Townie: A Novel, by John Butman
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Townie: A Novel, by John Butman
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Townie takes place in Oldon, Massachusetts, a burgeoning New England village that has become the favored residence of the mega-rich, a town whose historic past has been preserved and polished until it gleams with the arrogant intensity of a Colonial theme park. Alan Lowe inhabits a different Oldon, however, a town that he loved as a boy for the “power and rightness of its countryside.” Now, in early middle age, he finds himself living on the margins of the changing town, in a camp deep within Oldon Woods, “inelegantly sheltered by a stale, army-surplus sheet, perforated here and there with pinholes and rudely draped into the equivalent of a teepee.” Then Alan’s seemingly rootless life converges with that of Arthur Worthy, a member of the recently-arrived elite, whose life “bristles with appointments, trips, activities, possessions, responsibilities, and business urgencies.” But Arthur lives on the margin, too, as alone and isolated in his mansion as Alan is in his teepee. They share, as they discover, an unexpected connection, a woman named Anna, “who must be understood as a catalytic force in both of our lives, the intoxicating girl who devolved into the equable woman whose existence served to define our own.” Alan abandons his camp in order to temporarily look after Arthur’s mansion and their lives soon become deeply intertwined in an adventure that is ostensibly a business deal but is, more essentially, a search for love and connection with place. Townie is a picaresque novel of the countryside, funny and skewering about our social and business pretensions, moving and true about our need for roots and authenticity.
Townie: A Novel, by John Butman - Amazon Sales Rank: #2450512 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-05-12
- Released on: 2015-05-12
- Format: Kindle eBook
Townie: A Novel, by John Butman From Publishers Weekly Butman builds his inventive first novel around the art of the deal, pushing it in a dreamy, semiromantic direction. A rich resident of a tony New England village, Arthur Worthy, takes in the homeless narrator, Alan Lowe, christens him "Theo" and makes him his butler. Lowe, a former designer who is slumming his way through a shabby poverty charade, plays along with Worthy's game when the businessman asks him to come to London and perform a pivotal, trumped-up role in a high-stakes business meeting. The game takes an amusing turn when Worthy's erstwhile business partner shows up on their flight and gets himself arrested, allowing Lowe to meet one of the men he must fool. Despite the long odds, the deal goes smoothly until a series of bad judgments eliminates Worthy and his colleague from the final closing, leaving their fate in the hands of a phony indigent with no business experience. Butman's whimsical approach makes the odd conceit work, and he smartly steers clear of Lowe's midlife bitterness as he takes his plot through its strange twists and turns. The romantic subplot involving Anna, Worthy's ex-wife (who also turns out to be Lowe's childhood crush), is a dead end, but Butman introduces another entertaining subplot when Worthy beds a married woman just before he hits the road. Butman is a gifted writer with an excellent feel for his offbeat characters, but what makes this debut work is his ability to approach just about any situation as an arcane comedy of manners. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Review An oddly moving chemistry results when a homeless man and an eccentric multimillionaire join forces in a quaint Massachusetts town. -- Kirkus Reviews
About the Author John Butman lives near Boston with his wife and two sons, and summers in Maine.
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. What life really is, or should be, from two ends of a money spectrum By Mary McGreevey John Butman's debut novel of a small New England upperclass town caught my attention, because I live in San Francisco, amidst enormous gaps in wealth, especially obvious when I go to Marin County's little towns full of self-conscious suburbanites.The story of a local man, about 50, who's "failed" in life by giving up a video career to drop out completely, is more engaging that a first glance would show."Theo" (his butler name)takes to the woods living in a tent, scrounging food off the tourists' leftovers in local small restaurants, turning up at the clothing donation drives to help himself to whole bags of the locals' castoffs...somehow this interested me, because the life in our city is so full of these contrasts. I, too, like to see what the wealthy around here are casting out in consignment shops, including their books and nicknacks.Ostensibly the senselessness of things, and his loss of girl in his theater group, Anna, who snubbed him when he was ten years old, hangs like a giant sore on his spirit. He can't get over the loss, although he met other women in his life.In fact, I found this book at such a shop in the Mission, as a proofreader's copy.John Butman as an author likes to go into extreme detail about clothing, shoes, furniture, people's appearances, and his judgments of people based on these things. In this respect, his writing resembles more "female" style, and I often found myself skipping some of the more extreme details, to keep to the plot. Sorry, John, it's just me, I like a story that moves along briskly.Yes, in spite of his love of details, the author does keep things moving. A chance grab at a big JP Peterman's castoff dustman's coat, which he wears about town, gets the attention of the previous owner. He sees "Theo" in his old coat and starts a conversation, then has him move into his huge new house and help him as an aide, if one does not want to use the term butler or servant. "Theo" is the assigned name.Then begins a rollercoaster ride along the rich man's lonely life, the discovery that he'd married Theo's former love Anna, that he had a grown daughter by her.Next he's in on a money negotiations as a fake "first money guy" to get other suckers into a business venture, pretending to be proferring a big chunk of change although an odd duck.A thoroughly satisfying story, and suspenseful, as Theo tiptoes carefully to find out what happened to Anna. His new master's sexual appetites are also included.Not for me to reveal endings!Only once did someone espy that I had on her former garb; a hand-embroidered Croatian peasant blouse, that she'd MISTAKENLY donated. When I wore it to a local Croatian dance festival, she spotted it and came right up to me to ask where I got it. No, she didn't want it back, but actually, yes, in a way, she did. $3, Ma'am!So I know the feeling of Theo's first chapter chance encounter over a coat!Little fleas living on big fleas...
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Quirky Characters You�ll Love By Writer lady I really enjoyed this book - it's a quick, fun read. You will undoubtedly enjoy Butman's quirky characters - Alan Lowe and Arthur Worthy - in Townie. Their personal idiosyncrasies provide a humorous undertone to every scene in the novel. Butman's humor is smart and satirical.Though both Lowe and Worthy are intelligent, they are at opposite sides of the social spectrum in Olden. Lowe lives his life as a sort of hobo living alone in the woods, despite his well to-do upbringing and inheritance. Worthy is a wealthy businessman living alone in a huge custom-built mansion, who has sacrificed his personal life for his career.Alan Lowe becomes Worthy's butler and we glimpse the absurdity of life as an upperclass suburbanite and businessman through Lowe's (aka Theo) eyes. Some of the scenes are bittersweet, though, as they reveal the loneliness of both men. But in the end, through their odd friendship, they both find out what's important in life.I found their journey, while amusing, to be thought-provoking as well, almost like a modern fairy tale.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A closely observed, elegantly written, and very funny novel By W. S. Prindle Good things come in small packages. This novel has its own ironic but not unsympathetic tone towards it characters. You might hear some echoes of John Barth, Nabokov, S.J. Perelman in terms of the novel's unusual set up, humor, and wordplay. The humor in particular is interesting because much of it is sharp-edged satire of the absurdly monied classes of the eighties and nineties, with their grotesque MacMansions, devotion to gigantic cars, and the need to demonstrate to one and all that they are indeed richer than you. Yet, once we meet one of these people in the form of Arthur Worthy, we are charmed by him, much as Theo, the neo-Thoreauvian butler, is charmed. The details are rich, the oddities entertaining (I shall never look at a wrought-iron railing again without certain unrelated words coming to mind), and the twists and turns unexpected.Buy it, read it, and read it again. It's even better the second time.
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