{"id":15448,"date":"2015-02-16T13:10:01","date_gmt":"2015-02-16T18:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/simchafisher\/?p=15448"},"modified":"2015-02-16T13:10:01","modified_gmt":"2015-02-16T18:10:01","slug":"what-book-gets-your-region-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/simchafisher\/2015\/02\/16\/what-book-gets-your-region-right\/","title":{"rendered":"What book gets your region right?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"town<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to say which is more satisfying: a book that introduces you to a fascinating, new, unfamiliar world, or a book which is set in a time and place that you know intimately, and which really nails it.<\/p>\n

For me, The Dogs of March<\/a><\/em> by Ernest Hebert is a great example of the latter. It\u2019s set in a fictional small town of Darby, New Hampshire, and man, is it familiar. It gives us painfully accurate picture of the small town full of foster children, incestuous shack people, pompous little fief lords, renovating interlopers, and limping, buck-toothed junk car collectors, who\u00a0see no difference between the beauty of the snow on a stone wall and the beauty of a burnt-out washing machine riddled with bullet holes for target practice.<\/p>\n

The Dogs of March<\/em> (first in a series,\u00a0The Darby Chronicles<\/a>)\u00a0introduces us to Howard Elman, foreman at a weaving factory in the early \u201980\u2019s. He hasn\u2019t yet figured out that he\u2019s going deaf, and he hasn\u2019t yet figured out that there is nothing he can do about the way his world is coming apart and being rebuilt for some new purpose that doesn\u2019t mean anything to him.<\/p>\n

Here he appears around Thanksgiving in the dorm room of his son Freddy, the first of his children to go to college, with an early Christmas present:<\/p>\n

Father and son looked at each other as if each had come across a crime. Both spoke at the same moment. Freddy said, \u201c\u2018Lo,\u201d and Howard said, \u201cWhere\u2019d you get that goddamn beard?\u201d
\n\u201cI didn\u2019t get it; I grew it,\u201d said Freddy.
\n\u201cAin\u2019t you smart,\u201d yelled Howard. This phrase he could utter in a hundred ways, to convey degrees of sarcasm, exasperation, frustration, criticism, irony, cosmic outrage, even affection; a phrase that filled in when he had no other words; a staple\u2013like rice or potatoes or refried beans\u2013that could be fed into the maw of a starved vocabulary.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re always yelling at me,\u201d yelled Freddy.
\nDark hair enveloped his face from the bottom of the eyes to the throat. A pink slash showed where his mouth was. His ears were partially hidden.
\n\u201cYou look like a goddam A-rab,\u201d yelled Howard.
\n\u201cThe word is Arab,\u201d yelled Freddy.
\n\u201cAin\u2019t you smart,\u201d yelled Howard.
\n\u201cArab, Arab, Arab,\u201d yelled Freddy.
\n\u201cAin\u2019t you smart,\u201d yelled Howard.
\n\u201cOh, I ain\u2019t smart,\u201d yelled Freddy, with emphasis on the \u201cain\u2019t.\u201d
\n\u201cI\u2019ll smarten you up,\u201d yelled Howard, taking menacing steps forward, rifle at order arms, its butt skipping along the floor.
\nFreddy stood his ground, teeth chattering, clenched fists quivering at his sides.
\nThe two stood breathing fire on each other for a few seconds.
\nThen Howard backed up. He realized he had been wrong. For \u00a0man who had never learned to apologize, he did his best. He brought the rifle to present arms, and said, \u201cMerry fucking Christmas.\u201d
\n\u201cNo, not to me,\u201d said Freddy.
\n\u201cTrade it for a shotgun, then,\u201d said Howard.
\nFreddy shook his head no no no no and retreated.
\nHoward remained in the middle of the room, holding the gun in offering.
\n\u201cAin\u2019t nothing wrong with this rifle,\u201d he said.
\n\u201cI\u2019m not interested in killing animals,\u201d said Freddy with a shrug of hopelessness.
\nDread rolled over Howard. College had pulled his son apart, scattered beliefs, habits, and loves like so many bits of a machine, and was now rebuilding him into a customized version of Freddy Elman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The arc of the story follows a series of losses, errors, and painful discoveries, but it is somehow not a difficult book to read. Along with the brutal and tragic are dozens of little jokes and lavish gifts of beauty, as Howard, his long-suffering, teardrop-shaped wife Elenore, and his circle of malformed friends and privileged enemies rearrange themselves into a new world order \u2014 while other things, like Howard\u2019s duty to strike back against the savagery of the dogs of March, never change.<\/p>\n

A beautiful, frightening, tender-hearted book. And if you\u2019ve ever been to a town meeting in a small town, you won\u2019t want to miss chapter 13, where the wealthy, litigious\u00a0newcomer tries to ram through her own agenda;\u00a0the delusional, power-hungry selectman makes a tactical error; the white-bearded old loon is, as usual, the only one who talks sense, and the single-minded fire chief just wants a new firetruck, and can\u2019t seem to get it.<\/p>\n

What book or movie would you recommend, if you wanted someone to understand the place where you live?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to say which is more satisfying: a book that introduces you to a fascinating, new, unfamiliar world, or a book which is set in a time and place that you know intimately, and which really nails it. For me, The Dogs of March by Ernest Hebert is a great example of the latter. 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