Setting the Bar

This novel, by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Empire Falls, is set in fictional Thomaston, New York, a town that is situated close to Albany. Thomaston is slowly deteriorating as the town’s factory is closed, after spewing forth carcinogenic chemicals for decades. Lou C. Lynch is the main character of this novel and his middle initial provides him with the unenviable nickname of “Lucy.” While Lucy is the main character, the novel also tells us stories from the viewpoint of his estranged friend Bobby Marconi aka Robert Noonan and his girlfriend, Sarah Berg, as well as his intense family members - Tessa Lynch, Dec Lynch and Lou Lynch, Sr. The lives of the families in this novel all cross, and never in ways that seem happy.

The book starts out pretty slowly but don’t let this get to you. Stick with it and you won’t be disappointed - it starts picking up after about 100 pages or so. This book is about the friendshp between two boyhood friends - Robert Noonan and Lucy Lynch - how it picks up and wans with no seeming explanation. The two men are polar opposites with Lucy being caring, empathetic and giving, almost to the point of being a push over and Noonan, the outgoing, cynical, aggressive and independent bad boy whose path you daren’t cross. Lynch is the one that is happy living in the past and who doesn’t want to leave, while Noonan ends up in Venice, an ocean away, painting.

The story is also about families and how they define and shape a person. For Lynch, who is really, really needy (almost annoyingly so), he looks at his parents and uncle Dec and determines that he wants to be like his father, who his mother Tessa often scorns and looks down upon, because he is too trusting and has too much faith in the goodness of people. Noonan looks at his parents - a weak mother and an abusive father - and rejects both of them, but becomes scared in the long run because now he doesn’t know who he is or where he belongs. And when he sees that he’s more like them than he anticipated, in spite of all of his work trying to distance himself from him, he’s crushed. This novel eloquently picks apart the power that our parents and other close family members have on who we become in life and Russo does a wonderful job doing that. His characters are beautiful and wonderful and deep.  The story makes sense in the way that it is organized. The plot is magnificently developed and the language that he uses is divine. 

This is a must read.

Book: 7/100

I don’t remember how I heard about this movie or why I added it to my Netflix list but, in some ways, I’m glad that I did because I am not sure that I would have put this movie on my queue now. Kinsey is based on the life of Alfred Kinsey, who is known for his reports on human sexuality - which became popularly known as “The Kinsey reports” but which are formally named Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” (1948) and “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” (1953).  These reports were considered to be and are considered to be groundbreaking and new sexual knowledge. Today, Kinsey’s critics blame him for the spread of AIDS, to gay marriage and the high divorce rate.

The movie stars Liam Neeson in the title role, and Laura Linney as his wife.  Both were nominated for Golden Globes for this movie - he as leading actor, she as best supporting actress - and both are well deserved nominations. The movie follows Kinsey’s life from his mid-teens to just before his death in 1956. This is an astronomical amount of time to follow and I think the movie promises way too much by trying to cover this much ground.  According to the film, Kinsey was raised by a very strict, ultra-conservative minister, who is also sexually repressed (go figure) and who is played brilliantly by John Lithgow. The funniest part of the movie was when Lithgow’s character blamed the decline of western civilization and morality on the invention of the zipper, because it gave men and women easier access to, well, you know. The scenes between Lithgow and Neeson are amazing and wrought with tension - you would have thought that they were really father and son. It was very well acted.

The movie tries not to be too, too preachy but the message is clear - society should be tolerant of sexuality and people’s choices, as long as the people are there by mutual consent, aren’t forcing people to do that and that no one is hurt. I would recommend that you watch this movie, if only to see the character developments, which are masterful.