Comparing two of Robert Waller's books
By Lary Crews
Knowing I'm the author of three popular novels and a teacher of fiction, a student of mine recently asked me to compare and contrast Robert Waller's best-selling books The Bridges of Madison County and Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend.
Bending to popular demand, I will do so:
- The story of Bridges: A passionate middle-aged woman, stuck in a lifeless marriage, is reborn because of a lusty yet sensitive middle-aged man.
- The story of Slow Waltz: A passionate middle-aged woman, stuck in a lifeless marriage, is reborn because of a lusty yet sensitive middle-aged man.
- The hero of Bridges is: Robert Kincaid, photographer. Wears sandals from India, faded blue jeans, khakis. Smokes and uses a Zippo lighter.
- The hero of Slow Waltz is: Michael Tilman, professor. Wears sandals from India, faded blue jeans, khakis. Smokes and uses a Zippo lighter.
- The heroine of Bridges is Francesca Johnson, farm wife. Black hair, face showing first lines. Wears silver hoop earrings and tight-fitting jeans.
- The heroine of Slow Waltz is Jellie Braden, graduate student. Black hair, face showing first lines. Wears silver hoop earrings and tight-fitting jeans.
- The heroine's husband compared with the hero:
- In Bridges, "She knew Richard was no match intellectually or physically for Robert Kincaid."
- In Slow Waltz, "He's reminded of his limitations just by being around people like you, Michael."
The most old-fashioned, hard-core sort of sexism is combined in his books with the fuzziest, most up-to-date talk of self-esteem, while completely banal sentiments are continually recycled in self-consciously saccharine language.
From Robert Waller's Border Music:
Throughout the novel, Linda Lobo is described only in terms of her body. We're told that she fills out her jeans "like she'd been born in them." and that she smells "of all the highways that ever ran through spring and summer toward sad-eyed endings."
Jack Carmine is described as a "descendant of scalp hunters, back shooters and ladies of the night."
Jack says things like: "survival first, procreation after that" and "stroking a woman's hair while looking out at a rainy day is 92% of as good as it gets."
In one fairly typical passage, Waller writes: Women liked Texas Jack Carmine in the same way people enjoy sunshine and soft rain on their faces. He seemed to skate on the wind instead of letting it blow him around, and women sensed it. More than that, he genuinely liked women, not only in bed, but overall. Liked to watch them, talk with them, dance with them, and women picked up on it. They liked him because he liked them for all the things women are."
"There are those who dream and those who go out there," Waller continues, "those who only watch as a woman dances through firelight while rivers flow and turtles sleep and a very few who rise to dance with the woman before she has gone to where rivers go until they cycle back to run again."
Jack fantasizes about making love to a black woman who "would taste and smell of Africa and chains and long marches to misery ships that sailed for de land of cotton when old times past were still in progress.
Such spectacularly awful - not to mention offensive - writing permeates Border Music.
Linda tells Jack that "all women know how to shake it hard if they want to" and she adds "nature gave us that ability as a way of attracting you wonderful things called men."
"Tonight, I'm runnin' for the fireside, hangin' on to the latchkey, gettin' off the great, sad arrow for a while and intendin' to grin just a bit if it's at all possible."
Says reviewer Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times: "Border Music must surely rank as one of the most dreadful novels to come along in a long time."
I agree.
