Amor towles rules of civility review6/8/2023 “Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience.” Some of Towles’s characters manage to achieve that goal, some do not, and therein lies the tale. The 110th rule turns out to be the most important in Towles’ New York. Towles goes beyond the unvoiced, however, by printing a schoolboy’s version of the code, George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation, by giving his characters access to young George’s axioms, and by holding them accountable. In an urban landscape controlled by finance and breeding and culture and aspirations, everyone acts and reacts according to an unspoken set of “rules of civility.” They, of course, were describing social intrigues of more than a century ago, while Towles is focused on New York in the late 1930s, but all their characters move in the same moneyed circles and follow a tacit code of conduct. How does an author fit with his predecessors? How has he or she fallen short or moved beyond the masters’ acknowledged achievements? When I think of Amor Towles and his new novel, Rules of Civility, for example, I fondly remember his literary forebears, Edith Wharton and Henry James. As I read books for “Bookin’ with Sunny,” I realize that I’m always trying to put new publications in the context of the old.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |