The first thing that struck me about the book was the description. Often I'm a bit of a speed reader, skimming along for the action and dialogue, but I knew right away that I had to slow down and really picture this one. The "salted cars...splitting as they sniff for parking spots," the "snow sifting down on the roof and back window, the heated glass seeming to absorb each crystal." The whole story rests on the vivid images O'Nan creates because, really, what actually happens in the book? Not that much.
So let's talk about Manny. He's overweight, he misses his grandmother, he likes his job, and he apparently has no clue how birth control works. He's gotten two girls pregnant in the past year, and the one he loves broke up with him while the one he thinks is just okay wants to marry him. It seems like we should view Manny as a real loser, but I liked him a lot. For one thing, he's a great manager. I loved the way he cruised through the restaurant: he wipes tables, slices lemons, manages conflict in the kitchen, placates guests, buses tables, salts the sidewalk. He certainly isn't a guy who thinks that staff does the work while the boss watches. I think I'd like to work with him. (He's kind of the anti-Ignatius, isn't he?)
The thing is, though, that Manny is great only when he has a checklist or a handbook to tell him what to do. He definitely should know by now what to buy Deena for Christmas, but he doesn't because there aren't any hard-and-fast guidelines. So he relies on a set of oh-so-cliched "rules" for present buying:
"Clothes? Right now she doesn't have a size and...he doesn't trust his taste.
"Perfume? ...The odds of getting something she doesn't have and likes are slim...
"Music? Too high school, not personal enough, the same with electronics.
"Which leaves the fool's last resort: jewelry."
This passage--really, Manny's whole experience at the mall--illuminated how lost Manny is when he's away from the Lobster. When the Polish girl at the jewelry store offers her help, he selects a pair of earrings that he is fully aware will look totally different on Deena and are well out of his established price range besides. But he buys them anyway because he's relieved to have someone tell him what to do.
I spent a lot of time wondering what Manny is going to do next, after the Lobster closes. I'd like for him to develop a more accurate self-perception, because while he thinks he's a loser who doesn't do enough, his crew sees him as a pretty decent guy. Deena certainly seems to like him. I'd like to think that by leaving the marlin behind in all its shellacked, dusty glory, he's indicating the ability to find fulfillment and a sense of excitement in his next job and in his future with (or without) Deena and Jacquie. However, I'm not quite sure he can.
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I thought this was an interesting little novel. I guess though I wouldn’t go so far as to say “novel” because for me, it read more like a long short story. Both the fact that it took place in one day with no lapses in time and the fact that its point-of-view was so centered on one character (two things that I seem to encounter more in short fiction) just sort of led me to file this with the oodles of short stories I read in my creative writing classes in college and grad school. And that’s not a bad thing at all. What I really appreciated was the kind of literary experiment O’Nan was fronting here. He obviously did a lot of meticulous research and preparation for this story, and his acknowledgements seem to indicate as such. And, the details O’Nan provides (as Courtney points out) really help give us a Polaroid of Manny, his day, his history, his view toward life. But I guess that’s also my criticism. Because of the shortness of form and self-imposed limits of time, O’Nan makes it difficult to really get to know Manny as much as we’d like to get to know him. We only get a Polaroid, a single picture. However, as many great artists have shown us before, you can say a whole lot with a single slice of life. In terms of doing that with words, I’m not sure if I’ve read much better than what O’Nan does with Manny here, especially in this atypical novella format.
ReplyDeleteThat’s just some initial thoughts, I guess. I really think at the end, this is really a book about managing things. Managing the Lobster. Managing personalities. Managing life. There is probably a lot to talk about there…
I have a lot of trouble calling a work of literature that I can read in two, two and a half hours a novel as well. That being said, this is my favorite of the books we've read.
ReplyDeleteWe only got a snapshot of Manny, but it had more in common with the beautiful photographs that Maggie posts on her blog than faded, blurry Polaroids stuffed in a shoebox somewhere. He's a really good restaurant manager and a bit of a romantic streak... tempered by a deep melancholy streak. He spends the entire day ruminating on his failed relationship with Jacquie, his relationship with his current girlfriend/babymomma that he doesn't really love, his grandmother's death, and his closing restaurant. I guess lined up like that, maybe he's justified in his relatively black mood. :P
He's the kind of guy who craves structure, and his affair with Jacquie coupled with his grandmother's death seems to have destroyed any semblance of structure in his personal life. He's left floating through, and then the cherry on top... the one remaining constant in his life, the Lobster, is ripped from him. It's understandable that he's going to have a bad day but I think that he'll eventually get things under control. Throughout the scenes in the Lobster, he demonstrated that he's a really good restaurant manager. The Olive Garden will probably be his before the next Christmas, de facto if not de jure. Deena seems to genuinely care for him, and now that Jacquie is gone from his life, I think he'll eventually come around on that front as well. Given his level of responsibility and the baby on the way, I just don't see Manny drifting through life very long.
