painting by one of the book's main characters. But hey, painting, shmainting - it's the characters that rule in Baxter's novel. One of the voices here, a narrator who frames the stories of the other characters, is a guy named Charlie Baxter, who is a writer living in Ann Arbor. (Baxter was teaching at U of M at the time he wrote this.) Then there's Bradley Smith, who suggests that Charlie just write down regular people's stories - which is what he does. Poor Bradley, who runs Jitters, a coffe shop, and is also a painter (that title I mentioned), has no luck with women, having gone through two marriages already. His story is in here. As is Kathryn's, who leaves Bradley for a woman. And there is Diana, Bradley's second wife, very briefly. She is a high-powered, rather cold-blooded type who carries on with David, a married man. And Bradley's elderly neighbors, Harry and Esther Ginsberg, a philosophy professor and a scientist, respectively. But probably the best characters of all here are teenage Chloe (pronounced Clo-AY; she 'customized' her name) and her quirky, recovering addict lover, Oscar. It was Chloe's voice that really slew me. She is an older, wiser, corrupt-but-innocent 'Phoebe' sort- remember Holden Caulfield's sister? Estranged for some time from her parents, she later bridges that gap, in fact worrying about her parents -

"... I was my own woman and not their little girl anymore. Besides, I wanted to show them how mature I'd gotten by not saying f**k all the time, a habit that's hard to give up. That's scary for parents. You have to be careful with parents once you're grown up into mature adulthood. They get 'sensitive.' Almost anything you say, you hurt their feelings. Their aging hearts get broken. They just crumple up. Besides, I was about to become one of them."

You see? You chuckle at what she says, and yet at the same time you ache for her innocence. How author Baxter got so fully inside the head of types like Chloe - and Diana and Kathryn and others - is anybody's guess, but he does it, and he does it so damn well you just keep turning those pages wanting to find out what the hell these people will do next. Because this is a book full of wisdom, humor and the sadness and sometimes silliness of everyday living, all about love in its many permutations. It is indeed a 'feast' for anyone who loves good writing. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Did I say I loved this book? Well, I did. Bravo, Mr. Baxter!

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

A collection of reminiscences of the novelist/editor William Maxwell by various people who knew him mainly near the end of his long life. The words "generosity", "love", and "attention" appeared over and over in these appreciative pieces, which made me regret intensely that it has taken me so long to make Maxwell's acquaintance. I have known of him through reading Eudora Welty and her biographers...he was the editor of her magazine fiction published in The New Yorker, and they maintained a show more long term correspondence which has been collected and published by Suzanne Marrs, What There is to Say, We Have Said. Maxwell was the subject of the May 2024 American Authors Challenge, and I read this short volume in preparation for my introductory post there. Now I am really looking forward to reading his fiction, much of which has been languishing on my shelf for years...and those letters between him and Miss Welty. show less

This is one of those books I feel better for having read, but I can’t really say why. It contains ten stories, five grouped together under a theme of virtues — titled Bravery, Loyalty, Chastity, Charity, and Forbearance — and give grouped under a theme of vices — Lust, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and Vanity.

The stories do anything but illustrate straight-forward simple morals, organized around their title virtues. Life is messy, and so are virtues and vices. In fact, sometimes you show more can’t tell if the exercise of a virtue is a vice, or the exercise of vice a virtue.

The stories (most of them) also contain the direction, “There’s something I want you to do,” told by one character to another. It’s worth pausing over the line, both before and after it occurs in the story. In Loyalty, an ex-wife, in dire straits, comes to visit her ex-husband, son, and his new wife and daughter. She speaks that line to her ex-husband near the beginning of the story. She doesn’t specify the “something” when she says it. And it’s not clear, to me anyway, who has done what she wanted by the end of the story, although it has gotten done.

It’s also interesting to think how the title virtue or vice relates to the story. In Sloth, a pediatrician (one of several characters who recur across stories) is trying to come to terms with the limits of what he can do with his patients, the seeming role of chance, and the need for parents to find a reason, or blame, for what’s happening to their children under his care. And generally, he’s trying to come to terms with himself. Dealing with a particular child, his patient, after he has done what he can, he meets a Hitchcockian figure in a bar, a vision. The Hitchcockian figure becomes the interlocuter for his inner dialogue. In the end, after his patient’s fate has been determined, he asks his wife to do the “something” he wants her to do — pray for him. He says, “I don’t understand anything, and I need to understand what’s happening to me.”

All of the stories involve uncomfortable situations, the situations in which people reach out for help of one kind or another, and the situations in which virtues and vices are at play. Life is messy, and it’s a hard job to find the simplicity. show less

THE SOUL THIEF is my third Baxter book, and I liked it, but it's something of a puzzle. I mean, who's telling this story? Is it Nathaniel Mason, or is it the weird watcher, Jerome Coolberg? And why does Nathaniel fall for the lesbian artist, Jamie, when he's already involved with Theresa, who offers him no-strings uninhibited high-energy sex? And how does Coolberg know so much about the intimate details of Nathaniel's family history? Well, follow Nathaniel from his disturbed grad school days show more in Buffalo to his settled, married years in the New Jersey suburbs - with some blackout gaps and a major fast forward - and maybe it will all become clear. Or maybe not, and, like me, maybe you'll wonder if you missed something, if you should go back and reread the whole damn thing.

But, confusion aside, it's worth the trip. Because Baxter's strength always comes through in his characters, and THE SOUL THIEF is no exception. Nathaniel Mason, as well as the strange, sexually ambiguous Coolberg, are two more memorable characters to add to the varied collection I've already encountered in FEAST OF LOVE and SAUL AND PATSY. Highly recommended, but pay attention!

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less