That is much less a slight than a easy commentary of a mode — and one which comes with perceivable advantages. Most notably, Towles’s characters hit the web page like totally sculpted marble: frank of their conduct, stubborn of their morality and, by and huge, very handsome. In his latest work, “Desk for Two,” a group of six brief tales and a novella, Towles thrives on the crossroads of kind and approach. There’s not sufficient room for a personality to essentially mature in 30-odd pages; fortunately, Towles doesn’t want them to.
The gathering’s title derives from the character of its conflicts, most of which culminate in heated one-on-one dialog. These tales are simple in motion however resolve at refined moral angles, and so they come divided into two geographical sections: “New York” and “Los Angeles.” “The Line,” the opening story, takes place in post-revolutionary Moscow however concludes in “the center of Instances Sq., the place the road indicators flashed, the subway rumbled.” Delivered thus to Towles’s stomping grounds — he labored for practically 20 years at a Manhattan funding agency and nonetheless lives within the metropolis — it’s within the Huge Apple the place the 5 different brief tales stay.
Pushkin, the protagonist of “The Line,” stays in New York as a result of he spent all his financial savings on four-course ocean liner dinners whereas his spouse lay sick of their cabin. “Oh,” she thinks on the American passenger terminal, “how candy had been the notion that her husband had been reworked; that after many years of aimlessness, he had proved to be a person of objective and creativeness; and that her judgment in marrying him had not been so misguided.”
If “The Line” shares DNA with “A Gentleman in Moscow,” the subsequent story, “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett,” is an early excessive level that finds the creator in uncharted territory. Towles, in contrast to many novelists, has not solid writers in major roles. Enter Touchett, “his bachelor’s diploma from a well-regarded liberal arts school firmly in hand,” set on turning into “a celebrated novelist.”
Alas, the aspirant’s literary heroes — William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Fyodor Dostoevsky — have led lives of wondrous journey. Dostoevsky had even “been placed on a prepare and shipped to the precise Siberia.” Timothy’s mother and father, in the meantime, “hadn’t even bothered to succumb to alcoholism or file for divorce.”
“Oh, what crueler irony might there be,” Towles writes, “than for the gods to infuse a younger man with goals of literary fame after which present him with no experiences?”
Towles writes a author fairly properly, forcing Touchett right into a Faustian cut price involving classic books.
Concurrently, Towles cautions his friends in opposition to drawing too near their supply materials. “Like mother and father,” he provides in an apart, rapping his knuckles on the fourth wall, “authors don’t have any enterprise making an attempt to relive their glories or redeem their sins by the lives of their creations. Authors should be taught to stuff these burdens of their package baggage and lug them up the path themselves.”
Towles largely skirts the “path” of that the majority well-known tête-à-tête: marriage. For a group titled “Desk for Two,” with a marriage ring featured prominently on its cowl, these tales aren’t as conjugally inclined as one may think. In “Hasta Luego,” we’re informed of “the compromises of marriage,” which “govern when, what, and the way you eat.” However the marriage at stake, after a horrific day of airplane journey and a few late-night shenanigans at a lodge bar, belongs to somebody aside from the protagonist. The identical goes for “I Will Survive,” the place we discover a 68-year-old second husband mendacity about his squash schedule.
Towles’s work has all the time centered on the inside, and never simply the rooms of gilded Russian resorts. He’s all in favour of what makes individuals tick. And he’s most within the wishes of these with materials surplus, the purportedly worry-free — the Yale Membership makes a number of appearances; we meet “a ten-year-old boy dressed like T.S. Eliot.”
“Nobody is born pompous,” Towles reminds us, as if excusing his material. “To achieve that state requires a certain quantity of planning and energy.”
“Desk for Two” includes Towles’s first revealed brief tales, however he has mentioned that he “honed his abilities” within the medium, and it exhibits. The one place the place “Desk for Two” falters is within the novella that closes it, “Eve in Hollywood.”
“Positive-figured, with sandy hair, elegant and self-possessed,” the Eve of the title is Evelyn Ross from Towles’s “Guidelines of Civility,” who right here arrives in Los Angeles after a breakup in New York. “Eve in Hollywood” has strengths — it’s a winsome portrait of early Los Angeles circa “Gone with the Wind” — nevertheless it lacks the breezy impetus that makes the shorter items fly. Elaborate backstories are launched to paper over a few plot factors, and regardless of drama involving scheming paparazzi, the tone can typically really feel cloying. (“How does one fend off the affect of a summer season day? You begin by serving tea at three within the afternoon.”)
By this level, nevertheless, “Desk for Two” has greater than delivered. This assortment isn’t just spare items to tide readers over till Towles’s subsequent novel. It’s a worthwhile addition to his rising oeuvre.
Eric Olson is a author and critic primarily based in Seattle.