The Fool's Progress Regresses

The Fool's Progress, by Edward Abbey; courtesy of Uncle Joe

Naturally, for a book that follows one man's long life, The Fool's Progress went through its ups and downs.  Henry Holyoak Lightcap's memories (Or Abbey's?  It's subtitled, "an honest novel"; I'll look into how autobiographical it supposedly is after getting my initial thoughts down.) of how he got to his last, desperate, cross-country homecoming - and my reactions - fell into three distinct phases.

I. First, you have memories of a quaint but troubled Appalachian childhood.  While Henry dwells on his difficult father, lighter interludes were more fun.  Shenanigans like stealing coal from a train stick to the main themes, while the baseball game and war stories seemed more like pure entertainment.  Mixed in you have present-day stream of consciousness of a breakup, binge, hangover, etc.  I laughed at the line: "How can you be so rotten?  How can you be such a rotten obnoxious swine?  After a moment's thought, I answered, It ain't easy."

II. Things took a frustrating turn when Lightcap reminisces about Claire.  Abbey really started to lose me with a generic proto-Manic Pixie Dream Girl story.  Claire is young, beautiful, smart, artistic, coy, and unpredictable, (eventually) with a sex drive to match Henry's.  Meanwhile, he is, as we're well aware at this point, kind of a loser and jackass.  What does she see in him?  Sure, he's kind of funny, but it's kind of a pathetic male fantasy that that would be enough to win the girl.

The one possibility to redeem this part of the story returns to the autobiographical questions.  How much is Abbey faithful to real memories, or is he playing with the Lightcap character?  Is he conscious of how incongruous their romance was?  Is he selectively telling the story from Henry's perspective to dwell on his insecurities and eventual heartbreak?  Even though the MPDG concept only attracted the spotlight in the last few years, is he self-aware at all about the fantasy, or is he another oblivious male author of the time (I'm thinking of James Salter's Solo Faces here)?

III. Old Henry had some ground to make up in more ways than one in the last chapters of the book.  I don't think I ever really liked him, but it was impossible not to be moved by him (and poor Sollie the dog) hitting rock bottom, losing everything and barely able to push himself on.  It's not as uplifting as Big Chief Bromden escaping into the Oregon wilds, but in a similar vein.  Brother Will should have had the last word: "Nobody said you had to stay, you damn fool.  And nobody said you had to leave neither."  (Of course, there are a few more pages of pure fantasy about his daughter that bring things back to my least-favorite parts.)

So, despite a strong finish in some ways, the book lost me and never quite came back from it.  Some lines spoke to me at this stage of life (even if Lightcap will never be a role model), but mostly from the early-to-middle parts.

• Inspiration for hitting the road west: "The altimeter on the dash reads 6400.  Good.  A good height from which to contemplate the misery of the lowlands."  And: "A pickup truck is fine, a horse is better, but in the end when you come right down to it the noblest mode of locomotion is that by way of the legs, proceeding upright, erect, like a human being, not squatting on the haunches like a frog."
• In contrast, New York City: "Wherever he looked the view was the same: steel, cement, glass, iron, brick, asphalt, extending, as he knew from bitter experience, for miles, for leagues, for eternities in every direction, north to Boston, south to Baltimore, the world's greatest labyrinth, full of Minotaurs."
• A modest life goal I can take: "Henry Lightcap had found his niche, his slot, his cranny, his refuge in the vast vermiculate edifice of the American socioeconomy."
• And for an eventual return: "Eastward, homeward, deep in the heart of Kansas, downhill most all the way."