Ken’s Comments (group member since Jan 21, 2020)

Ken’s comments from the The Obscure Reading Group group.

I got the impression that Mrs. Hedges was satisfied with her life, that she was "Lord of her realm" at that window, being in charge of all those women and taking in all that money.

John wrote: "A point on the Super, Jones. Petry seems to be writing him as the ultimate incarnation of upper class entrenched materialism. Whereas the Chandlers' materialism is contained to consumer products an..."

Are you saying that, for Jones, "wealth" comes in the form of his desire for a higher class, prettier woman?

Otherwise, I'm a bit confused by this thought of yours: "Petry seems to be writing [the Super, Jones] as the ultimate incarnation of upper class entrenched materialism."

Diane wrote: "Ken, I mutter it quite often these days while watching the news."

You mean you're still watching the NEWS? I've already voted. Now I've stuck my head in the sand until Nov. 3rd. Or 4th, maybe. Then it's either a Bacchanalian dance or an appearance at the visa office.

I think even now some men have this sense of entitlement that's both scary and disgusting to many women.

I think there's a lot more of it than we think, even after the women's movement of the 60s and 70s (Helen Reddy just died, sadly). That's one of the most amazing things about this book to my mind, how it comes to us out of the past but doesn't look dated in the least, neither in racial or sexist ways.

The name Junto reminded me of Junta, which is a group of military idiots ruling a country after a takeover. You know. Banana Republics, like the USA.

Sounds like something Grandma would say. The Grandma mentioned in Chapter One, je mean.

Fine point: I didn't "hate" the ending, I just didn't like it. I reserve "hate" for writers like Henry James.

OK back as promised.

When reading novels, I often consider the parts, the whole, and how they blend. Illogical as it may seem, I sometimes like all the parts, but not the whole. Conversely, I sometimes like the whole but take issue with the parts.

It's all about architecture, and that's a talent more experienced novelists either get good at through practice or never do.

The Street is Exhibit A of what I call a wonderful parts novel. The set pieces in the shifting points of view were compelling, to say the least. They also interacted (some architecture for you) in that you saw similar scenes and time periods from varying characters' POV.

Were all the characters equal in their characterization? Not exactly. Jones was given the most time because he, more than any other, allowed the author to express her animus toward a certain kind of male, namely the sexual predator. As stated before, I didn't buy Jones' unreasonable fear of Christian symbols, but that's me.

Other characters, with less time on stage, were nicely done if not rounded much due to lack of press: Mrs. Hedges, Min, Boots, Junto, and, in an appearance that appeared gratuitous at best, Bub's frazzled white teacher.

The parts drove the novel, providing a narrative arc that compelled me to turn pages. In the end, though, I scratched my head over the final scene with Boots. Yes, it looped both Boots and Junto into the Jones narrative of men as little more than sexual predators, but, as others have complained here, it upended everything Lutie stood for.

I'm not a fan of tying all loose ends together OR of "they lived happily ever after" finishes. That said, this ending showed that the beginning novelist still had work to do in the architecture aspect of writing.

That is, I expected that the book would come back somehow to Jones especially, Junto probably, and Mrs. Hedges, too, because there were consequences in all of their actions. Instead of that, we got this melodramatic finish that almost seemed as bad as the rookie writer's famous finish: "She woke up to find it was all a dream!"

Jolting, it was. John Gardner once said that the fictive dream must be "vivid and continuous." I give Petry high marks for the vivid part, but feel she lost the "continuous" when I was pulled out of her fictive dream to my chair and my book, where I thought, "What the hell...?"

I am both disgusted and angry with all men, and have been all day...I've even questioned myself as a potential enemy.

I got a good laugh out of THAT line, Matthew. And I can sympathize, being one of those Almost Dead White Males people keep complaining about when they look at literature survey courses.

But seriously. As Sara says, the fact that you feel embarrassed tells you something. It's how I feel when I read that way more men than women support Trump. Disgusted, angry, but mostly embarrassed.

More tomorrow about the end of the book. Hoo, boy! What an ending is all I'll say now.

The discussion of this book has been broken into three parts as follows:

Week #1: Oct. 1 - 7 Chs. 1-5 inclusive
Week #2: Oct. 8 - 14 Chs. 6-12 inclusive
Week #3: Oct. 15-21 Chs. 13-18 (End)

This is it, the final week of discussion on Ann Petry's debut, The Street. Endings are notoriously hard to land. How did Petry do, in your opinion?

No worries about spoilers here, so if you haven't finished the book yet, hold off on reading what follows. If you HAVE finished, time to work in your overall opinion with your reasons.

Enjoy!

