Books: The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt (2023)

“Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.”

Most of the novel is taken up with Comet’s past, with only a small part set in 2005/2006, where we learn of his adventures as an unhappy runaway child during the last days of the Second World War, of his true love that is stolen away, and pride and purpose he finds as a career librarianist. What sustains the novel is Bob, who is sort of a straight man surrounded by a number of outsized people like Connie and Ethan – and the ones in the retirement home, as well as June and Ida, who we see in the latter half of the book (and characters straight out of Dickens).

The Librarianist is, perhaps, deWitt’s most accessible novel, though it’s more prone to clichés of the genre than previous tales. I can identify a lot with Bob, an introvert, as well. Still, I found the book effective, with its dark humor and compassion little seen in today’s fiction;  a moving and delightful character study that is warmhearted with a likable hero.

Books: French Exit by Patrick deWitt (2018)

“Frances Price – tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature – is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Prices' aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts. Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self-destruction and economic ruin – to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, and the inimitable Mme. Reynard, aggressive houseguest and dementedly friendly American expat.”

Part of the charm of reading Patrick deWitt (Undermajordomo Minor, The Sisters Brothers) is getting wrapped up in his slim plotting that is filled with such wonderful oddness.

In French Exit, we get a strange tale filled with strange people and –perhaps- a magical cat. Neither Francis or Malcolm (or most of the people they interact with) for the most part are very likable -but I believe that’s part of the charm of this satirical short novel. As the blurb on the paperback version says, you may never “invite them over to dinner, but they sure make for fun reading.” Both are utterly and hilariously dysfunctional, including Franklin (the husband and father who died 20 years ago) who we see through flashbacks and other descriptions. The book also moves rapidly from one unbelievable situation to the next.

Frances does remind me a lot of Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development through most of the book. Here is a character that was used to being rich, pampered, and able to get away with almost anything (much to her late husband’s dismay). Much like Lucille, Frances uses her cutting comments, her penchant for drinking at all hours, and her domineering ways with everyone, including the coddling of her thirtysomething man-child son Malcolm (who is now bumbling around through life because it’s always been steered by his mother) to get through a life she seems bored with.

There is an absurdist aspect about the whole novel, which includes the Price family’s financial situation and how things seemly always work out for them; and whole theme of the book being about the “tragedy of manners”. And it even gets a bit fantastical with the reveal that their cat, Small Frank, is harboring the “spirit” (?) of Frances late husband. The subtleness and easy acceptance of this -and the fact that deWitt decides not to explain any of it- is somewhat enduring as well.

As the book proceeds to its end, you understand where it closes at, and even that’s hinted in the title, which “refers to leaving a social gathering without saying your farewells. One moment you're at the bar, or the house party, or the Sunday morning wedding brunch. The next moment you're gone.” Other terms include an Irish goodbye, and ghosting. Still, deWitt writes beautifully and, as always, I love his bizarre humor:

 

“What’s the opposite of a miracle?” Malcolm asks.

 

Frances sat upright in her bed. “How many letters?”

Books: Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick deWitt (2015)

One of the biggest things I miss about the closing of Borders was getting Advanced Reader Copy’s of writers books. Most that came were by new authors, but you could always count on an oldie but a goodie (such as Stephen King) from time to time. One book that came in 2011 during the last few months of the companies existence was The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It was a darkly comic, Western-inspired story that takes place in Oregon and California in 1851. The narrator is Eli Sisters and his brother Charlie are assassins sent to kill Hermann Kermit Warm who is accused of stealing from the Sisters' fearsome boss, the Commodore. Was it the Sisters fault that the man turned out to be sort of likable?

While the novel, with it’s short chapters and and sparse narrative, sometimes seemed indicate deWitt was penning a screenplay, the book was wonderfully odd. And then, by accident, after reading this book, a remainder version of his first book, Ablutions, came into the store. Of course, as things happen, I’ve yet to pick up the slim book. It’s somewhere here, but at this writing I’m not so sure where it is. Life of a bibliphile.

Anyways, while in Portland working on Something Like Summer, I was surfing through Powell’s and saw that deWitt’s newest book, Undermajordomo Minor, got released. So I scored a copy at the library when I got back. 

