Saul and Patsy [Paperback]

He does a lot of telling rather than showing. For example, he has Saul stating again and again how much he loves Patsy, but we never see why Saul should (maybe this novel wasn't really meant to be read alone). Baxter doesn't show us a loving relationship; he just gives us Saul's earnest proclamations.

Saul is a self-important lightweight. Early in the book he makes a passionate speech about politics, then never mentions any interest again. There is a literary allusion Saul shares with Nancy, also early in the book, to a poem by Robert Creeley (a poet favored more by alternative than mainstream poets), but I don't think either of them either reads, or mentions a book, for the rest of the novel. The allusion seems to exist solely for Baxter to signal that he and his characters are hip. But in fact Baxter is very square.

Perhaps he is so popular because he affirms the middle-class view of the world so charmingly. On rare occasions one might rant about politics, but it won't have a real place in one's life. One might wish to help others less fortunate, but one will get over this when faced with the ugly faces and tasteless homes of actual less fortunate human beings. As young people the characters may have quoted poetry, but by now literature is merely part of a stereotypical attitude toward being young.

I find it offensive when Baxter cannot stop lavishing fascinated description on the repulsive ugliness of a particular "low-life" woman's face; Baxter also enumerates her tasteless home furnishings -- that we may nod in agreement, our prejudices confirmed? Saul thinks he's a real hero for allowing a kid to stand in his yard, a kid he knocks off his bike and physically threatens. Toward the end he becomes really delusional in his self-congratulations, believing he is single-handedly going to save the young people of the town, when he's shown less than average empathy or understanding. Patsy has her own moment of class condescension in a conversation with a young married woman of "the lower classes," whose marriage Saul has sometimes envied. Patsy quietly, and smugly, takes in that the girl is naive, a victim rather than a lucky woman, as the poor inferior girl imagines.

Baxter seems to have believed far too much in the uncritical praise he's received. Doesn't he know that some of his popularity is based on his affirmation of a certain section of the middle class and its values, not only on his talent as a fiction writer? Does he know that never makes any reader of this class uncomfortable? Yes, he is skilled in creating a fictional world out of often subtle perceptions and physical details. The surface of the fiction enjoyed by the reader is something Baxter excels in. But when all is said and done, the considerable skill seems devoted to rather lame ends. Baxter has been so successful, I think, because he has compromised his art. Nowadays, of course, it is only foolish idealists or losers who do not compromise. Also nowadays, compromised art, if it is literate and fulfills our class expectations, earns rave reviews for its quality.

"Saul and Patsy" does have the sense of having been worked up from short stories, notably because characters who have already been introduced get the full intro treatment several times, as if this were the first time you were meeting them. Besides this small annoyance, it is hard to pick out where the stories were knitted into the larger novel.

I looked forward to "Saul and Patsy," which, after all, is what reading a good book should be all about.