Yes, I'm Still Running a Blog, Really I Am

The Significant Other and I just got back from a weekend jaunt to Los Angeles in order to fulfill familial obligations, but we did manage to find time for brunch with Mark late Sunday morning, and what with a flight out and a flight back, I was able to finish An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which readers may recall me lauding a few weeks back. Well, now Stephen Amidon has his say in the weekend NYTBR...and interestingly enough never mentions P.G. Wodehouse, everybody else's touchstone for Paul Murray's accomplishment. He and I are in basic agreement about the book, though I quibble with his quibbles:

Murray also tends to rely on crude, knockabout humor to move his narrative along. The result is a novel whose 400-plus pages begin to weigh on the reader not long after the midpoint. Only when Charles straggles home, considerably worse for wear, does the author regain his deft touch.

I don't agree with the implied criticism of "knockabout humor" implicit in that first line; knockabout humor is just right for certain stories (Wodehouse's Blandings novels, among others, spring to mind) and not necessarily something to be sneered at. And though there are parts of Charles' foray into the real world that aren't quite as zippy as the scenes at the manor, in my opinion Murray's deft touch, at least with regards to Charles' voice, doesn't slip in those sections. (I could have done without quite so much fixation on Gene Tierney, as those passages do slow down the plot, even though I understand why Murray wanted to include that material as an insight into Charles' emotional makeup and his blind spots.)

Let's put it this way: if Jonathan Franzen was less interested in tragicomic realism and more interested in farce, and he lived in Ireland, the results might well be something like An Evening of Long Goodbyes. And Paul Murray's definitely going to be a fellow to keep an eye on.