Elizabeth's Blog-Along on 'The Accidental Tourist'!

Dear Blobbists, 

As I mentioned in a previous post, Elizabeth read along with me for Macon and Muriel and the whole wild ride. Here are her thoughts on the read, with a few bits of my commentary sprinkled in (in purple, to make Mar smile). To be clear, I asked her not to read my blob before writing her thoughts, so you'll see some overlaps. 

Enjoy!

Elizabeth's thoughts, in no particular order: 

As I mentioned before, the only other Anne Tyler book I have read was A Spool of Blue Thread, and I found it rather meandering, though the characters felt quite “real”. Not too long after, a friend of mine commented on GoodReads that Anne Tyler is one of her favorite authors and when I expressed my lukewarm feelings on Blue Thread, she said “She can write families like no other” and I had to agree on that count. When I realized that the Accidental Tourist was set in Baltimore too, and much of it would be largely taking place in the family’s ancestral home, I wondered if it would be very much like Blue Thread. Some authors tend to write the same story in the same place over and over. But I don’t think that was the case here. The Learys were really not very much like the Whiteshanks. The only similarity I felt was that both families had their own idiosyncrasies and a general feeling that the way they do things is the RIGHT way, and everyone else is ignorant, misled, weird, or just plain wrong. Yet, Tyler manages to show that no family is immune to the struggles that come for everyone - sickness, loss, heartbreak, but also unexpected joy. This story had a much more contained storyline than Blue Thread and I appreciated that very much.

THEMES!

TRAVEL / HOME / FOREIGNNESS

In the afternoon (so to speak), he visited hotels. … Most were maintaining their standards, more or less, but something had happened to the Royal Prince. The fact was that it seemed…well, foreign. Dark, handsome men in slim silk suits murmured in the lobby while little brown children chased each other around the spittoons. Macon had the feeling he’d got even more hopelessly lost than usual and ended up in Cairo. Cone-shaped ladies in long black veils packed the revolving doors, spinning in from the street with shopping bags full of…what? He tried to imagine their purchasing stone-washed denim shorts and thigh-high boots of pink mesh—the merchandise he’d seen in most shop windows. “Er…” he said to the manager. How to put this? He hated to sound narrow-minded, but his readers did avoid the exotic.

Yikes. This passage makes me wince with the latent racism / xenophobia! Though it goes along with the theme of reluctant travelers, who only want to be reminded of the familiar when they are away from home. [Ooph, same feels for me.]

“To tell the truth,” Macon said, “I’ve always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals.”
“Animals?”
“I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?”

Yes, I completely agree with Macon. And this is why we now have CAT CAFES all over big cities! Cat Hotels has got to be the next big thing… [OMG I AM SO HERE FOR CAT HOTELS. YES PLZ.]

GRIEF/ LOSS / MEMORY

When Macon’s niece Susan joins him on his Philadelphia trip and mentions Ethan:
She pressed her fingertips to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For what?”
  “I didn’t mean to talk about him.”
   “You can talk about him.”
 “I don’t want to,” she said.
  She gazed off across the room. Macon, following her eyes, found only a harpsichord. He looked back at her and saw her chin trembling.
 It had never occurred to him that Ethan’s cousins missed him too.

This is so poignant. Grief can be so all-consuming, that one suffering from it becomes a bit self-centered, and unable to see others that are suffering too. There is also a tendency for people to avoid talking about the loss to the ones who are at the center of it, as though speaking of it will hurt them more. I loved this whole scene of Macon and his niece dearly remembering his dead son. This bit too:

“You don’t think he’s mad at us, do you, Uncle Macon?”
 “Who’s that?”
“You think he’s mad we’re starting to forget him?”
“Oh, no, honey. I’m sure he’s not.”

I think everyone can relate to that pang of guilt a person may feel when they realize they haven’t thought of their deceased loved one lately.

I liked this description of how a memory can live in your physical body, not just your mind:

Macon was visited by one of those memories that dent the skin, that strain the muscles. He felt the seat of Ethan’s bike pressing into his hand—the curled-under edge at the rear that you hold onto when you’re trying to keep a bicycle upright. He felt the sidewalk slapping against his soles as he ran. He felt himself let go, slow to a walk, stop with his hands on his hips to call out, “You’ve got her now! You’ve got her!” And Ethan rode away from him, strong and proud and straight-backed, his hair picking up the light till he passed beneath an oak tree. [I forgot about this! Reminds me of Proust remembering the shape of his bed as he wakes up.]

