DR. VAIBHAV SABNIS

The audible version of ‘The Lincoln Highway’ was the first time that I enjoyed hearing a book more than reading it. How can I tell? Because midway into the book, I decided I like this book so much that I want to keep a paperback. But the styles of reading, the accents and the expressions of the narrators depicting various characters were such a delight that I realised the audiobook was much more entertaining.

Saying that Amar Towles writes well is an understatement if ever there was one. His style, his vocabulary and narration are so perfect that I would not want to change one word about it. The characters, their backgrounds, their motivations and points of view are so exquisitely described that they literally live in your brain.

The plot is very simple. In June 1952, 18-year-old Emmett Watson is back from a correctional facility in Salina for an unintentional crime. After he finds out that his late father was bankrupt and their farm and house are seized by the bank, he and his 8-year-old nerdy and stickler-for-rules brother Billy set out for California in Emmett’s car – his last priced belonging.  But two of Emmett’s friends from Salina – Duchess and Woolly gate-crash into their lives and manage to turn the direction of their journey by 180 degrees towards New York, albeit along the same famed Lincoln Highway. Duchess is a street-smart character but his self-serving ethics are questionable. While the genial Woolly, even with the best of intentions, lands himself in trouble due to his outlandish ideas and bizarre sensibilities. And from then on, it’s all about the journey than the destination.

Towles takes us on an enterprising and immersive journey through the early twentieth-century U.S.A. His flawless and fluent language, impeccable dialects and dialogues, thought-provoking analogies and juxta-positioning, and sporadic doses of Shakespeare and Greek mythology make this book an absolute delight and an everlasting treasure. One of the most impressive aspects is the presentation of the thought process of a person with an unsound mind and how even the simplest of tasks can be a struggle for them. And how they are frequently misunderstood by the society.

            The story is narrated through the viewpoints of different characters, two of which are in first person while others are in third person limited POV. Sometimes an incident starts with one character’s view-point and is completed through another character’s perspective, holding the suspense for a while. The narrative is non-linear – it starts in the middle and moves forward, darting in the past from time to time.

If indeed there is a chink in the armour, it’s the climax. Personally, I felt the actions of the protagonists at the end were out of character. I think there could be a better ending to the story providing closure. Or maybe leaving behind a few threads hanging is the author’s style and/or intention.

Still, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the process of reading. Reading a good book is a reward and reading Towles is a delight.

Some excerpts :

1. For no matter how much chance had played a role, when by your hands you have brought another man’s time on earth to its end, to prove to the Almighty that you are worthy of his mercy, that shouldn’t take less than the rest of your life.

2. Billy looked up at Ulysses.

-But he was a preacher.

-In that man’s heart, said Ulysses, sliding the door shut, there is more treachery than preachery.

3. And what did I find sitting right there on the stovetop but a skillet as black as Batman’s cape. Picking it up, I weighed it in my hand, admiring its design and durability. With a gentle taper and curved edges, the handle fit so securely in your palm you could probably deliver two hundred pounds of force without losing your grip. And the bottom of the pan had a sweet spot so wide and flat you could clean someone’s clock with your eyes closed. Here was an object that had been carefully designed for one purpose, yet was perfectly suited to another.

4. I couldn’t help but remark on the similarity between the food in Ackerly’s cabinet and the menu at Salina. We had always chalked up the prevalence of this sort of cuisine to its institutional utility, but maybe it was an expression of the warden’s personal tastes. For a moment I was tempted to use the can of franks and beans in the interests of poetic justice. But if you hit someone with a can, I figured you might do as much damage to your fingers as you did to his skull.

5. After accepting a cup of the coffee and a slice of the coffee cake in order to be polite, Emmett was reminded that half the time, manners are there for your own good.

6. Many years before, Abacus had come to the conclusion that the greatest of heroic stories have the shape of a diamond on its side. Beginning at a fine point, the life of the hero expands outward through youth as he begins to establish his strengths and fallibilities, his friendships and enmities. Proceeding into the world, he pursues exploits in grand company, accumulating honours and accolades. But at some untold moment, the two rays that define the outer limits of this widening world of hale companions and worthy adventures simultaneously turn a corner and begin to converge. The terrain our hero travels, the cast of characters he meets, the sense of purpose that has long propelled him forward all begin to narrow – to narrow toward that fixed and inexorable point that defines his fate.

7. When the vengeance of the Lord is visited upon us, it does not rain down from the heavens like a shower of meteors trailing fire. It does not strike like a bolt of lightning accompanied by claps of thunder. It does not gather like a tidal wave far out at sea and come crashing down upon the shores. No. When the vengeance of the Lord is visited upon us, it begins as a breath in the desert.

Gentle and daunting this little expiration turns three times above the hardened ground, quietly starring the dust and the scent of the sage-brush. But as it turns three times more, and three times again, this little whirlwind grows to the size of a man and begins to move. Spiralling across the land it gains in velocity and volume, growing to the size of a colossus, swaying and sweeping up into its vertex all that lays within its path – first the sands and the stones, the shrubs and varmints, and then the works of men. Until at long last, towering a hundred feet tall and moving at a hundred miles an hour, swirling and spinning, turning and twisting, it comes inexorably for the sinner.