The Books: “The Fiery Pantheon” (Nancy Lemann)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

The Fiery Pantheon by Nancy Lemann

The Fiery Pantheon is Nancy Lemann’s third novel – which, once again, involves a hilarious (tragi-comic) extended family of wacky Southerners … many of whom are transplanted to New York City. It also features a heroine -Grace Stewart – who yearns to idolize people. She looks for mentors. She searches for those who embody the qualities she thinks are paramount: stoicism, rectitude, kindness – old-school qualities. She’s a young woman, but her heart cracks at the sight of a doddery old gentleman in a seersucker suit, being stoic and kind. She’s young – and she’s actually a gorgeous woman – but she’s embarrassed by her looks, so she makes a huge effort to “be drab”. It, of course, doesn’t work. Although she is a flirt (“she would flirt at a building”) … she is, essentially, a serious person, looking for serious people to fill her life. If they’re doddering old Southern lawyers, who wear seersucker suits, so much the better. She lives and works in New York – and is engaged to a man named Monroe – who is, while a nice person, not quite in that league. He’s a simple Southern boy, who drives around on the weekends visiting his army of aged relatives. He waters his lawn in an undershirt. He is, indeed, kind (look at his treatment of his elderly relatives!) But something is missing. Maybe Grace doesn’t want that kind of life, even though she’s a New Orleans girl herself? Who knows. All we know is when we first meet Grace, she is on vacation with her extended family – and they’re all staying at this old-time mansion in Virginia – where an orchestra plays, and you have to dress up for dinner. While they’re there, they run into a guy named Walter – a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch in New York – who is also from New Orleans – and he’s a young guy, completely mischievous, dissolute – he’s always knocking back a cocktail and making inappropriate statements to the house maids. But he’s an AWESOME character. So so funny. He notices Grace right away. He notices immediately her pathetic attempts to ‘be drab”. He sets out to ‘get” her. It is then that he realizes that she keeps in her head a “fiery pantheon” of idols … men she expects others to live up to. You know, people like freakin’ Aristotle. Or Cicero. THAT is what she strives for. Walter finds out about Monroe, so he sulks about him – “what is it about this Monroe?”. He also sets out to tease Grace mercilessly about “the fiery pantheon” – first of all, he knows he could NEVER get into such a group … Also (the deeper level) – he senses, somehow, even through his cocktail-infused haze – that Grace is living in a dreamworld, and that’s not good for her. She yearns for a “fiery pantheon” and she picks Monroe?? Is this girl out of her mind? She’s going to get crushed by life!

The novel is (of course, because Nancy Lemann wrote it) – hilarious. There’s a deadpan quality to the voice that totally offsets the wild flights of fancy (which you can see a bit of in the excerpt below). Grace’s mother is an awesome character – and completely convinced that everyone on the planet would be better off if they were institutionalized. She can’t go out for a family dinner without noticing all of the personality disorders in the restaurant. But the novel is chock-full of people like that – and Walter becomes, over the manic course of the book – where he is nearly driven insane by Grace pretending to be drab and mooning around about her “fiery pantheon” – a truly memorable romantic hero. Even with his dissolute habits.

The Fiery Pantheon has one of my favorite lines in a book ever: “She had a nostalgia for a life she never led.”

God, I so understand that.

It’s not that I yearn for my own past. It’s not that I have an unbearable nostalgia for my own childhood. It is that I yearn for a life I have not lived. That yearning can keep me up nights. Lemann gets that.

Grace yearns for another kind of life than the one she has. Even down to her deliberate “drabbing”-up of her looks. She wants to be a calm quiet sensibile spinster. Full of rectitude and stoicism. Instead she’s a flirty glamour girl who attracts every male in a 15 mile radius. And etc.

Love this book. Here’s an excerpt.

The Fiery Pantheon by Nancy Lemann

She studied the last suave sight in New York, of the angels atop Grand Central. A policeman patrolled it on a horse from below, the second to last suave sight in New York.