Then again, maybe I'm just rooting for him.
Yes! Go Manny!
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to hear you put it in that light. All through the story my heart kind of ached for this guy: "Oh, man, he's so depressed, and melancholy, and he just thinks that nothing will ever be right in his whole life!" Then again, we've all had a day where things just suck and we can't help but be temporarily convinced that they will always suck, forever. But then we wake up the next morning and the perspective of just one day makes everything all right again.
This is my second time reading "Lobster," and for various reasons I think I got more out of it this second time through, probably because I already knew what was coming so I was able to slow down and savor O'Nan's imagery. Which is lovely, yes?.
ReplyDeleteHowever, during both reads I had the nagging feeling that O'Nan's story may have been better realized as a play than a novella, and couldn't help but want a better understanding of Manny as a person. Such are the drawbacks of short fiction, I guess, but I was really intrigued by the history of Manny and Jaquie and was left wanting to understand that relationship better. I guess this is a complement disguised as a criticism, since O'Nan created such a likable character that I was left caring about him enough to want to know him better.
But what ultimately struck me about this story is how very sad Manny is. I do not believe he will be happy with Deena. He clearly doesn't love her, so can only disappoint her. It's a shame that a man who takes such pride in his managerial position is being demoted (even if the pay remains the same). But what saddened me the most about Manny was his desperate need to be liked. One of the most poignant moments of the novella for me was the moment when a pissed off employee shredded his jacket. Rather than feel anger, Manny felt shame, and tried to hide it at first. This moment just broke my heart, because it illustrates how desperate for appreciation Manny truly is. For all his flaws, he seems to be a genuinely nice guy, and I fear he'll never get the respect he so desperately craves.
The incomplete picture of Manny we get just added to the book's verisimilitude for me. I've had my share of McJobs--bus boy at a Big Boy, bagger at Kroger, and so on--and the impressions I got of my coworkers was similar to what O'Nan provides us of our minor protagonist: small impressions, maybe sketches, yes, but true enough, in their way and in the ways that matter. What we learn of Manny through omniscient narration is not nearly the Manny that presents himself to his employees, and there's something irresistible in unpacking that contradiction. That very human contradiction.
ReplyDeleteO'Nan could've very easily been a top-notch sociologist, as good a job as he does of making the Lobster so lived in such an economy of pages. If it weren't for his beautiful turns of phrase--both inside and out the Lobster, and inside Manny's thought process and desires--Lobster reads like a a high-end qualitative study. It's one thing to be verbose and let sentences (and chapters) languish; it's quite the other to refine one's language to this essential (but...true) extent. Paucity can be a bitch, yo.
One last thought: I love books that take an everyday, throwaway kinda story and let it somewhat grandly unfold, writ as large as Shakespearean palace intrigue. Something very Dickensian about such a process, and an admirable aspiration by O'Nan. There was a part of me that was very saddened when the bus wasn't full of hungry customers, or when the lotto tickets didn't work out. Sometimes a very small part of the whole can tell us a lot about that whole, no?
So this is my first time posting about one of our books. I actually finished it early, and really enjoyed it. But I've been fearful of the blank page (or tiny window, as it were), which is why I think I do better with a live discussion, because I can just say stuff as it occurs to me. Putting things into print gives it a lot more weight, and forces self editing. I've actually had this window continuously open for over a week, to remind me...but nevertheless, here I go.
ReplyDeleteI first wanted to agree with Paul: that I found the book to be more of a novella than an actual novel, both in the length and in the subject. I'm not sure who gets to make these kinds of distinctions, but if it's any of us than I guess we have two votes already.
I don't want to cover a lot of the stuff that's already been covered (I too loved O'Nan's writing style and prose) but I did want to say that I read the book, I think, a lot differently than it sounds like you all did. I didn't *really* like Manny, to be honest. First, he acted like a lot of managers that I've known at various chain stores, so I'm sure there's some projection going on there. It *was* interesting to get the perspective from within his head, but I still identified more with the employees perspective. There was absolutely no reason to keep the Lobster open that day, other than (what I viewed as) his whiny self-serving motives. A part of me thought it was less about letting go of the Lobster and more about making sure he was around Jacquie one more time, which is blatantly unfair to the rest of the crew. Everything was a pain-in-the-ass that day, of COURSE there would be no business, and the waitstaff would make no money. The only reason he kept the place open was because *he* couldn't let go. The universe was telling him that it was over, between the storm, the power outage, etc. and he was raging against the dying of the light. Sorry Manny, the darkness always wins eventually.
