| Title | : | Testing the Current (New York Review Books Classics) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1590176022 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781590176023 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 345 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1984 |
In Testing the Current William McPherson subtly sets off his wide-eyed protagonist’s perspective with mature reflection and wry humor and surrounds him with a cast of vibrant characters, creating a scrupulously observed portrait of a place and time that will shimmer in readers’ minds long after the final page is turned.
Testing the Current (New York Review Books Classics) Reviews
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This book starts with a kind of Prologue titled Kinderszenen. What follows is indeed Scenes from a Childhood. Tommy MacAllister is eight years-old. It is an age when you are small enough to hide under a dining room table; so you can see everything, even things which you can not quite understand. And answers are not easily gained.
"What's adultery?" he asked. There was a long pause. The fireflies played, the lanterns burned soft and steady, music and laughter and the sounds of dancing floated out from the clubhouse.
"Adultery?" Phil Meyer gave him a quick look. "Well, I guess you'd say it's something adults do. . . ."
The year in which the the events of this book unfurl is 1939. But the events of the world do not reach the country club setting. Tommy's father had actually made money in the Depression. There are parties and dances and golf, instead. And adultery. All seen through a child's eyes.
Tommy's mother often plays the Schumann. Follow the notes: Träumerei, which means daydreaming but can also mean reverie; and this town, seemingly so isolated, is named Grande-Rivière.
Scenes from a childhood. Tommy saw how Lucien Wolfe's footprint got on the curtain, saw the spill on the carpet. Things get cleaned, of course. You'd only know it was there if you saw the mess when it was made.
Mrs. Aldrich said that whenever anyone spilled anything, she just cleaned up the spot at once. It was a lot easier for her to treat the spots as they occurred. That way it never showed the dirt. Oh, of course sometime it might have to be washed, she said, but it would probably never look as good again. She'd leave that job for her children or her grandchildren.
At the last big party of the summer at the club, Mr. Hutchins gets beyond drunk and Ophelia, the club steward, suggests maybe he's had enough. He shouts a horribly offensive racial epithet at her and is hustled away. One of the hosts says, "I don't think anyone noticed." As if, you know, the real concern is not Ophelia but an awkward unpleasantness among the guests. Mrs. Steer, a very nicely drawn character,* considers going to Ophelia to apologize, but . . . Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do. Maybe it would make her feel funny.
Tommy noticed that too, saw that mess as it was made.
By the end, it was that subtlety which won me over. That Mr. Wolfe's coins became tarnished, that Mrs. Steer's writing was hard to read; that there are many kinds of messes, that they are noticed.
The people at Mrs. Wentworth's party were all talking about the dance--everyone of them had been there--and about the war. As if the two subjects were equal, you see. Mrs. Steer was there, trying to find some news on the radio but she wasn't having any luck. The radio was just playing church music. "Damn it," she said. She looked at him. She was not smiling. "The whole world is blowing up, Tommy. . . . Nothing will ever be the same again" -- and she snapped off the radio and left the room.
Holding a grandchild, I wonder at the messes he will inherit.
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*That Mrs. Steer, born in Denmark, would be churning over what would be the right thing to do for 'Ophelia' is just one of the little nuances in this book which would make for a very nice group read or discussion. -
Veneer is the best word here. This is the rather restricted world of upscale Grand Riviere, MI during the Depression. The hard world outside is exactly that, however. Outside. The novel is this world viewed through the eyes of 7-year old Tommy MacAllister who always keeps in mind what he's been told is the good and best way of conducting oneself with friends and neighbors, and particularly with adults. It's adults Tommy observes most closely, and there the veneer becomes apparent as he realizes there are some things he doesn't understand but still knows enough to have misgivings about. Beneath the propriety of family and neighbors there's an undercurrent of mischief and misconduct he can register but not quite make sense of.
Faintly reminding me of William Maxwell's fine Time Will Darken It, this is an intense and microscopic look at his parents, siblings, and those they socialize with. Nicely rendered, consistently innocent yet full of clues, it drags at times because the observations of Tommy are often too detailed without any forward movement in the novel other than his observations themselves. The long Thanksgiving Day dinner and Christmas day celebration are examples. The novel is best when Tommy sees adults being themselves. He suspects but doesn't fully understand. His pov, however, passes understanding to the reader. -
Perfect! Unmarred by sentimentality, false epiphanies or forced drama, this novel both elegantly depicts a specific class in a specific time and conveys with rare understanding and subtlety the inevitable poignancy of growing up. I can't believe it took me so long to discover this book. If I had a list of favorite books, this would make it easily.
