Genre: Political fiction/Coming of Age
Description:
“Jolted by an
arrested adolescence, Manfred Schmidt is a lonely teenager who craves for
belonging and respect. His unconscious rage and forming identity are fused
together at a time when a new leader is offering hope to a troubled,
post-Watergate nation. He takes on Jimmy Carter as his hero, offering hope to
his evolving self.”
Author:
“Trautman was born in Madison, Wisconsin
and has lived in Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C., Massachusetts,
New Hampshire, Hawaii, Kansas and Michigan. He has also lived in Afghanistan
and Ireland. He currently resides in Maine.”
Appraisal:
Things protagonist Manfred Schmidt did:
1. Experienced angst when his parents divorced.
2. Went to some baseball games and museums.
3. Dropped out of college without ever having kissed a girl.
4. Did volunteer work for Jimmy Carter’s reelection.
5. Watched Carter’s defeat on TV.
The end.
I realize
that as a sarcasm one of the world’s great novels could be reduced to “Old man
catches huge fish. Shark eats fish.” However, that two-line synopsis implies
great struggle, victory, and defeat. Does it imply that struggle is useless or
that struggle itself conquers defeat, irrespective of the inevitable?
There are no
such implications or questions in Deacon Blues. The struggles run to
trying to gin up courage to ask the Carter campaign for a paying job and to invite
a girl to a movie. The narrative focuses on Schmidt as a socially inhibited
young man; one who is devoid of charm. He is no Holden Caufield snarkily thumbing
his nose at imperfections of society.
It would be unduly
generous to attribute Schmidt’s devotion to Carter as a metaphor for selfless
devotion to good against overpowering evil. Even though Schmidt seems to see
things that way, it’s ultimately just politics.
Readers who,
for whatever reason, finish the novel will have waded through a morass of
excruciatingly banal details.
“The laundry
room was pretty basic, with industrial size washers, huge dryers, a few long
tables for folding and some metal chairs for sitting.”
Ah, so that’s
what chairs are for.
As a
positive, Trautman’s writing style is clean, readable and error free.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
Nothing to note
Format/Typo
Issues:
None
Rating: Three stars
Reviewed
by: Sam Waite
Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words