I thought that nicely compared with the stillness and emptiness of the corpse of a loved one, as described when he recollects the time he went to identify Ethan’s body at the morgue: “Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him. This was simply an untenanted shell…”

In the sleepiness of the night, Muriel places his hand on her C-section scar and it speaks to the universality of grief and loss:

And it seemed to him, as he sank back into his dreams, that she had as good as spoken aloud. About your son, she seemed to be saying: Just put your hand here. I’m scarred, too. We’re all scarred. You are not the only one.

BECOMING A CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON / BEING UNABLE TO CHANGE ONESELF / FINDING STRENGTH TO CHANGE AFTER ALL

I enjoyed following Macon’s journey along this path - first finding himself successful in dating Sarah when he “played it cool” as a young man, then realizing he was unable to STOP playing it cool as he got older. I also enjoyed the descriptions of the Leary family and their specific behaviors that seemed to drive away spouses. I could relate to both Sarah and Muriel as they perceived Macon. Sarah, for being initially attracted to Macon’s cool remoteness, and then later frustrated by their lack of intimacy, especially as they navigated the depths of grief. And yet… still missing him when they were separated. And Muriel for being an open book, being patient and generous of herself with him, and then feeling frustrated when he was holding himself back and not treating her as family.

So many universal feelings related to love and relationships:

• feeling attracted to someone for some feature that later on seems to drive you apart

• finding yourself having locked into certain behavioral patterns for reasons unknown and seemingly incapable to stop doing them

• the joy of being with someone who brings out a different side of yourself, that was previously hidden or unknown 

• what is more important - being with someone who accepts you as-is, or being with someone who challenges you to be different, maybe even better?

• how do you define love? Is it admiring the other person? or admiring who YOU are when you are with that person? [Love this. It's the central question for Macon!]

Upon presenting a cool exterior to Sarah in their early days of dating, when he sometimes didn’t really feel that way at all

He felt he’d been backed into a false position. He was forced to present this impassive front if he wanted her to love him. Oh, so much was expected of men!

Well, that is just hilarious in a head-up-his-ass kinda way. He didn’t stop to think what kind of “front” she may be presenting to him. MEN! [LOL. Preach.]

Later on, Sarah says to Macon:

“Everything that might touch you or upset you or disrupt you, you’ve given up without a murmur and done without, said you never wanted it anyhow.”

hmmmm foreshadowing??? Muriel certainly touches, upsets and disrupts Macon!!

On Rose’s extremely low-and-slow cooked turkey dinner: 

“It’s pure poison,” Danny finished for him.

This scene had me laughing over the nitpickiness of the Leary brothers, when Rose DARES to try something different, mixed with the boredom of Porter’s teenagers, who probably just contributed to the insanity for entertainment purposes. [LOL agreed. I also loved that Julian ate the 'pure poison'. :)]

Macon finds himself becoming a different person with Muriel, and like it:

Then he knew that what mattered was the pattern of her life; that although he did not love her he loved the surprise of her, and also the surprise of himself when he was with her. In the foreign country that was Singleton Street he was an entirely different person. This person had never been suspected of narrowness, never been accused of chilliness; in fact, was mocked for his soft heart. And was anything but orderly.

Muriel starts to get uneasy about Macon’s seeming disinterest in commitment (and appropriately so). She seems to notice that men seem attracted to her because they find themselves able to change when they are with her… and then … they leave.

“It was like I had, you know, cured him, just so he could elope with another woman.”
“Well,” he said.
“You wouldn’t do anything like that, would you, Macon?”

Later, after Macon learns she had quit her job and was starting to rely on him, and his brain starts going ALERT ALERT! 

Seeing her go was like shucking off a great, dragging burden.

And Muriel works her magic again, reassuring him and bringing a smile to his face, this time with a mitten-puppet:

“I’m not Muriel! I’m Mitchell Mitten! Macon, don’t you know Muriel can always take care of herself?” the puppet asked him. “Don’t you know she could find another job tomorrow, if she wanted?…”
I kind of want a little Mitchell Mitten for myself, who can tell me that everything will be okay! [OMG yes I LOVED the mitten-puppet!]

