Discussion of "The Feast of Love"

First: Hello to all whom I haven't heard from in some time. I'm excited to be able to reconnect through this thing. How is everyone?

Second: Hi, Joe! (The circle of people I know is now complete [by my own admission, it's a small circle.]) For those of you who don't know Joe, Joe and I completed our MFAs at Oregon State last June. Now he lives in the Louisville/Boulder area. He's a great reader and a terrific writer, so if he can be persuaded to share some of his fiction, I'm sure we'll all enjoy it.

Third: "The Feast of Love" by Charles Baxter, the man who brought us "Burning Down the House" and "defamiliarization."

So maybe I've cheated with this book. I am only halfway through the novel, but I went to see the film last night. The book is a compilation of first-person narratives held together by the "narrator" Charles Baxter (his "character" name in the novel). I read an excerpt of a review of the book, and apparently, this fragmented style grew out of Baxter's self-proclaimed flaw, an inability to structure a "conventional" and linear work. This--which is similar to Tim O'Brien's "July, July"--must be the easiest way to write a novel, it seems. Perhaps that's only my naivete talking. Still, you write a few stories, string them together with little interstitials...voila! Thoughts? Anyone tried this?

Not surprisingly, the film eliminated the narrator character and combined some of his introspective, wise traits with that of another character. Too literary, I guess. Also, the characters felt a bit thin to me. Because the novel devotes 300+ pages to shaping and crafting these folks, there are some things that a few well-placed images and lines of dialogue just can't quite accomplish.

It's been said/written that the book is about "love in all of its miraculous, transforming manifestations." Or something like that. But what a bunch of shortchanging bullshit, really. The novel delves much deeper into uncertain psychological ground. Love as terror. Love as a form of myopia. Love as self-loathing, among all other things. Because--and only because--these characters are so specific and finely shaded, the book takes on larger significance and earns a worthiness of the use of "love."

I guess I should provide a bit of a concrete plot summary. Baxter, as the narrator and author, encounters several people (in his town of Ann Arbor, Michigan--relocated to Portland, Oregon, in the movie connected to his friend Bradley W. Smith. There's Bradley's first wife, Kathryn, who falls in love with another woman and his second wife, Diana, who's been in love with another man since before she met Bradley. Then there's Bradley, Jr., Bradley's dog; Bradley's neighbors Harry and Ethel, whose grown son calls to spew curses and demand money; Bradley's coffee shop employees, Chloe and Oscar; and a slew of what might be termed more minor characters, all of whom are, by turns, changed, slayed, elated, denied, created by love.

Long live the short story, even if this is the only way to preserve it.