I came across David Gates for the first time this year in the Best American Short Stories collection. It was a story titled ‘A Hand came down to guide me’. It’s a story about friendship between men with an eye to looking back over how a life is lived and how it might end. It’s good.Then my friend Naomi recommended this novel which was shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 1991. It was Gates’ first published novel. In an interview, he says that Jernigan was an experiment. "I think what I wanted to do was to push all my worst imaginings and all my worst qualities to a terrible extreme and see what came of it," he says. "The isolation, the selfishness, the callousness, the indifference, the cruelty. Those awful qualities that are innate in all of us. I'm not uniquely that way." (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/18/boo...)Peter Jernigan is 39. The immediate 12 months prior to the opening of the novel have not been kind to him. He is not kind to himself – or anyone else. He has a distinctive voice which drives the novel. One reviewer described him as “like a Holden Caulfield who has grown up to find himself trapped in a novel by Richard Yates”. (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/24/boo...) Holden Caulfield came to mind many times in reading this; in the brittleness of tone, the pretence at offhandedness, the irony and self-sabotage that Jernigan displays. He speaks directly to the reader, a device that “creates a powerfully immediate portrait that's devoid of the slightest hint of condescension or superiority.”Here’s an interesting segment from an interview with Gates at the time of writing this book. "Beckett is my main man," Mr Gates says in his office at Newsweek magazine, where he writes about music and books. "Beckett writes so beautifully about such bleak things. We're all going to die, and we all die alone. And we all live alone. Yes, we live in relation to other people. But so much of the daily noise is not the noise of conversation; it's the noise of the talk that goes on in our heads. And Beckett is the one who speaks to me, and probably to many other people who for whatever reason can sit alone in a room and make things up." (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/18/boo...)I have to say that about half way through Jernigan, I thought that I might not be able to stomach too much more of the man. The book is experiential in that way. He is foul in the way that dysfunctional people self-sabotage – he loathes himself and behaves in such a way that the people closest to him are likely to loathe him too. This is a good summary: “It’s a relentless, combustible mix of high literary art and low humour, wisecracking profanity and shellac dark glimpses into a man’s wilful self-annihilation. Narrated by Jernigan himself, we see the world through his gin-bloomed eyes, playful and funny one moment, appalling and offensive the next.” (http://www.thefolioprize.com/category...) What makes it bearable is that Gates is always on the money – he renders the relationships between Jernigan and his teenage son, and Jernigan and the woman that he is sleeping with, with pitch perfect precision. I just wanted to know more even though it was hard to bear.Again in interview, Gates says of writers that he values: “Jane Austen came to me somewhat later, and probably I was past the age of being strongly influenced. But I was aware, in reading her, of how well she shows her characters’ motivations and agendas, and how they come into conflict with the agendas of other characters. It’s something to which every writer of realistic fiction should pay attention, and certain scenes of hers stick in my head as touchstones: the two encounters between Elinor Dashwood and Lucy Steele in Sense and Sensibility, the Sotherton episode in Mansfield Park.” (http://www.iowareview.org/blog/interv...)I’ll go looking for more of his work – he writes so well about men in particular. Here’s a bit – you won’t be able to tell from this excerpt why I liked the novel so much but for some reason this appealed. I think it’s the juxtaposition of the promise of youth with the shambolic self-destructive father that Jernigan has become. Here’s Jernigan and his son:“Up ahead, a branch crested with snow hung low over the sidewalk. Danny made a run at it ̶ I took the opportunity to get the bottle out quick and have a good gulp that made me cough and gag ̶ and leaped, right arm high, as if going in for a lay-up. Snow covered his bare head. He waited for me to catch up, hand moving backward and forward across his hair, stirring snowflakes that sparkled in the streetlight. Judith and I had made this beautiful boy.”
Oh man.Real attraction-repulsion with this book. This is probably one of the most virtuoso feats of first-person narration I've ever read -- scarily real -- and it has the added appeal in being set in the Bergen County of my childhood, from July 4 to Christmas of 1987. Basically you're inside the mind of a colossal fuckup, a very well-read, self-loathing drunk careering toward rock bottom, yet who never seems to get there. Things just keep getting worse. On the one hand I didn't want to go on because it was so bleak and I felt like I knew where it was going, but on the other the writing is so compelling and the plotting so skillful that I couldn't put the book down. And then the ending: phew. The last page really wallopped me. There is pathos and catharsis, but no redemption for old Jernigan. I cringed through much of the book, said "Jeez!" out loud several times, but when I read the end I just groaned like I'd been punched. I need a drink and a happy movie or something, or maybe just a pleasant walk.This book is good.
Do You like book Jernigan (1992)?
'Jernigan' tells the story of an alcoholic loser who manages to alienate and hurt the few people in his mediocre life that reach out to him, who may even love and/or need him; most notably his deceased wife, his son, his new girlfriend and her daughter. Not unintelligent - it is hinted he showed artistic talent as a younger man - he maintains a smug arrogance despite all his failings. Incapable of showing empathy, he substitutes feeling with snide sarcasm. Jernigans's life's an accident waiting to happen and Gates drags the reader along for the ride, merciless stepping on the accelerator.At times this makes for entertaining reading, and Gates shows a knack for coming up with bizarre scenarios (the hospital scene, for example, is priceless), but overall, while sad, the tale of Jernigan failed to move me or anything much within me.
—Ursula
I am rounding Jernigan's rating down to a two and a half. This book rises and falls on its narrator and main character, Jernigan. Though the author was hoping to create an adult version of Holden from Catcher in the Rye, he did not succeed. Jernigan lacked whatever makes a reader sympathize with Holden. For most of the book, I found myself wishing that Jernigan would attempt the suicide that I was sure was inevitable so I could stop reading or at least get a new narrator.With that extensive disclaimer, my enjoyment of the book did increase the more I read. But that maybe because the plot had some far-fetched twists at the end that I found simultaneously ridiculous and compelling.
—Stephanie
Suburban sadness, but this disquiet does not stay very quiet. Similar to The Sportswriter or Revolutionary Road or Stoner, it's a short novel of unhappy relationships, stalled careers, addiction, money, pain, and soaked in too much booze. Written from rehab, it's an honest self-aware clever strong voice of one man's downfall, with many ups and downs throughout. It hooked me and took me along for the abuse that came with the journey. Suggested if you find yourself in the right mood, as the writing is so good and powerful as to show you're in good hands.
—Peter Knox
