Entertainment Weekly either gave the movie The Feast of Love a good review or listed it in its top ten things for one week. Whichever it was, the reviewer went on to say that although the movie was good, the book upon which it was based was even better. So a paperback copy of The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter took its place on the shelf of to-be-reads. I finished it last night. I wasn't that crazy about it, but I am looking forward to the movie. It appears to be well cast. Greg Kinnear is on the cover, and there's a role I can see him playing. Ditto for Morgan Freeman. Thus, I anxiously await.
But back to the book. I'm a traditionalist. I like books where characters do things and talk to each other. Such scenes are rare in The Feast of Love. Love is often talked about and we see what characters who are "in love" do to each other. That's all okay. The author, however, does occasionally soar in his expression of an idea. Five pages are dog-eared.
1) Three characters are named Bradley, two dogs and the character I'm pretty sure Kinnear is playing. At one point the human Bradley is thinking about the two canine Bradleys and comes up with the following: "Their Bradley is smarter than this Bradley, but I don't care about that at all, not really, because at least with pets and for all I know with people, too, intelligence and quick-wittedness have noting to do with a talent for being loved, or being kind, nothing at all, less than nothing." (page 62) I think he has nailed a Truth there, indeed I do.
2) Power goes out in a shopping mall. Baxter writes, "Down at the center of the mall, the fountain has stopped surging water into the de-ionized air, and the water sits there, gathering dust." (page 121) Does still water gather dust? Can it? Why? Why not? And here we have a whole bunch of ideas and questions I've never thought about before. Can any science majors help me out?
3) Regarding a seedy neighborhood where fortune tellers ply their trade: "Anyway, you gotta drive over there on a sunny day. Otherwise it doesn't work. You get bad head colds in your psyche if you go there on a cloudy day. Then your psyche sneezes your good karma out into the ozone layer, where, of course, it burns away." (page 157) I'll heed the warning. I'll also use this sentence to point out something Baxter does very well. The book is all first person, switching among four speakers. Each voice is unique, and it's fun when each chapter starts to pick out who's talking.
4) "Girls leave home every day, set up house, buy dish drainers, colanders and garlic presses, thus bringing a version of themselves into existence." (page 287) I love the specificity; I love the idea. For me it was a nutmeg grater.
5) "We're constantly getting bulletins from the future, in case you haven't noticed, but mostly we ignore them because of the unsightly messengers, the slobby crackpots who get the information and have to pass it on with their bad breath and missing teeth." (page 296) Again: specificity and idea. When Baxter expresses an idea so clearly, to me that's poetry.
As I said earlier, I'm anxious to see the movie. But I'm also afraid that the things I liked best about the book aren't going to translate well into film. I hope I'll be surprised.
