In Saul Bellow's 1953 novel "The Adventures of Augie March" we are investing a lot of time in its reflection of the lower-class urban Depression-era first-generation American experience. Living with Grandma Lausch is a blessing for the March boys (Simon, Augie, and Georgie) for a variety of reasons - most notably their mother is steadily going blind.
Augie's brother Simon is characterized as a petulant but independent child whose actions indicate that he wishes he was born into another family. Augie does not understand his brother's fascination with English schoolboy life and his fierce anger at George III. In fact, Bellow uses these two small details to ground Simon as a character in opposition to himself. After the pair of boys are sent away for the summer, we are also led to assume that each one is changing and through all the machinations - this change is for the better.
While Augie becomes in Grandma Lausch's multi-lingual jargon a "cat-head" (she characterizes adolescent Augie as "too easy to tickle" saying "Promise you a joke, a laugh, a piece of candy, or a lick of ice-cream, and you'll leave everything and run,") Simon rises to the head of the class thanks to his need for escapism and hard work. However, after he graduates, and is forced to enter the real world, it even changes the valedictorian. Sent to Benton Harbor to wait tables over the summer, Simon returns more petulant than Augie ever was. Augie describes him as much "brawnier" than before and wearing that youthful face of general dissatisfaction. In fact, Simon has even chipped a tooth which he tells Augie he did "kissing a statue." (In reality, it was far worse, biting a dime" while throwing dice.)
Simon, as the oldest, and now officially a breadwinner, means that he has escaped Grandma Lausch's apron strings first. While Bellow chooses not to make this clear (likely as it creates conflict and generates interest in Simon's sudden plateau in life,) Augie recounts how many times his cycle of worsening "misdemeanors" led to a period of punishment/castigation from Grandma Lausch and finally "shedding tears when I was pardoned." It is implied that either the crimes grew worse or the isolation grew more normal. Either way, Bellow is opening holes in the lives of Augie, Simon, and even Grandma Lausch.
How does a family heal itself? First, they learn from overreach. Augie's improvising a reason why Mother still needs the donation of glasses from the dispensary does not work forcing his reticent Mother to intercede to tell a bold-faced lie. Second, they learn from seeing Grandma Lausch as a diminished matriarch in her own blood family, and her classic grift as no longer successful. Enter Simon. Augie clearly admires him and acknowledges the details of him physically taking the form of an adult. Simon bides his time on the midnight shift for the newspaper/candy concession stand, before being promoted to the shift at the main artery (where he can "see the celebrities in their furs or Stetsons and alpacunas, going free in the midst of their toted luggage.") Simon prospers in this position not only bringing home enough money for the family but enough to even slip some to Mother.
At home, he physically rules the roost now. His success at work opens the door letting Augie pick up a shift downtown. Even in hindsight, Augie smartly sees his fate in this maelstrom. Yet secretly he still wants to follow in Simon's footsteps and be under his control. Three weeks later, Augie was fired for failure to perform not only up to Simon's standard but a break-even point. Simon's iron-fisted rule over Augie could not make him perform. Worse, Simon (possibly like Grandma Lausch) is cold to Augie showing disappointment in being curt. They argue over money, of course, and it painfully escalates when Simon insults Augie, "As if you didn't have any more brains than George!" Following that, Grandma Lausch yells at Augie, and Simon stays quiet saying nothing. The family structure was damaged. Augie's place in life is cemented by Grandma Lausch's "cat-head" prophecy.
Seemingly the old lady had been waiting for just this to happen and had it ready to tell me that there were faults I couldn't afford to have, situated where I was in life, a child of an abandoned family with no father to keep me out of trouble, nobody but two women, feeble-handed, who couldn't forever hold a cover over us from hunger, misery, crime and the wrath of the world.
In the world of hand-to-mouth living and disappointment not only pushing Sisyphus' rock down the hill but rolling over you in the process, the hardest rock bottom to hit is to hear "Maybe if we had been sent to an orphanage." With everyone else silent and brooding in their corners, Augie is only left with one conclusion.
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Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
NEW MUSIC This Week
OLIVIA RODRIGO - GUTS [PURPLE LP/CD](Geffen/Interscope)
While this is unpopular to say, Olivia Rodrigo may be the most on the ball of all the Popstars out there today. For her stellar debut "SOUR," she disintegrated the boundaries that made the years of previous female pop singers follow a template that was designed to show their range and not their talent at putting it all together as/with writers. On the first wisp of "GUTS," Rodrigo has already released a pair of tracks that nearly put "SOUR" in the rearview (especially given that it has become THE album structure to follow.) "bad idea right?" is a genius single. First of all, unlike all the other Pop stars, Rodrigo is out for both blood and to playfully display a sense of humor (those long blasts of multi-tracked "blaaaaaaaaaaah" in the background.) Second, after everyone adapted her Gwen Stefani-infused "SOUR" Punk/Pop shot "good 4 u" and the new generation power ballad "Driver's License," Rodrigo completely subverts the norm and blasts them both out of the park with a Queen-like mixture of quiet desperation to be heard and stadium-ready release on "vampire." Its only true comparison is the synapse-clearing title cut from Billie Eilish's "Happier Than Ever." However, "vampire" does not seek to overwhelm, it like "GUTS" is clearly swinging for the fences of catharsis.
TYLER CHILDERS - Rustin' In The Rain [GREEN LP/CD](Hickman Holler/RCA)
The new crop of Americana singer/songwriters continues to display the ambitions of the previous cycle of Country Outlaws. With his instinct to follow both his passions while trying to tell stories that connect with those music fans who are turned off by the repetitive nature of commercial Country, Tyler Childers has no interest in doing what anyone says he should do. "Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?" took a lot of chances in its gospel sprawl. However, it may have been too much of a good thing. So, Childers envisioned a romantic Country album (actually, he is quoted as saying several of these cuts were written as if they were for Elvis.) Strangely, the Eighties New Traditional bent of "In Your Love" may be the closest Childers has come to a hit single yet (charting Country, AAA, and almost entering the Top 40.)
FLEETWOOD MAC - Rumours Live [2LP/2CD](Rhino/Warner)
Still in the Top 40 in sales and streaming. Still a best-selling LP in the new age of Vinyl. Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" shows signs of the same dominance that kept it on top of the charts for over half of 1977. Touring constantly since it hit stores in February 1977, Fleetwood Mac took a victory lap with three nights at the Forum in Inglewood, CA. After playing two legs in North America and one in Europe, Fleetwood Mac used these nights to stretch out and play "Rumours" as well as a slate of deep cuts that had drifted from the set. Adding those selections back (and the exhaustion of playing the same show night after night) makes these extended versions of "World Turning" and "I'm So Afraid" unexpected standouts. Finally, just when you think you have Stevie warble and sway through "Rhiannon" one too many times, "Rumours Live" demonstrates how she truly gave it everything on stage.