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Loved.
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I generally dislike novels with juvenile narrators. If I'd known the protagonist of this one would be age 7-8 for the duration, I doubt I would have picked it up.
The setting is far northern Michigan, near the Canadian border, in the year 1939. The bulk of the characters are upper middle class Wasps, with one or two Jews and some black and Indian (Native American) help. (Workers/domestics/servants.) Young Tommy MacAllister has attractive parents and two much older brothers. He is friends with the youngsters in town, but seems to spend most of his time with the middle-aged ladies his family knows. Everyone spends hours at the country club, golfing and eating. They all vacation on "the Island" nearby, with the Indians ferrying them back and forth in boats. Tommy's mother has an affair with one of the men in town. Not much else happens. Tommy's tiny, circumscribed world is half focused on all the different people in it, and half on holidays, meals, and gifts brought him.
People seem to think this white Waspy country-club Midwestern Republican milieu is a vanished world. -
I can best enthuse about this novel by way of an improbable analogy. Don't laugh, but the closest approximation to the feeling that this book gives me is "A Christmas Story", yes, the film.
Why? It's hard to describe. Both take place in the 1930s and both deal with uncentered, ungrounded memory. Both are nostalgic works of no little whimsy, and both are fine examples of literature as through a child's eyes, deftly crafted by an adult years afterwards.
There isn't even a central plot, but, like Ralphie's tale, is a collection, or even collision, of disparate memories, peopled by wonderfully ordinary people.
With no real plot to speak of, Tommy MacAllister, age 8, walks us through his upper middle-class (or higher, hard to tell) life somewhere in Michigan (?) in 1939. The looming war and other things are only very peripheral. In fact, the whole account seems a set-up for all the bad shit that will happen later. Tommy observes the crazy shit the adults around him say and do and he tries to understand them, and so do we. None of us have quite figured it out yet, and that might be the key thing.
Great characters, patchwork, quiet beauty--unjustly overlooked these days. -
First published in 1984 and reissued by NYRB Classics in 2013, William McPherson’s excellent first novel Testing the Current harks back to a bygone age. Set in the late 1930s in a small town in Michigan near the Canadian border, the novel focuses on one year in the life of eight-year-old Tommy MacAllister. Each summer, Tommy’s family and their financially-comfortable WASP friends retreat to a group of small islands in the river that runs by their town, where their days centre on rounds of golf at the country club, dinners, dances and other social engagements.
Tommy is a keen observer of behaviour, often picking up much more than his elders realise, but at eight years of age, he doesn’t always know why people behave the way they do. And this idea brings us to the novel’s main theme: namely, this young boy’s growing awareness of the adult world and his quest to make sense of it:
And at that moment, as he stared off into the dusk, beneath the paper lanterns hanging from the eaves of the long porch and the moss baskets of ivy and begonias, there was nothing on his mind that he could put into words, more a state of mind than anything on it – solitude, the mystery of life, that sort of thing, which at eight, he had a sense of but lacked the structure in which to put it. (pg. 11, NYRB)
Driven by a desire to understand the ‘many mysteries of the grown-up world,’ Tommy is constantly curious about his surroundings, frequently asking questions his parents seem unable to answer to his satisfaction:
“Do you love Daddy?” Tommy persisted. “Of course I love Daddy,” his mother replied. She was really exasperated now. “He’s my husband! He’s your father! Now Tommy, stop being a pest.” But Tommy, unable to resist, asked, “Who do you love more, me or Daddy?”
“I love you both,” his mother said, softening a little. “It’s a different kind of love, that’s all. When you get older, you’ll learn that love is a lot more complicated than it seems, my darling. A lot more complicated. It’s not at all simple.”