She watched an old movie about W.C. Handy played by Nat “King” Cole. W.C. Handy kept staying in his hometown, Memphis. He kept writing songs of world renown, and poking down Beale Street every night. Once he got to Davenport, Iowa, apparently a jazz outpost of the time. Then he returned home in disgrace to his father. Then he got as far as Cincinnati. Pretty soon he was poking around the Mississippi Delta and made his way to Moorehead, where the Southern crossed the Yellow Dog, as he wrote a song about. Then he was back in Memphis. It reminded her of Monroe.

She kept wishing for a rooted life. Like the street Monroe lived on, where he knew all his neighbors and all their dogs, and they certainly knew him and his dog, considering he devoted his whole life to his dog.

A news program came on. There was a story about a little boy who was a hero for he caught a crook. While reporting the story they showed the nieghboorhood. It was a modest suburb – but there was something in the green, the lawns, the trees, the sidewalks, something indefinable, that reminded her of the South. Just when the children turned the corner, the way they rode their bikes, the way the trees looked – it was someplace very close to the most old and familiar and thus enchanted places of her heart. Why do they have those strange accents? she wondered. Yes, they’re in an old familiar green place and they’re speaking in a certain jucular and strange accent and locution. The pavements glistened. The sky was black. There were palms. She noticed it was sleazy. That was not a criticism. She would not criticize her region. It was an observation. It reminded her of Florida too. The Gulf South. She waited patiently for the dateline at the end of the story but none was given. But finally just at the last minute before they went to the next thing they blew up the item from a local newspaper that the story had come from and yes, it was The Times-Picayune.

Then she read about Nabokov’s youth in Russia, at a ravishing estate outside of St. Petersburg with old parks and gardens, and upon the Revolution, his sudden departure on a throbbing boat across a hopeless sea, to Constantinope and beyond, consigned to exile, never to see his native land again.

She fell asleep and had the recurrent dream of a crushing azure beauty by the sea and she couldn’t tell if it was somewhere in the North or if it was the Alabama coast. In this dream, which was disturbingly recurring to her in New York, she searched piteously for the location of the ravishing place, the pellucid green of the sea, the crushing, saving beauty of it, one place to take refuge in, to decide on, but when it came to remember how to find it, whether it was in the North or South confounded her.

Some people have a recurring dream in life, she knew. This was hers.

In the middle of the night she seemed to see a man standing in the room and to feel the touch of his hand, a luminous figure in a dark room. It was in her hotel room and it must have been around three in the morning. Your worst nightmare: to wake alone in the middle of the night with a strange man standing in your room. The apparition appeared to be wearing a seersucker suit and bow tie and tennis shoes. When this became apparent he seemed somewhat less threatening. His identity could then be perceived. When she saw it was Monroe she felt better. She felt she had an overwhelming love for him. This made her feel better, to have an overwhelming love for someone. He was a connection to the past. He was a connection to that spot of land on earth a person holds most dear. She had an uncomplicated love for him. This made her feel better, to have a simple, uncomplicated love for someone. Of all those who could be dear, he was dearest. Why? She felt remorse. Then he bent down and gave her a thick book with a blue cover. It was a book of etiquette. She opened it and there was a pressed flower inside. When she found it he looked away.

Then he said to her specifically, in a slightly pleading tone of criticism: “Grace, you always love the same few things, you always go back to them, you always cleave to them.” He did not mean it as a compliment. He seemed to mean it as a criticism. Perhaps he only meant it as truth, which he seemed to disdain, he who above all should be considered guilty of it.

For their honeymoon Monroe planned a trip to the Louisiana countryside. For six days they would go to plantations and Southern gardens and the Gulf Coast. “I don’t think I could be alone with you for six days in antebellum homes,” said Walter when this was described to him. “Southern gardens and plantations – plus you – that would be a little excessive.” That was sort of funny. It was crusty. He couldn’t swallow all that plantation tour stuff. Monroe wasn’t crusty. He could swallow all that plantation tour stuff. Not only could he swallow it, it was mother’s milk to him. He came from one, he had lived on one – a plantation. His whole life was a fantastical and exaggerated portrayal of an old South impossible to exist. But it did exist. Its fantasticalness obsessed her.