Some Can Whistle (Again)

As I write this, I'm sitting on the front porch of a quaint house in downtown Cleveland, Tennessee, a city that strangely enough, I've never visited in my 50 + years of living in Tennessee.  

Why I am here?  That's a difficult question to answer, existentially. 

JP is running in a track meet at Lee University this weekend.  I was able to find an Airbnb a few short blocks away from campus and a five minute drive from the track.  It's a quite a nice, older neighborhood, tucked away away between downtown, historic Cleveland on one side and a series of strip malls on the other.  A bit of an oasis, it seems to me.  Some smaller, modest houses and a few larger, almost antebellum houses on Ocoee Street.  

It's strange to me that I've never been to Cleveland, particularly since I have several fraternity brothers from here, a few of whom I was quite close to during college.  Speaking of which, on a lark I decided to try to track down Greg Mooney, my little brother in the fraternity, as I drove into town late yesterday afternoon.  I was successful and on the eve of his older daughter's wedding, we had a nice chat on the phone.  

JP ran the second heat of the 800 last night.  He finished 5th, I think, in a fast race, clocking a 1:55:02.  That's another PR for JP by more than a second almost a sub-1:55.  JP was pleased, I think, as he's beginning to feel like himself on the track again, which is nice.  H runs the mile tonight, in about an hour and a half.  I hope he has another good race.

To close out May and "Larry McMurtry Month" - self-designated - I just finished "Some Can Whistle" (1989), a sequel to "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" (1972).  Both of the novels are semi-autobiographical, particularly "Some Can Whistle," as the protagonist is a novelist and, later, a television producer, Danny Deck.  Neither are particularly uplifting - actually, they're kind of bleak - but Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite writers and, as always, these two novels are well written a resonate with me.

What's really strange, though, is I had a fairly vivid recollection of reading "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers," and Danny Deck as a young man is a character who always stayed with me.  The scene at the end, when he drowned the manuscript of his second novel in the Rio Grand, was a memorable one, and something I had never forgotten.

When I picked out "Some Can Whistle" from the bookcase in my office upstairs at home, I assumed it was a book I had purchased sone ago but never read.  It wasn't until I opened it and turned a few pages that I saw I had finished reading it - the first time - on February 4, 1993, more than 33 years ago.  I would have been in my last year of all school in Knoxville when I originally read it.

What's really strange and, honestly, a little troubling, is that I had absolutely no independent recollection reading "Some Can Whistle" the first time.  When I re-read it, nothing at all was familiar to me.  Not the story, the characters, the plot, or the ending.  Nothing.  Still, I wouldn't have dated it and put my name in it in February of 1993 if I hadn't read it.  Weird.

Maybe it hit me differently now because I am older and Danny Deck in "Some Can Whistle" is closer to my age.  Danny Deck in "All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers" was closer to my age, then, when I read it for the first time.  

It reminded me, too, that I read fiction not necessarily to remember what I have read, because often times that fades.  I can't recall the details of "Cold Mountain" (Charles Frazier) or "American Pastoral" (Phillip Roth), although I loved both of those books.  I read fiction because I enjoy it - in the moment - and simply for the love of reading.  That's the takeaway for me, I think.  

Now, it's off to the track to watch JP run.