It is said that this book does not reconstruct the Diana accident. It doesn’t. It reconstructs what might not have been an accident if a sensitive, guilt ridden orphan named Samuel Carver (“Call me Carver”) who threatens to break pinkies had arranged for a car to blow up in a tunnel in Paris. Carver, like other orphans before him, is an idiota, an innocent. He does not know who it is he has killed. What does Carver know? He knows he was adopted by a middle-aged couple who didn’t love him and sent him off to boarding school when he was eight. He knows how to run and he knows how to shoot and he knows how to fall asleep in the arms of his executioner, demonstrating a disarmed and disarming new-man vulnerability. And finally, in front of the T.V. news, he knows how to cry…. Maybe, not.
Tag: Paris
The Accidental Tourist Anne Tyler::George Guidall
As the eighties crash down around him in images of newly divorced women and unusably long nails, Macon emerges as a peculiar species of American male bent on reorganizing the world. Author of guidebooks for businessmen who hate to travel, Macon Leary writes about the latest KFC opening in Paris and the whitest hotels in London. He works at home. He micro-manages his world and everything in it. He reduces foreignness. He is, in fact, a perfect mascot of a decade of globalization, OCD and telecommuting.
His son dies. His wife leaves. His dog becomes passive-aggressive. He meets an outrageous, frizzy, single mother who trains dogs and talks too much and wobbles on high heels. He takes her son shopping. He doesn’t change.
Ethan was dead and gone but Macon was still holding up shirts saying “This one?” “This one?” “This one?”