Yvonne & Jan,

As readers we can't help but be influenced by our own upbringings and the neighborhoods we grew up in.

I grew up in a small suburban / rural town in eastern Connecticut, one that was 99% white and heavily Roman Catholic. To say I grew up naive about racism would be understatement. I didn't have a black classmate until middle school.

As a young man, I took a job in Hartford and worked with many black people. Oddly, my previous lack of interaction caused me to interact. I got along great with coworkers, race and gender notwithstanding.

Most of my education about racial strife came via the news. My first influence was watching videos of Bobby Kennedy's 1968 presidential run, which included many visits to cities and slums and the poor. I saw his speech in Indy on the night of MLK Jr.'s assassination. He was my ideal.

And then came the Obama Presidency. And then came the backlash in the form of the Trump Presidency. And now I feel like race is front and center, better in some ways, but so much worse in others. News of white supremacists. Echoes of 1930s-style fascism. All making the selection of Ann Petry's novel particularly salient at this time.

Cindy wrote: "Sara wrote: "Interestingly, she was raised in a small town and had a much less discriminatory experience than this book depicts. When she went to New York to study, she taught in Harlem and discove..."


It would be interesting, Cindy, to see if Ann Petry did read Native Son.

As for women writers having greater difficulties finding recognition in literary fiction, I wonder if it would have been any different if Ann Petry had used a pseudonym or used YA writer S.E. Hinton's trick and gone with initials only, leading to the assumption by most readers of The Outsiders (when it came out) that the author was a male.

Sara wrote: "Interestingly, she was raised in a small town in Maine and had a much less discriminatory experience than this book depicts. When she went to New York to study, she taught in Harlem and discovered ..."

Interesting that she was born in Old Saybrook, right next to Old Lyme, which she put in this book. My grandmother lived for years in Old Lyme, so I logged a lot of summer months down there at the beach as a kid (yes, I was a kid once).

I looked but didn't see reference to her being raised in Maine. Help?

Cindy wrote: "For me, the strength of this novel revolves around the female characters while it's biggest flaw are the male characters.

With the exception of Bub, all the men seem to be cut from the same cloth-..."


Cindy,

Agree completely about the men making men in general look awful. As I read the book, I got the impression that one driving force to Petry's art was anger.

Although questions of race and gender are the most obvious parallels between this book's 1940's setting and today, little ones creep in, too, like this bit from p. 223:

"Junto had sent [Boots] to a doctor who performed a slight, delicate, dangerous operation on his ear.

"'You'll be all right in a month or so,' said the doctor. 'In the meantime mail this letter to your draft board.' The letter stated that Boots Smith was ill and unable to report for a physical examination. And, of course, when he was finally examined, he was rejected."

Clearly Boots didn't have a rich daddy. If he did, there'd be no need for "delicate, dangerous" operations to dodge the draft. Just the letter so you didn't have to serve with all the "losers" who, perhaps, you would later in life pretend to admire, even though you pay no taxes to support them (or the police, or law and order).

You guessed it. I chuckled darkly, thinking "Cadet Bone Spurs" before turning the page.

Ah, the joys of reading.

Good points, Cindy. All eyes have been on the badly behaving men in this novel, which certainly helps the struggling protagonist to look good by comparison. But slapping a kid for shining shoes? Hmn. Not sure it can be written off like spanking was back in the day (I don't consider my parents abusive for spanking me as a kid, but spank they did, early and often. Still, not the same as slapping the face.)

Your canary remark brings to mind "I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings," the Maya Angelou outing that I haven't read (unless excerpts count, and they don't).

Why DOES a caged bird sing? Are all these characters "caged" in their way? And can't the same be said for every human, to one degree or another?

I agree, Sara, that Junto is bad news. Although he is lauded by both Boots and Mrs. Hedges for his equal treatment of blacks and whites, it seems to me that he is an accomplice in Mrs. Hedges' prostitution business and that he sees the same thing Hedges' sees in her: a profitable challenge.

Speaking of prostitution, I found the back story of how Mrs. Hedges' got INTO prostitution rather lame. A girl in trouble gets taken in. A young man shows up to see her when she's away. Mrs. Hedges invites him in to wait and then says, "Hmn. I could make money on this sort of thing."

It seemed rushed and poorly done. Probably unnecessary, too. Do I wonder how a Madam becomes a Madam? Not really. She's just another madam.

The other thing that did not ring true in this segment was the bit about the cross that Min puts up. The Supe is deftly described and his inner thoughts prove him to be a psychopath of sorts. But his rearing back from the cross is a bit of a clunker, reminding me of Dracula falling back from garlic and crosses and sunlight. B-grade horror, in other words.

