Thursday, July 31, 2008
"The rich are different from you and me."
I read Caitlin Macy's FUNDAMENTALS OF PLAY shortly after it came out in 2000 and have always remembered liking it. It's Macy's first, and as far as I can tell, only novel, which is somewhat surprising since I found her writing style to be smooth and very polished. George Lenhart is the book's narrator and his jaundiced views of his "set's" manners, relationships, careers and obsessions are well worth reading. One such obsession of this group of wealthy and not so wealthy (but still painfully class-aware) twenty-somethings is Kate Goodenow and who she will marry. As these former Ivy Leaguers begin making their way in New York in the early 80's, they sense the changing world, some more acutely than others. George, always the intelligently aware narrator says "we were the last generation of the century to come of age, and the first one that wanted to be as much like our parents' as possible. We ought to have started a revolution; instead we brought cocktail shakers." I have read people dismiss this novel as Gatsby-lite, and while there are hints of Fitzgerald as well as John O'Hara (mentioned earlier in this blog), I think Macy has a definite and unique take on these characters at a particular time and place in America.
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