At the outset of John Gardner’s Nickel Mountain, Henry Soames owns and runs a diner by the side of a Catskills highway. He does a better job of that than of controlling his own giving heart; because of his charitable nature, he ends up not only married to a young woman who is pregnant with someone else’s baby, but also opens his home to a Jehovah’s Witness no one likes or trusts, and who may be an arsonist. The novel’s events swirl around Henry, its enigmatically passive-active agent at the center, and through it all the locals for better or for ill, prove that in Gardner’s hands, human nature is endlessly fascinating.

Also as fascinating are the apparent machinations of the gods, or impersonal forces with which humans must contend. A young would-be car designer and racer throws his dreams away and attends Cornell Ag school, as coerced by his businessman father. Henry’s bride finds him impossible to live with part of the time, but also unalterably admires his good acts. Other regulars come to Henry’s roadside diner and complain or shake their heads about nature, or the follies of their fellow characters, and nothing apparently changes over time. The town’s doctor, who doubles as its justice of the peace, carries around and expresses the anger and confusion for everyone’s benefit.

The tides of fortune and folly pursue all; no one is immune. Some suffer more than others, as usual, but through all the health challenges and commercial difficulties Henry wrestles with, his surprising wife and child turn out t be improbable blessings, even to the point of a comprehensive upgrade of his business. Gardner prepares us for certain confrontations which end up occurring outside the narrative, and it’s hard to find the purpose in some of the conflict on offer.

But the direct, persuasive, effective passage is always within the author’s repertoire: early on (at p. 66 of 454), as Henry emphatically blubbers on on some subject or other:

“But was he saying anything at all? he wondered. All so hopelessly confused. And yet he knew. He couldn’t do it and maybe never could have, but he knew. He was a fat, blubbering Holy Jesus, or anyway one half of him was, loving hell out of truckers and drunks and Willards and Callies—ready to be nailed for them. Eager. More heart than he knew how to spend.”

A constitutional inarticulateness afflicts the hero Henry: his compelling ideas, in the midst of his trying to express them, become amorphous as he loses his way. In spite of the mental and emotional challenges, he blunders ahead anyway, and comes out somehow ahead of the game. This, and the plain, direct, and vivid descriptions the author gives the other characters and their misadventures, drive the narrative, and attract and reward the reader. It’s all a mystery, and the Henry Soameses of the world, for all their difficulty in expressing it, know it better than the rest of us.

https://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2023/09/nickel-mountain-by-john-gardner.html ( )

Low key novel about ordinary small-town life in the Catskills. Henry Soames is a good-hearted man with health issues. He owns a diner. He hires Callie Wells to work for him. She is seventeen and pregnant. Her boyfriend leaves for college. Though vastly different in age, Henry and Callie marry. She has the baby. They take in an odd evangelical man whose house has burned down. A good friend visits on occasion. A few deaths occur. There is little to no plot. It seems to be about living and dying. It has a melancholy tone. I cannot rave about it, but I enjoyed reading it. ( )

Nickel Mountain by John Gardner

...and those who can't, teach.

I began reading Nickel Mountain by John Gardner because I wanted to see if one of the most renown teachers of fiction could actually write as well as he expected others to.

Gardner felt that aspiring to be an author was almost akin to a "higher calling" and required rigorous study and practice. As well as hard work and sacrifice such a career choice came with duties and responsibilities.

The most important of which is telling the truth, and not just getting facts right, but making sure your fiction is believable and not perceived by the reader as a lie. Foremost it must "affirm moral truths about human existence".

Well, okay. That's quite a tall order so I was curious to see if his fiction reflected all that high-minded stuff.

Henry Soames is middle-aged but acts and thinks like an old man. He runs a truck stop restaurant by himself on a lonely highway. Everything about him is depressing; he's morbidly overweight, he's got a bad heart, he's filled with self-pity and shows it, he blames his overbearing mother and failure father for his station in life. This guy is your classic victim and one of the most unsympathetic protagonists I've ever encountered.

When an acquaintance suggests Soames hire his teenage daughter to help run the place he agrees. Why does he agree when there's no indication he needs help and is about as misanthropic as a person can be? Gardner doesn't tell the reader.

Which is interesting because the relationship between Henry Soames and Callie, his sixteen year-old employee is at the crux of the story.

Technically, Gardner starts with promise - his opening sentence is brilliant. However, he delays the inciting incident until it's almost too late, and when it is revealed it's tepid.

Good fiction according to Gardner "creates a vivid and continuous dream" for the reader, but his writing is difficult and complicated not at all vivid and continuous.

Since I abandoned Nickel Mountain at page 33, I can't say whether moral truths about human existence were ever affirmed, but for the pages I did read I can affirm the story was depressing and monotonous, filled with insignificant details I imagine the reader was supposed to infuse with meaning, meaning which bordered on creepy.

My conclusion is that rigorous study and endless practice is indeed necessary for an author, but it's obviously not a guarantee he'll write a good book. ( )

There doesn’t seem to be anything special about Henry Soames. He is a fat man operating a run-down diner, The Stop-Off, more for the conversations with the regulars than as a living. But when Callie, a young waitress, turns up pregnant, and it’s clear that the child’s father won’t be there to help, Henry offers to marry her. While Callie sees the offer more as an arrangement, their devotion to one another grows over the years. She’s drawn, like all Henry’s friends, to his gentle nature, to his open acceptance of everyone.

At several points throughout the story, Henry is faced with difficult decisions – about people in his life, people who he cares about and people who he’s just met. Henry, to his own detriment and often in ways that spark ridicule, never fails to help each and every person who he is in a position to help. Though it sometimes troubles Callie and his friends, it’s the kind quality that draws them all to Henry.

Gardner’s book is the story of a man who makes choices from a predisposition that many would consider weak. But the result is a unique and lovable character, one that is rare in literature, one that champions kindness and compassion.

Bottom Line: Rare story about a kind spirit.

4 bones!!!!! ( )

An oddly disturbing novel. Each character is diminished by circumstance and their interactions are complicated. ( )