I cat sit in the apartments of friends in the summer and this one in East Harlem, maybe not far from the author’s childhood home, has a few Evan Hunter/EdMcBain novels on the bookshelf. One of which is an old Signet paperback of Last Summer. I needed something to read and since I had positive feelings about the old movie and the novel is only 206 pages, I thought, “Why not?” Sometimes it is good to follow an impulse.
I had remembered the movie as being good and the first time in saw both Barbara Hershey, and Richard Thomas. Also that it was not a happy movie, it involved bullying and worse. The movie script was written by Eleanor Perry and directed by Frank Perry. As a pair, they made some fine movies in the 1960s-70s. They made David and Lisa, another intimate human drama. After reading the brief Last Summer novel, I’d like to see the old movie again although it seems out of distribution currently.
Last Summer is about four high school aged white children of economic and social privilege from Manhattan private schools dealing with life at their parent’s summer places on an island somewhere outside the city presumably a brief ferry ride off Long Island somewhere.
The boys know one another from summers past. They bond in sort of a moderate triad with a brash attractive bikini clad girl, Sandy. She has found an injured seagull. These three hang out, acquire beer, do stuff with the seagull, none of which is heartwarming, and take Peter’s dad’s sailboat out. All the while we are becoming familiar with their characters and their relationship with one another. Dan (was that even his name?) is the sketchiest character even through his suggestions propel some of the plot. He is mainly focused on Sandy. Not so much in love with her but seeing her as a vehicle for his urges to act out sexuality. He is not motivated by need for intimate human connection, but sensational pleasure that is selfish and greedy and heightened by getting away with something natural and beautiful turned nasty naughty. He is a consumer. There must be a core of attempted connection in showing other boys/men how one has scored.
They meet Rhonda. She is the opposite of Sandy. She’s injured by something horrible that happened in her family and socially awkward.
Sandy is the dominant force in the triad. Through a series of encounters Rhonda is granted a type of provisional acceptance by Sandy into the group. The boys just follow. Ultimately it would have been better had Rhonda stayed away from them.
The novel is written from the point of view and in the voice of Peter. This character is the nicer of the two boys, the nicer of all three really. Perhaps it is that he is the only one who gets to tell his side of the story. His description of the characters and their actions are all we have. We have to take him on his word, unreliable narrator that he no doubt is. There is the sort of weakness in him, an insecurity that compels him to stay with the group and its power. His is a self-protective chameleon nature. He blends in to hide, thrive, and consume. He develops sympathy and ultimately affection toward Rhonda. But can he follow through?
Peter is the story. He is the one who represents maybe all of us when we are on the fence, know what is right action, but must drift along with power. When we are given the choice of the uncertainty of loving, and take the alternative route with the others into fleeting sensation and a type of gang mentality.
Evan Hunter presents a wonderfully constructed scene with the entrance of the Anibal character. Having read the brief online biography of Salvatore A. Lombino and his East Harlem roots it appears Anibal from Puerto Rico, with learner’s level but carefully accurate English, and living in East Harlem, is a sort of stand-in for the author or based on men he once might have known as a youth. Even Anibal is not immune to the allure of the young white rich pleasure seekers. Heartlessly they call him “Annabelle”, ignoring his repeated prompting that the accent is on the middle syllable, after all he is not a real white man. He’s just another disposable toy to bored consumer kids. The sequence is also of retro interest because it has a modern element of ancient computer dating. In the way familiar, not remote, from 21st Century hookup apps, as well as reflecting current “Build a wall” mentality incubating in kids.
50 years after this book came out, it is easy to see that the people in it are in their late 60s now and perhaps still holding on to that kind of gang power thing that seemed to work for them back then. They are the elite in business and politics still running things. Getting ready to pass it on to their survivors. Sophisticated yet ruthless they went through whatever it took to please their spouses, children, and their good old American narcissistic personal needs.
The rest of us? Maybe we are all Rhonda hanging on the fringes trying to fulfill our own narcissistic needs, by attracting high profile miserable jerks in control. We would probably be better off wandering away from them and playing alone or among ourselves.
Evan Hunter presents a sunburned noir.
It still holds up.
No comments:
Post a Comment