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Capturing essence of an odd couple
By Maria Russo |
September 2, 2012, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
"FOR crying out loud!" "For Christ's sake." "Don't give me that." "I've never heard anything so stupid in my life." "What the hell did you do that for?" "Enough already." "Crazy dame." The barbed expressions scattered liberally throughout "When We Argued All Night," Alice Mattison's fine novel of a friendship that lasts more than half a century, was for a long time the sonic wallpaper of life in certain quarters of New York City. During the years in which the novel unfolds, from 1936 to the beginning of the new millennium, being a New Yorker meant something specific and unfakable, and Mattison captures that essence of city life.
Mattison's book counts the city's blessings but also looks starkly at its more numerous deprivations, homing in on what has made New Yorkers sophisticated but also weirdly provincial, not to mention prone to outbursts of not very well pent-up rage. But for all that, Mattison has more than New York on her mind. Her central characters are Jewish, as are many of the supporting players, and "When We Argued All Night" is also a book about 20th-century Jewish life. It has much to say, as well, about the modern America in which Jews have found their places, and about the too-often forgotten casualties of the nation's mid-century anti-communist fever.
The author of nine previous works of fiction including "The Book Borrower," Mattison's prose here is so crisp that along with all the pleasures of fiction she manages to deliver the particular intellectual satisfactions of an essay or a documentary.
Mattison's central characters, Harold Abrams (born Hesh Abramovitz) and Artie Saltzman, are childhood friends who manage to remain connected until old age. They are not at all alike: Harold is blond, physically substantial and socially smooth. Artie is skinny, dark-haired and quarrelsome. Unlike Harold he is not accustomed to being the center of attention. ("Given a wall, Artie leaned.") Harold is a natural at attracting the ladies, though he's also always concerned that they're laughing at him, and he can't seem to find a way to be honest with any of his many lovers. Artie is less sure of himself romantically, but also less troubled in that realm, and when he finds the woman he wants to marry he's a devoted partner. But despite their differences, both men are driven by their need to discuss - argue about - books and ideas.
Much of what Harold wants to convince Artie of has to do with Harold's decision to join the Communist Party. Artie thinks Harold is being foolhardy. He's not wrong, because Harold is committed to the party only halfheartedly - and especially because it's Artie who ends up suffering for Harold's party membership.
Harold's ducks always seem to line up in a row. While cantankerous, watchful Artie struggles, trusting and confident Harold, the only child of an immigrant tailor, manages to glide toward success - with women, with money and with his career. Only parenthood - that ultimate leveler - brings Harold troubles he can't vanquish.
Both men are types it's all too easy to disparage: one could easily be dismissed as a shouter, always an inch away from a violent outburst, the other as a manipulative philanderer. Yet Mattison makes you care about them right to the end, and care so deeply that you take their every disappointment personally.
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