Yes, you’re right! Sarah was a minor character, but she helped me understand Woolly better, and his place in the family. Woolly always referring to “Dennis” in quotes made me laugh. Especially funny, of course, because Dennis was his actual name. I guess the quotation marks gave the delivery some attitude. A creative way of making it clear how Woolly felt about his brother-in-law.
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The ladies of the Circus (or whatever the brothel was called) essentially enchanted Emmett with drugs to stop his journey. And the men there were certainly pigs! The Cyclops could be Preacher John, who was killed by Ulysses. And Emmett was continuously being shipwrecked by the loss of his car and other transportation. Athena could be Sally, intervening and rescuing. So if you stretch, you can find parallels. Or at least make them up if not intended!
Let’s read The Odyssey next ;).
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Oh goodness no, I do not want to read The Odyssey!!!
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Good parallels, @ Marilyn – and not a stretch at all! I particularly like the idea of Emmet being “shipwrecked.” He was always ending up places he didn’t want to be, through circumstances outside his control.
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Comments on narration from Amor Towles:
Can you talk about the shifting points of view in the book?
When I first outlined The Lincoln Highway, the plan was to describe the story from two alternating perspectives: Emmett’s (in the third person) and Duchess’s (in the first person). This seemed a natural way to juxtapose the two different personalities, upbringings, and moralities of the lead characters—and by extension, two different ways of being American.
But once I was writing, the voices of the others characters began to assert themselves, making their own claim on the narrative, insisting that their points of view be heard. First it was Sally and Woolly, then Pastor John and Ulysses, and finally Abacus and Billy. Now that the book is done, it’s hard for me to imagine it could ever have been told from the perspectives of just Emmett and Duchess.
So far, I haven’t used the omniscient narrator in my novels. Rather, I’ve either used the first person (as in Rules of Civility) or a third person which is an extension of the protagonist’s point of view, tone and vocabulary (as in A Gentleman in Moscow). In The Lincoln Highway, I use both of these techniques. The chapters of six characters are told in a third person that reflects their point of view and tone, while the chapters of Duchess and Sally are in first person. Duchess and Sally both presented themselves to me as first person narrators right from the start, and I trusted that. I suppose that’s because they have such strong and vocal personalities.
And on the backwards numbering of chapters:
When I began writing the book, it was laid out in sections titled Day One, Day Two, Day Three, and so on. But when I was about halfway through writing the first draft, I became frustrated. The book was feeling unwieldy, with sections that were cumbersome, slow, or off track. After dwelling for days on the draft’s shortcomings to no avail, I suddenly realized that the book wasn’t simply a story told over the course of ten days, it was a countdown. So, I went back to the beginning and began revising—having renamed the sections as Ten, Nine, Eight, and so on. This helped clarify for me what belonged in the story and how it should be told.
There’s more – an interesting interview: The Lincoln Highway: Q and A - Amor Towles
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I just listened to a KQED interview with Amor Towles, and he said MANY readers had issues with the ending. Forum From The Archives: Amor Towles Shares His Odysseys, Both Literary and Literal - KQED
He said at the end of the Question and Answer on his amortowles.com site,( same link Mary13 just posted) he addresses the ending.
Emmett’s intention about Duchess adrift in the boat
“ A number of readers have reached out with questions about Emmett’s intentions and culpability at the end of the book. Readers, of course, are welcome to draw their own conclusions. But here’s my take, for those who want it:
As Billy is cleaning the library, Emmett has placed Duchess in the boat and set him adrift in order to buy himself some time. Noting the hole in the bow of the boat, Emmett has piled stones in the stern in order to keep the hole in the bow above the water line. As Duchess himself notes (when he comes to), all he need do is lean back and paddle slowly, in order to make it safely to shore. But when the wind starts blowing Duchess’s money away, Duchess can’t help himself and moves towards the bow with fateful repercussions. I suppose it’s worth nothing that Duchess isn’t angry with Emmett in the last chapter because he recognizes the ingenuity of what Emmett has done, and he knows his own culpability in the final outcome.
Some have wondered how Emmett will be able to live with the knowledge that Duchess has drowned; but Emmett is not likely to ever find out. For no one has any reason to suspect that Billy and Emmett were in the Adirondacks in the first place, and Duchess’s end will be viewed as an accident.
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I know The Lincoln Highway is set well before the internet and the 24 hour news cycle, but I think Towles is kidding himself if he thinks Emmett will never find out. The son of a renowned and wealthy family found dead in their summer home, with the safe emptied out and a petty criminal found dead in the lake with over $100,000 – that would be big news.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the police pinned responsibility for Woolly’s death on Duchess – concluding that he poisoned him, even if just through coaxing him to take the drugs. That might be a comfort to some of Woolly’s family members, but likely not to Sarah. I think having met Duchess, she would know that wasn’t his M.O. and would grieve long about the decision Woolly made.
Speaking of Woolly, there is a connection between him and Rules of Civility (which I haven’t read and I’m glad because I think the overlap would have distracted me). See Q&A.
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Attention chefs: The recipe for Fettucine Mio Amore is in the Q&A. 
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Sally’s character bothered me. At first you think she has a thing for Emmett, but in the end it seems she was just using him as a tool to escape her small town life. Definitely not enough character development to make her significant.
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I’ve read Rules of Civility and the watch that Woolly gives Billy is the same one that is described as a Christmas present for someone. Also apparently two characters spend some time at the Adirondacks camp. I remember none of this! I read the book in December of 2018.
So many astute observations and comments about this book by everyone who posted! This is what makes it an excellent book club selection, passionate feelings about this one.