Muriel pushing to go to France with him, refusing to be mugged, etc: 

He had to admire her. Had he ever known such a fighter?
I guess he hasn’t! Seems like most people in his life seem to resign themselves to the hand they are dealt.

Macon again notices how he has changed and wants someone to notice!! Like oh uhmmm I dunno, his estranged wife??

Macon, listening absently while Edward sighed at his feet, had a sudden view of his life as rich and full and astonishing. He would have liked to show it off to someone. He wanted to sweep out an arm and say, “See?”
  But the person he would have liked to show it to was Sarah.

Sarah and Macon on deciding who to be with at this later stage in their lives:

“Macon, I think that after a certain age people just don’t have a choice,” Sarah said. “You’re who I’m with. It’s too late for me to change. I’ve used up too much of my life now.”
…
“After a certain age,” he told Sarah, “it seems to me you can only choose what to lose.”

They both agree with each other, but they aren’t saying exactly the same thing….

…he began to believe that people could, in fact, be used up—could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other and maybe even do harm to each other. He began to think that who you are when you’re with somebody may matter more than whether you love her.

Again, this idea that certain people enhance who you are, and other people detract… and maybe that should be how you select a partner.

More Leary siblings driving away their partners —Sarah describes Rose as like a flounder - “she’s lain on the ocean floor so long, one eye has moved to the other side of her head” - And Julian describes how she ended up moving back to her grandparents house and taking care of “the boys”. I wonder if Macon thinks about Rose’s inability to change and sees it in himself too? Is this why the phrase “you could have taken steps” has such an effect on him at the very end?? His thoughts:

He reflected that he had not taken steps very often in his life, come to think of it. Really never. His marriage, his two jobs, his time with Muriel, his return to Sarah—all seemed to have simply befallen him. He couldn’t think of a single major act he had managed of his own accord.
  Was it too late now to begin?
Was there any way he could learn to do things differently?

This is a great line of thought. So many of us drift through life, one thing after the other. It can be hard to change that habit and actually make up your mind on what you want.. then fight for it!

There is this motif of Muriel weaving threads into Macon: 

It seemed she had webbed his mind with her stories, wound him in slender steely threads from her life.

Upon leaving Muriel, and it not being “so clean-cut” like in the movies when important changes happen in characters’ lives. Macon has to leave some belongings behind.

He had to abandon them—messy, trailing strings of himself cluttering his leavetaking.

Later, when she shows up on the plane to France with him - He was conscious only of Muriel somewhere behind him. He felt wired to her. 

Macon later describes a feeling of tug-of-war with her when she urges him to go to breakfast with her Paris, he declines, then she turns around and walks out…

After they have dinner in Paris and he declines to join her in her room after: And then he felt how she drew at him, pulling deep strings from inside him, when the elevator creaked away with her.

Interesting that the last page, when he rejoins Muriel, does not have any thread/wire/string imagery… instead, confetti!

Little bits I liked:

• Macon wasn’t very familiar with dogs. He preferred cats. He liked the way cats kept their own counsel.

This says a lot about Macon - throughout the book he tries to block out unsolicited stories, advice, secrets, etc. You can easily imagine him awkwardly trying to back out of conversations throughout the book. So it’s interesting that the book follows his relationship with Edward the dog FAR more than Helen the cat (who is barely mentioned at all). 

• In New York the passengers scattered instantly. Macon thought of a seed pod bursting open.

I like this bit of imagery. Why don’t I think of things like this when I’m navigating crowds?

Words I learned: 
So, I didn’t really learn new words; instead, I learned how NOT to use some words - like nauseous or enormity! A few of the Leary-corrections I did know and also am annoyed by - “eck cetera” or abusing the phrase “literally”. When people mix up “your” and “you’re” or “they’re” and “their” I just figure, poor thing, you are not so bright, you can’t help it. But when educated people mix up “effect” and “affect” or “less” vs “fewer” I feel my eyelid start to twitching!! (and YET, I abuse grammar all the time… so where do I get off???) [LOL right there with you. English and Latin teacher parents, so grammar was an all the time topic of conversation. ;)]