Bullet Park by John Cheever

I almost put this book back on the shelf when I read that the two protaganists were named Hammer and Nailles, respectively. But as chance would have it, I flipped open the book read the passage in which the neighbourhood priest introduces them to eachother, and neither finds it the least bit funny – knowing everyone else will. So that made it alright, I bought the book.

This is a story of men and their human condition in a bedroom suburb of New York City. Sound kind of cheerless? Well it is rather. Cheever makes a pretty good case for the oppressed species known as Middle-Class Provider, in this case the mouthwash salesman Nailles. Nailles is an ordinary guy who's life is largely dictated by the commuter train schedule. Yet he is somehow blessed, because of his natural optimism and because of his very real love for his wife and only child. In contrast, Hammer has an independent source of income, but his adventurous, rootless life is tormented by his own personal black cloud, or "cafar" that hounds him mercilessly.Its another good character portrait, in this one, Cheever paints an equally sympathetic picture of Insane Man Before He Opens Fire.

The era is late 1960's, but all that American protest of Vietnam, the youth movement, Free Love &etc, only lightly touches the suburbs, where enormous amounts of alcohol are consumed and mild flirtation at dinner parties is still the entertainment of choice. But as a distant presence of a bigger society, they help place the two men's lives in a larger context, somewhat relieving the claustrophobia of their own inwardly directed worlds. I'll complain a bit about the end here, which I think somehow misses the mark by refusing to grind to a slow halt or, alternatively, fails to create a spectacular collision when Hammer and Nailles finally meet the denoument. Basically you just don't really care what happens at the end, and the lack of emphasis or suspense doesn't help. On the other hand that could well be Cheever's final raspberry salute in this ode to suburban life.

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