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TIME: Almanac 1993
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TIME Almanac 1993.iso
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072792
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07279944.000
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REVIEWS, Page 71BOOKSFlip-Flopping Along
By MARTHA DUFFY
TITLE: THE EASY WAY OUT
AUTHOR: Stephen McCauley
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster; 298 pages; $20
THE BOTTOM LINE: There are many routes out of a bad
affair, and a sure-handed comic novelist delivers a surprising
one.
It's not easy to write a character who has the power to
charm. They're like witty people -- the author had better be
able to suggest an elusive quality without making heavy weather
of the whole matter. Stephen McCauley has that skill. The hero
of The Easy Way Out is a fellow of no obvious consequence, but
the reader gladly follows him through a dizzy emotional crisis.
Patrick has opted for an easy life working for an addled
travel agency in Cambridge, Mass. "I could flirt with the
customers, wear tight pants to work, drink at lunch, and swear
on the phone," he notes, but adds, with the grace that saves
him, that he wouldn't mind making "a tiny fraction of the world
a better place." His lover, Arthur, wants them to buy a house
together and settle down for good. But Patrick already knows
that he would be "stuck in a passionless domestic relationship."
Then there are his two heterosexual brothers, whom he
loves and whose interests he would like to promote. Ryan, the
elder, faces a divorce he does not want. Tony is in a situation
much like Patrick's: being propelled toward marriage to someone
he no longer loves. The O'Neils are a close-knit clan from
Boston's working-class suburbs, fiercely loyal people who are
usually at cross-purposes because they find it almost impossible
to speak their mind directly.
Mama Rita thinks the steady Arthur is the best thing that
ever happened to Patrick. Father James is half in love with
Loreen, Tony's determined fiance. In touchingly comic ways,
these parents -- mismatched themselves -- are determined to see
their offspring securely in wedlock, as if the kids could not
function on their own.
True to the title, Patrick takes the easy way out. It
isn't very admirable. McCauley builds the climax with the
ingenuity of an experienced comic novelist. Curling through the
book has been the saga of Patrick's efforts to get a Harvard
professor and his secret mistress a scarce reservation in
Bermuda. After the kind of sure but wayward plotting that marks
the work of David Lodge, Britain's master of academic foolery,
it turns out that Patrick gets to enjoy the booking and the
island's velvet sands -- with Arthur a thousand miles north.
Stephen McCauley, 37, has had an easy career. His first
novel, The Object of My Affection (1987), won critical and
popular esteem that only a tiny percentage of fiction -- first
or otherwise -- ever attracts. He grew up in Woburn, a Boston
suburb, the middle of three brothers. After the University of
Vermont, he says, "I flip-flopped along," teaching, working at
a Cambridge travel agency that was "full of wonderful, slow,
late-'70s atmosphere."
In 1982 the author went to Columbia for an M.F.A. degree
in writing. He has taught writing at several colleges, most
recently at Harvard. He lives with a friend in a leafy backwater
just north of Harvard Square. Mystery writer Robert Parker is
a neighbor. McCauley radiates satisfaction with his life. To
listen to him is to recall his book and a passage in which
someone describes a 19th century novel "as if the author and
most of the characters were close friends." As surely as
Victorians did, McCauley has tapped into that source.