It seemed simple to Tommy. Love was love, he thought, and that was that, the only difference being that you loved some people more than others. How could there be different kinds of love? (pg. 121)
Tommy’s brothers, John and David – both college-age, both dating girls – seem very grown-up with their own lives to lead. But the young boy finds adult allies in the shape of Mrs Steer, mother of his friend Amy and the only Democrat in his parents’ set and the somewhat eccentric Mrs Slade, whom – to the embarrassment of his mother – Tommy finds fascinating. Mrs Slade, a neighbour who also happens to be the aunt of David’s girlfriend Margie, injects herself with morphine, a habit acquired following a double mastectomy – another thing everybody except Tommy seems to know, but never discusses. Never that is until a family dinner (with Margie in attendance) when Tommy tells of how Mrs Slade showed him the needle and injected herself in the leg. Later that night when John tells Tommy that Mrs Slade is ‘a dope fiend,’ the young boy considers Mrs Slade more exciting and interesting as a result:
“Why does Mrs Slade take morphine?” Tommy asked. It sounded delicious (pg. 36)
To read the rest of my review, please click here:
https://jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2014... -
This is a very solid American bildungsroman. And its success is due to both the strange world it is set in, and the precocious voice of 8-year-old Tommy MacAllister. The setting is a small town in northern Michigan, somewhere close to the lake and not far from Canada. Tommy, his family, and their friends live in town during the winter, and on the Island during the summer. It's set in 1939 or so. The Depression is over and most people here have come out if untouched, though some have lost their former fortune. They are rich, they are Christians (mostly), they are conservative (mostly) and don't like FDR. The town is staffed mainly by local Native Americans, whose treatment is paternalistic. There is one Jewish family, who started off poor, became rich, and are only half accepted. The Meyers give more money to the local church than any other family. Everyone likes to play golf. It's a world that has disappeared now, a world that is really hard to imagine for me in fact. Wealthy without being greedy or crude. Intolerant but generally nice. The whole town takes summer off. And the families remember their foreign ancestors, while at the same time being very much American. It's a world that though far from perfect, smells nice from the modern age. Nostalgia is clearly playing a part here, but it comes without the idealism that gives nostalgia its bad connotation, instead it seem to inspire McPherson to recreate an old, dead, and really pretty interesting world.
And Tommy's voice is wonderful. He's the smart little kid who is growing up and realizing that the adult world is flawed and deceptive. Racism is under the surface and certain people let it out when drunk. Women are judged, judge, have little to do, and at the mercy of their local society. Adultery lurks not far behind even the most perfect of families. And Tommy sees it all with his own growing eyes. He doesn't know everything that is going around him, but he picks up on a lot, and fortunately the reader can see his imperfect perception and fill in the gaps with their own understand of human nature, with the help of a really well written book by McPherson. -
Beautifully written but not my kind of book. Story is about upper middle class or lower upper class routine doings in 1939. Did not like the voice. Narrator is voice of 8 year old whose musings, reflections, observations and descriptions are not of an 8 year old but rather of an adult who is pretending to be 8 years old. I found it annoying. This is what I call for me a "grind-it-out" book. I never stop reading a book I started because I figure I can always learn something. However, that being said, this is one I would have stopped if I didn't have my personal "grind-it-out" policy.
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An eight-year-old in an idyllic, midwestern youth comes to grips with the sexual and moral misdeeds of his elders. McpHerson has a real genius for replicating the mindset of childhood, there’s a ton of stuff in here that echo my (and I suspect, your) dim memories of that age, the odd traditions our young minds grasp onto, our fears and obsessions, the enormous enthusiasms which only children are capable and for which adults are ever envious. Lyrical, beautiful, lots of fun. Check it out.
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A worthy read and worth sticking with it. A seemingly simple rendition of a year in the life of an 7-8 year old boy is much, much more. There is everything from upper class snobbery, racism in Upper Peninsula, Michigan and wrongdoing by a major corporation. Introduced to this at book group at Grandpa's Barn in Copper Harbor, MI. One of the members reported that the area in the book saw 5 military bases during WWII. This book ends with the rumblings of war in 1939. Overall, a book full of insights. The writing style is rich with long, long sentences. But isn't that how a little boy (or girl) thinks? My life is richer after reading this. I carry memories of the people and events in the book.
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One the finest books that I have read in quite some time. This book reads like the author is right beside you. I was instantly absorbed by the main character and with each revelation, I echoed his emotions(confusion, joy, disappointment). I am sad that this is the only book that is worthy of merit, according to reviews-but I just might try the other anyway. Close to perfect.
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Tedious to the extent I couldn't be bothered finishing.
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This is a book that I read.
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I think I didn't read this right. I should have tried harder to keep up with all of the characters ... but at the start I thought we were just setting the scene for the plot to come later. But that was the plot. If it was a better book, it would be worth re-reading.
Bits:
"Tommy wasn't sure he'd ever grow up that much, to be as easy, as assured, as handsome as John and his friends. It seemed a fearsome and not altogether likely prospect."
"'You never know how you feel about your tits, Tommy, until they cut 'em off,' and she opened her negligee and showed him the tubes of flesh flapping from her chest like laundry on a line."
"'If nobody talks about it, how does everyone know about it?' Tommy asked. 'She doesn't wear a sign.'"
"'You know the Logans ... they do hate to lose a yacht.'"
"'I love to dance, myself, but now it practically takes an Act of Congress to get Roger onto the floor, at least with me. And then he makes me feel like a barge with a tugboat'
'Elizabeth ... you're the first ninety-eight pound barge I've ever seen. He should dance with me. He'd think he had the Queen Mary in tow.'" -
very wordy, easily skimmed, but good. I fell into its rythm, and loved the characters. A rich country club family set in the Great Depression.
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I'm not sure why I stuck with this book because despite the potentially interesting topic - coming of age story during the Depression in Upper Peninsula, the story was tedious and repetitive.
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[Testing the Current] fits into the precocious and observant child story line, think [Member of the Wedding] but less earthshaking, though full of tremors and ominous out-gassing. The locale is a small town, Grande Rivière up on the Canadian border and Tommy's father is the Big Man, the owner of a factory that processes . . . well, who cares? . . . the huge furnaces never stop burning unless there is an explosion and makes the family pots of money. 1939, Tommy's family have weathered the Depression just fine and offer employment to the town as well -- his father is a conscientious man and loves his work. His mother is small, kind, and a beauty, a catch, but comes across as immature and unfinished ultimately, as a person, as women of that era were still encouraged to be. Tommy is ten or more years younger than his two brothers, born as his mother was approaching 40. This is a nothing really happens sort of novel. Summertime and Tommy 7 going on 8 is going about his usual activities. There is a rigid order to everything, arcane rituals to be learned at almost every level of sociality, even what might seem minor--and new privileges for Tommy gain as Tommy grows up. He's impatient for long pants, for a bicycle, to be able to learn to row from "The Island" only a few miles from home where summer "cottages" have been built on the big river that flows near the town of Grande Riviere. He's also trying to figure out what matters to adults, e.g. sex, and there is plenty going on, of course. The climax of the summer is the party his parents give for their 25th anniversary at the (also nearby) country club. In an Angela Thirkell novel there would be a different atmosphere altogether, but here there are dissonances here, special American ones -- the privileged whites are served by "Negroes" and "Indians" and do not share bathrooms or much of anything beyond a basic politeness. And there is the impending war looming over all, of which Tommy only becomes aware of near the end, so the novel captures a breathless moment, much like 1914. It is a couple of decades too late to be the story of Nick Carraway's childhood in the midwest, but my guess is, but I kept him in mind as I read. MacPherson makes the connection somewhat explicit with a beautiful young woman named Daisy who has married for money. She is a fine golfer and Tommy is learning to play and admires her form . . . "form" is a word that matters -- style, form, appearances . . . one member of the social circle, Mrs. Steer, is Danish and intellectual and is reading a book called: Anticipating the Eventual Emergence of Form. (I looked, doesn't exist!) A dog dies and is stuffed, and comforts his former mistress with the appearance of a dog. Eccentricities are tolerated as long as a person doesn't wander too far outside the acceptable. Much here resonated with me, I know my parents were brought up similarly, albeit in the East not the Midwest. I take nothing for granted, but my mother, especially, did and struggled valiantly to keep up after the 1960's. ****1/2
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interesting and unconventional story telling by an eight year-old boy. it's 1939, his parents and their friends are wealthy in small town America. they belong to a golf and country club. Tommy tells us all about his experiences with his older brothers, their girl friends, his mother, his father, each of the neighbors, his aunts and uncles, his dead grandparents, the people who work in the club, the servants, and just about everyone who falls into his company. he's a curious kid, thoughtful, a bit skittish, likable, and dreadfully honest. This story reads quite unlike any other i can recall, and i think most thoughtful readers, especially those who were ever boys, or those who were girls but had brothers, will enjoy it very much. i did, though i'm not quite sure why. Perhaps because my own life at that age was not anything like Tommy's life.
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Ambivalent. Was hoping the afterward would address some of my issues but the author complicated things by bringing in information from the sequel. The 7-8 year old narrator distances the reader by presenting the novel in the third person, blunting his responses to all these "end of an era" social issues around him. By the same token, the novel provides a slice of WASP Americana circa late 1930's and is a superb example of roman-fleuve!
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Beautifully written with an almost Proustian ability to making the past (in this case up state Michigan in the 30's) come alive.
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One of the best books I've read in a long time. Brought back so many memories of time up north, what family gatherings once were and looking at life through an 8 year old's eyes. Highly recommend.