Part of what else bothered me about Manny was that he was SO weak that it made me a little disgusted with him. He continued to follow his corporate handbook when it made ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE to do so. And if I'm remembering this correctly, Jacquie asks him for the lighthouse glasses for a customer and he says "one per customer" but then relents, I think only because it was *she* who was asking, and because she gave him a look. The incident at the mall, weak. His whole relationship debacle with Deena and Jacquie, weak. By the end he didn't even have the sack to take the Marlin, even though he knew it would probably end up in the trash anyways, and it meant something to him. So maybe I'm not angry at Manny, but I was hoping at some point he'd show me some huevos, finally. But he didn't, he stayed with Deena, kept bitching about his grandmother and let the snow plow guys do a half-ass job. When the buses showed up and were full of people who weren't eating, I was actually glad. I was like, "yeah, asshole. You're staying open for NO GOOD REASON" I punched the air and I felt (as a member of the crew) vindicated in some way.
Oh, and if you're closing the restaurant forever and one of the guys wants to take some open booze bottles, just let him. I mean, seriously. "I'm Manny and I play by the rules. The corporate book says blah blah blah". Dude, give us a break, you know? I ate in a famous restaurant on its last day here in DC, and let me tell you: they were going out Irish Wake-style, giving away full bottles of booze, letting people tear photos off the walls, someone brought in a piano and people were playing/singing... THAT is how you close a restaurant.
I will say: I was very glad that the lottery tickets didn't win. On a day that was riddled with disappointment and mediocrity (especially since we viewed everything through Manny's eyes) it was the only way the last day could end. I know I've been down on Manny this whole time, but I can dislike him and still really like the book, right? Because I really did enjoy reading the book, I just brought my own non-managerial perspective to it. For me it was interesting to get an idea of how someone like that thinks. But when I saw him doing all the stuff Courtney gave him credit for (slicing lemons, wiping tables) I felt it was because he knew others wouldn't do it, and the corporate manual says it HAS to be done, or that he needed to show a good example to his employees, because the corporate manual says he has to.
I don't know why I was such an outlier on this, BUT I'm glad I was able to make my first contribution, and feel free to defend Manny below, since he clearly lacks the sack to do it himself.
Wow. I hadn't thought of Manny from the crew's perspective. I would agree that Fredo and Nicolette and maybe LeRon saw Manny just the same way you do (obviously at least one of them does, because he stole the liquor!) But I also think there were flashes of real affection from some of the team. After all, as Jacquie says, they came in that day for Manny, not the Lobster. There also seemed to be a kind of fond rapport between Manny and Ty, the cook, which I noticed most when Ty made Manny's favorite lunch. Maybe this was because Manny acknowledged Ty as the King of the Kitchen.
ReplyDeleteI think I liked Manny more than you did because I identify more with him than with the crew. If I was scheduled, I absolutely 100% would have shown up that day. Why? Because it's expected, and as a member of a team I'd feel obligated to play my role. I would probably even make a half-assed attempt to follow the rules, although I'd have different reasons. I dislike chaos and vindictive behavior, while Manny is simply lost without his employee handbook. However, we'd both need the closure that last shift would offer.
I haven't posted yet because one I'm a slacker, and two I don't know that I have a lot to say.
ReplyDeleteI felt that this was a very enjoyable read, and I do enjoy books that have a lot of imagery. I like to read and savor a book and the descriptions, and this book allowed me to follow all of the descriptions. I had a very clear image of everything in the book, maybe because it's a familiar place.
I thought that it was a brilliant study of a day in the life of the people behind the scenes that we don't think about when we stop in for some shrimp after getting some last minute Christmas gifts.
I found Manny to be likable, but I kept hoping that he would make some decisions. He was such a weenie. He couldn't make up his mind to do anything during the day unless someone else told him what to do. Companies love people like this because they make great drones and don't ask questions about the rules. I think he would have done well with a military career.
I did sympathize with him somewhat as a dreamer. I think that there are a lot of people who have ideas about who they want to be, or something that they want to do, but don't really know how to get there. I for example can not figure out how to get a band together. Fortunately I have other aspects of my life where I have figured out how to get what I want. I have the job that I wanted, although it may be frustrating at times. I have a great relationship with the girl I want to be with. Unfortunately for Manny, he can't figure out how to get any of the dreams he has to come to fruition. I see that as the source of his sadness. He has dreams, but no path.
Essentially he is a good guy, but a drone. A worker bee. Thank goodness for him he has a job to go to, at a similar chain, where they will tell him what to do every day, otherwise, I think that he would drift even more aimlessly than he already is.
Also, as far as relationships, I wonder if he has chronic dissatisfaction syndrome, like Christina in Vicky Christina Barcelona? I'm not sure that he would truly be happy with any woman for more than a few months.
ps. I don't think it was omniscient narration as we only followed Manny, and he did not know what was going on with the other characters when he was not in their presence until after he asked them. But I could be wrong.