And while it’s clear that The Sisters Brothers was a Western (well, western themed, because it really wasn’t about cowboys), Undermajordomo Minor is sort of hard to categorize into a genre. It could be a literary fantasy book, but I don’t think it is. It has tinges of English gothic to it, as well. It may, for me who needs to categorize things, really fairy tale or fable. Well, a fable without a moral. It is certainly a love story and an adventure story but it’s also an ink-black comedy of manners.

“Lucien (Lucy) Minor is the resident odd duck in the bucolic hamlet of Bury. Friendless and loveless, young and aimless, Lucy is a compulsive liar, a sickly weakling in a town famous for producing brutish giants. Then Lucy accepts employment assisting the Majordomo of the remote, foreboding Castle Von Aux. While tending to his new post as Undermajordomo, Lucy soon discovers the place harbors many dark secrets, not least of which is the whereabouts of the castle’s master, Baron Von Aux? He also encounters the colorful people of the local village—thieves, madmen, aristocrats, and Klara, a delicate beauty whose love he must compete for with the exceptionally handsome soldier, Adolphus. Thus begins a tale of polite theft, bitter heartbreak, domestic mystery, and cold-blooded murder in which every aspect of human behavior is laid bare for our hero to observe.”

Once again, deWitt employs short chapters that remind me of what screenplay looks like. But while I don’t find that jarring –it actually propels the story- it may put people off a bit, especially those more literary readers. The prose, which may seem light, is filled with many weighty issues. Much like science fiction writer Joe Haldeman, deWitt is able to give a lot of meaning in short passages. The humor, dark and often laugh out loud, is brilliantly rendered here. Sometimes I often felt I was watching an old BBC costume drama, mixed with Hammer Films spooky castles. The book does take a weird left turn towards the end, but it’s not out of place in the atmosphere deWitt was trying to create. 

But I miss those ARC's because without them, I would have never discovered Patrick deWitt. Now where is that copy of Ablutions?

Books: The Brothers Sisters by Patrick de Witt (2011)

For generations, the Western genre has been portrayed in pretty much the same way, with its black hats and white hats, the sense of right and wrong and glory of the hero ending the reign of terror of some evil man. It was predictable, safe and (from the Hollywood point of view) extremely successful. But while there has always been a sort of casual violence to the genre, it never was portrayed as brutal –well, with the exception of Sam Pekinpah films maybe.

These books, films and TV shows never examined the heart of where the violence of these men came from. Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Oscar winning film Unforgiven attempted to look at the moral ambiguities the genre presented, and tried to paint it in a more realistic life.

In the novel The Brothers Sisters, we meet Eli and Charlie Sisters, infamous assassins who are sent on an errand to kill one Hermann Kermit Warm, an ingenious (and, as it turns out, extremely likable) man, who is accused of stealing from their boss, a fearsome figure named the Commodore.

Yet, as they set out, we understand that younger brother Eli (and narrator of the book) has grown weary of the killing, and wants to settle down (and seems to be developing a puppy-love to almost any women that crosses his path from Oregon City to San Francisco), while Charlie seems indifferent on the whole subject. Their conversations are, in the end, mundane and often hilarious. Sure there is plenty of Western tropes –saloons, prostitutes, sneak attacks and gun play - but de Witt shows these only to be small aspects of the Sisters lives, because the story is filled with petty squabbles, misunderstandings and a lot of hangovers.

Through the eyes and voice of Eli, we see what a reluctant murderer he is, and how truly different (yet the same) he is from his older brother. He sees violence begets violence, but is unsure, or incapable, of changing the course of his life. There is a generous man buried under Eli’s rage, one who is kind to women and animals –his devotion to his injured horse sparks a retort from Charlie, who calls his brother “The Protector of Moronic Beasts.”

The Sisters Brothers is often funny, dark and lyrical, especially when the novel seamlessly moves from causal murder to thoughtful opinions. It’s not so much a commentary on the Western genre that say Unforgiven was, but like that iconic movie, we see that while the Sisters brothers are assassins, are at times unlikable, they’re always more evil men than them stalking the old west.