Having read it two times back to back, I think I have some things to say about David Boyer’s 1968 novel
The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker. I am convinced that it is a significant piece of literature . . . especially in the disillusioned protagonist genre.
Jonathan, the main character, a college graduate, finds himself in a world that doesn’t make sense to his sensitive intelligence – reminiscent of Holden Caufield (though he doesn’t go on and on about people being phony). Instead, he finds himself surrounded by two cold cities and their inhabitants . . . Philadelphia and New York. The people around him are self-centered, callous and, in a word, crazy. Despite his behavior, Jonathan might be the only sane person in the book . . . even though all the rest are simply going about being ordinary people . . . or, when seen through Jonathan’s eyes, crazy people. It’s refreshing though that Boyer doesn’t have Jonathan think and think about the madness of others. He just experiences it, and we experience it with him.
If Jonathan experiences little that is good from ordinary people, he finds no solace when surrounded by intellectuals and artists, either. For instance, at a party . . .
“I wandered around the apartment drinking beer and listening to people talk. I learned that ‘Kubla Khan’ was actually an account of orgasm, that Martin Luther had anal fixation, and that Lot’s wife had conversion hysteria . . . the fruit in Genesis could not be an apple, because an apple has no symbolic meaning; thus the fruit must be a banana because the banana is an obvious symbol of the phallus. Eve ate it. Then Adam ate it . . .
‘That’s a lot of horseshit,’ I said, and went into the bathroom.”
In John Updike’s
Rabbit Run, Rabbit Angstrom, Updike’s disillusioned protagonist, turns to sex when modern life smothers him. It’s a tired theme. Benjamin of
The Graduate pretty much does the same thing – though it’s more out of boredom than anything else.
It’s refreshing that Jonathan has access to sex with both a nymphomaniac and a rich mistress, but it doesn’t do much for him. Given a chance to escape with his mistress to the Bahamas, he changes her plans so they can go to the Poconos. There, they stay in a cabin, shut off all the power (including the furnace), and live for a few days in front of the fireplace – cooking food, making love, and keeping each other warm. It’s Jonathan at his happiest. He enjoys the simplicity of chopping wood.
But, their return to the city brings Jonathan back to his cold reality. Things that used to help him escape don’t do much for him – like spray painting the glass windows on parking meters or having fake sword fights on the subway. He withdraws from everyone, lives in his apartment, and picks through the trash to see what he can discover about his neighbors’ lives.
In the spring, hearing his neighbors fighting about the nuisance of their little boy, Jonathan offers to take the kid to the zoo.
Jonathan sees something important in the way the boy appreciates the zoo . . .
“We visited the birdhouse, and he got so involved in a sulfur-breasted toucan that I started to get nervous. How could he, when the deities of his life were tyrants and fools, become so absorbed in a ridiculous-looking bird from South America? . . .
In the small-mammal house he got hooked by the sloth, and I began wishing that I could creep into the boy’s skull and examine the world with his vision. My own seemed more and more shaky."
In a rather touching moment on the walk back from the zoo, Jonathan asks the boy in earnest if he will be his friend.
“He looked at me and nodded. We walked a ways in silence, and then I said, ‘I need someone like you. I haven’t any equilibrium of my own. It’s sort of a makeshift arrangement, and I’m somewhat lost without my gadgetry. But you seem pretty solid to me. You know what I mean?’ He shrugged. ‘I guess you don’t, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I borrow some of that solidness of yours. Okay?'"
The boy is agreeable, but that night the father phones Jonathan and calls him a pervert and tells him to stay away from his son.
So, there’s a little
Catcher in the Rye . . . the beauty and innocence of the child.
From here, Jonathan’s descent into despair goes much faster. I wouldn’t want to give away the ending, other than to say that it’s entirely satisfying.
If you can get your hands on a copy of
The Sidelong Glances of a Pigeon Kicker . . . do. It’s a really interesting read that more people should be talking about.
I think I might actually read it a third time.
As to profits earned for week 41 . . . well, I brought in $4.00. So, if worse comes to worse, I can probably bail out a bank or two.
My profits for the year have hit a new mark: $873.85
