Winslow in Love

This is quite the novel, bordering on brilliant at times. Winslow is a down and out, unemployed, alcoholic poet who gets a substitute teaching position as a sabbatical replacement at a Montana college. Shortly after arriving there from Oregon, his wife packs her bags and leaves him. In and out of his alcoholic stupor, he becomes obsessed with a female graduate student who is emaciated and has multiple piercings. They begin an affair but the relationship is difficult for both of them because they each have so much baggage and Winslow is much older than she is. Because of these things, it is often difficult for them to connect. Through a series of tragic and life-affirming events their relationship ends but Winslow is forever within her circle and we are led to believe that she is saved from herself.

This is the latest book (both in terms of publishing and in order that I've read) that I've added to my "book club", that is to say, my favorite books--books that I think everyone should own, or at least read at least once. This is a very poetical book. Canty's prose is a lyrical prose. It's a melancholy book that has a certain hopeful hopelessness to it. It's the story of an over-the-hill, overweight poet who is past his artistic prime who gets a teaching position in an out of the way school. His marriage is over as is his career. He has lost his talent and his life to alcoholism. While at this school he meets a troubled young student. These two people are drawn to each other and in each other find each other's salvation, of a sorts. It's a haunting story, one that ranks with any of the finest pieces of literature written. This is a book that you simply must read. And the cover art fits the story wonderfully.

Where I saw this review is beyond me. That I read the book is the substantive thing. It knocked my socks off - not as smelly as Winslow's but they still could benefit from a good washing. The 'lump' stays with me. The bursting heart, the beating life, the unknown that comprises the solopsistic circle. It's ok that it's solipsistic. I'm way past my school days. Thank you Mr. Canty. Thank you very much. By the way, Missoula reminds me of Fairbanks, my home town. I wonder if Montana and Alaska both attract the end-of the-roaders or if we're all traveling the same road one time or another. We're all bound to hit the end some time. Hey, it this is autobiographical, try cutting down on the booze. You're too good a writer to kill yourself on that poison.

This is an absorbing novel. My being a Canty fan, incidentally, may make me more, not less, credible. That's because, for me, Canty has a higher and higher bar to clear with each successive work. I thought "Nine Below Zero" was a very strong novel, and I think "Winslow In Love" is similarly compelling. I wish Canty would write books every two weeks, like Joyce Carol Oates. Then again, if he did, maybe his characters wouldn't stick in your head after you finish his work. I still think about Winlsow from time to time, weeks since I've finished the novel. Of course, that may just mean it's time to check myself into the hospital to have my meds tweaked again? Read this book. It's powerful.

With it's feeling of whimsical melancholy, Winslow in Love is an often touching and poignant account of a "fat and unlovely" middle aged college professor whose sense of regret and unhappiness overwhelms a life that could have been better. Richard Winslow is fat, bald and drunk, a failed poet and a self confessed failure at life. He's the troubled and deeply unhappy main protagonist at the center of this charming, spirited, and sprightly novel by Kevin Canty. The story begins on one rainy, windswept Oregon afternoon when June Leaf, Winslow's flighty, disaffected wife suddenly informs him that he's been given a semester long teaching opportunity in Missoula, Montana. With his creative juices dried up, drunk most of the time, and with a face that is peppered with melanomas, he takes up the offer. While teaching Rilke to a bunch of incongruent students - who aren't sure what to make of their muttering, misanthropic teacher - he meets Erika Johnson, a troubled, distressed student, "a waif so riddled with piercings," who, at thirty-five years younger, is just as worse off as he is. Erika, battling with anorexia and depression, forges an uneasy friendship with the emotionally embattled Winslow. Becoming an unlikely duo, and partaking of one paper cup of Johnnie Walker at a time, they eventually embark on a road trip across the America where they learn much about themselves, each other, and the wild, untamed nature of love. Constantly drunk and chain-smoking, Winslow is probably literature's ultimate anti-hero. He relentlessly refers to his life "as a long illness." Where once he sensed that the world belonged to him, he now knows that feeling has gone from him forever and life is just one disappointment after another. Richard Winslow may put off some readers - he's just such a dour, sulky, and self-pitying old retch. And although he doesn't imbue much sympathy, this reader was readily able to admire his observations on life and the illusive nature of love. As he ponders life as a failed poet, he reflects on the thousands of pages of wasted words, years of heart and soul and discipline for what? Ships in bottles, one after another. But Richard is also realistic enough to know that in some kind of existential sense, he just has to go forward and let things turn out however they turned out. Canty's prose is gritty and realistic, complimenting characters that are constantly living on the edge. Love for them is either at the bottom of a whisky bottle, a full packet of cigarettes, or an endlessly indefinable destination in the front of a beat up old car. Old, injured, tired, and haunted by matters of love, Winslow feels he is going to die alone. Certainly nobody loves him and if they did, they couldn't live with him. He's constantly wracked with the feeling that he doesn't fit his life - there was some other life somewhere that he ought to be leading and not this one. Winslow discovers that with a failed life, he has nothing to lose, which makes the