"A dearth of good men." I'll say! The only decent male is the man-in-progress, Bub.

More later...

The discussion of this book has been broken into three parts as follows:

Week #1: Oct. 1 - 7 Chs. 1-5 inclusive
Week #2: Oct. 8 - 14 Chs. 6-12 inclusive
Week #3: Oct. 15-21 Chs. 13-18 (End)

Please try to confine posts to events in each week's chapters so that there are no spoilers for fellow readers.


Today we move to the middle portion of the book, where Ann Petry continues to provide shifting points of view to offer a lens into the lives of people in Harlem during the 1940s.

What strikes you from these middle chapters?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of Chs. 6-12, in your opinion?

Is the writing sustaining your interest? In what way?

How is the book historical and how is it contemporary?

How believable are plot developments and character behaviors, in your estimation?

Do you see any foreshadowing? Can you tell where Petry is going with all of this? What evidence can you cite for your predictions?

Anything else you want to bring to the group's attention after reading Chs. 6-12?

Sue wrote: "What a great discussion. This book reads as if it was written yesterday instead of 80 years ago. As has been mentioned, structural racism is definitely alive and well. I do wonder how people can de..."

Yes, Sue, the bit on the stairs using light and dark reminded me a bit of Hitchcock films. You know, that subtle scary that works better on the imagination than in-your-face scary like a lot of films today.


Did we bring up the latchkey kid issue? I'm not sure why, but Bub, who I think is all of 8, is home alone an awful lot out of necessity. I found this jarring, the type of thing that, in 2020, might more than raise eyebrows.

Of course, this book isn't 2020. And I wonder how many kids, even IN 2020, are home alone -- night and day -- at a young age.

Candi wrote: "Thank you, Diane and Kathleen. I know all pet owners and animal lovers have gone through this, and it is a comfort to know you're not alone :)"

2020 is going down as a very bad year thanks to national and world goings-on. It seems especially cruel, then, when bad things happen on a personal level, too.

I lost my dog of 16 years back in April. Third time around for me, but it doesn't get easier when you bring a dog with cancer to the vet's one last time. Harder, seems.

So my heart goes out to you, Candi, on this your second ordeal. Perhaps books will help you get through!

Some quotes of note:


"Granny would have said, 'Nothin' but evil, child. Some folks so full of it you can feel it comin' at you -- oozin' out of their skins.'

Not sure why I marked this. I think when I read it, I felt there was a lot more of it going around in the world today. Oozing, I mean. 1930s style oozing.


"That's the kind of big ugly furniture white women love to give to their maids."

There are many quotes similar to this, making me sense that Petry herself had experiences to draw on when it came to dynamics between races.


Jim to Lutie: "'God damn white people anyway. I don't want favors. All I want is a job. Just a job. Don't they know if I knew how I'd change the color of my skin?'"

Sad sentiment, this, where a man would regret the skin he was born in. It also struck me that many white people today complain about minorities lining up for "favors" such as welfare or food stamps or whatever. Hearing that makes me do a slow burn. When it comes to government assistance, people of every race line up with bells on. And don't get me started on tax dodging. It's a rich man's game, mostly. White and male, mostly. Isn't this the same sin from the other direction?


Mrs. Pizzini's prophecy: "It's best that the man do the work when the babies are young. And when the man is young. Not good for the woman to work when she's young. Not good for the man."

Foreshadowing, anyone? I sympathized with Lutie's fury when she came home to see money she'd been sending from Connecticut was being used by Jim to support a mistress, all in front of Bub yet.


Among the snatches of conversation Lutie overhears while working in Old Lyme, CT: "Sure, she's a wonderful cook. But I wouldn't have any good-looking colored wench in my house. Not with John. You know they're always making passes at men. Especially white men."

Only last month I read Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America and this was exactly the kind of racism Xendi talked about in that book-- stereotypes about both black men and black women and how deeply entrenched they are thanks to our history of slavery especially -- a legacy we are still dealing with today.


Lutie to Bub after she finds him shining shoes at age 8 (guess WHO helped him make the shoeshine box): "You see, colored people have been shining shoes and washing clothes and scrubbing floors for years and years. White people seem to think that's the only kind of work they're fit to do. The hard work. The dirty work. The work that pays the least."


There's a lot of this in the book, and I find it most satisfying to read in light of all of the racial unrest this past year. This is how far we haven't come. Only now the focus is more on a more deadly type of racial profiling.


As you can see, I've been pleasantly surprised with how openly Petry addresses racism and sexism in her 1940s manuscript. I thought authors might have to be more careful then, but that is thankfully not the case.