I liked this story, and hapless boys traveling through 1950s America.
Yes, it’s flawed book, as many noted, many readers disliked Duchess,but as Towles, said in KQED interview, Duchess had charisma!!!
The plot, the precisely drawn characters, Towles writing style, the points of view, and the action pulled me in, and I thoroughly enjoyed the trip.
My fear was that there would be a “Thelma and Louise” ending, because I knew Wooly was not returning to Salina, and Duchess, who had some endearing moments, would end badly! Didn’t expect the horrific drowning, and Duchess’s psychotic break. The ending chapter was jarring.
We didn’t get to the land of dreams, California and mom, but we know Emmett and Billy led happy lives.
Sally, represented the liberated woman, before the 60s sexual revolution, and she , too ended up happy, too.
Lincoln Highway, originally named Unfinished Business, depicted 1950s America just before the tumultuous 60s.
In the question and answer Towles writes-
“ The battle for civil rights in America is as old as the Union itself, but in 1954, the modern civil rights movement was about to begin**.** On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, initiating the end of legal segregation and the concept of “separate but equal,” at least on paper. In the decade that followed would come Rosa Parks’s refusal to give up her bus seat and the resulting Montgomery Bus Boycott led by Martin Luther King (1955), the lunch counter protests (1960), the Freedom Riders (1961), the March on Washington (1963), and countless other public actions culminating in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1954, the “sexual revolution” was about to begin**.** It was in December 1953 that Hugh Heffner published the first issue of Playboy with an old nude of Marilyn Monroe serving as its centerfold—launching a new era of publicly acceptable pornography. That same year, the Kinsey Report on female sexuality was released, bringing private discussions of bedroom behavior into the public square. But the revolution would really take off when the Pill was approved in 1961, giving women and men the ability to engage in sexual activity with less concern over long term repercussions.
In 1954, television and rock & roll, two of the greatest cultural influences of the 20thcentury, were about to take off. In 1950, there were only one million households in the US with a television set. By 1954, that had grown to 30 million and by 1959, 88% of US households would have at least one set. In those first ten years of television many of the lasting formats and idioms of the medium were defined from the evening news broadcast to the sitcom and from the soap opera to the late-night talk show.
1954 saw the release of the first two hits of the Rock & Roll era: “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” by Big Joe Turner and “Rock around the Clock” by Bill Hailey and the Comets. (“Rock Around the Clock” would have a particularly large impact when it was chosen to accompany the opening credits of the 1955 movie The Blackboard Jungle, a drama about an inner-city high school, starring the young Sidney Poitier.) To give some sense of the world at the time, the top thirty songs at the end of 1953 according to Billboard included the likes of Nat King Cole, Patti Page, Eddie Fisher, Tony Bennett and three songs by Perry Como. Which is to say that pop music before 1954 was a crooners’ game. Fifteen years later, the Billboard charts would be dominated by the likes of the Beatles, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, Steppenwolf, and Sly & the Family Stone.
While Rock & Roll is often referenced as a complement to the rise in youth culture in America, I would argue that it was a fundamental cause of the modern youth movement. At no point in prior history did teenagers anywhere in the world have an effective means by which they could share their perspectives with each other. Rock & Roll was an art form created and performed by young people for young people with their own experiences, hopes, and complaints as its principle subject matter. Rock & Roll was the first public forum in which the young could assemble, express themselves, and rally each other in support of their own priorities. But as I say, all of this was about to happen.
Finally, in 1954 the road culture of modern American was about to begin. In 1954, America had 6% of the world’s population and 60% of its cars, but the automobile was primarily used as a local convenience. When the Lincoln Highway was conceived by Carl Fisher in 1912, 90% of all roads in America were unpaved. In the 1920s, the federal government began investing in highways and established the first numbered routes, but long-distance roads remained fairly rudimentary for decades. It wasn’t until June 1956 with the passage of the Federal Aid Highway Act that that the country began building the Interstate Highway System—the multilane, highspeed highways that crisscrossed the nation, supporting not only the transportation of goods, but of workers, vacationers, and the curious. In the decade that followed, Americans would make great use of the new roads. While in 1950, 450 million vehicle miles were travelled in the US, by 1965, that number had doubled. In 1954, Holiday Inn had only three locations, but it would have 500 ten years later, and 1000 by 1968. 1954 was the year that both McDonalds and Burger King were launched.”
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Regarding the other hot issue, THE Odyssey significance .
https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101889716/amor-towles-shares-his-odysseys-both-literary-and-literal-2
We are not alone in wondering how important, symbolic,is the odyssey to the story.
In the interview a woman calls in and asks just that.
Towles, answers by saying in western narrative the journey quest has deep historic roots-
Homers Odyssey
Virgil’s Aeneid
English Canterbury Tales
Don Quixote
American - Moby Dick, grapes of wrath , on the road
He said in all individuals face obstacles, have choices, there are consequences, often their fate is defined by their choices.
Abernathy’s Book was a homage to some of those previous epic tales.
Interestingly, Towles didn’t focus on the significance of the Odyssey, in particular, in the Lincoln Highway.
I read the book earlier this year, as it was a Christmas gift from my DD. I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it. It was too long, too many characters and it just wasn’t as good as A Gentleman in Moscow.
I couldn’t stand Dutchess, even with his horrible upbringing I had no sympathy for him. I didn’t mind the ending at all. There was no way that Emmett knew that Dutchess would end as he did. He just wanted to keep him “occupied” for a while as they were escaping. I liked Billy and Woolly. Billy was like a wise perceptive old man, but innocent.
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Yes, Woolly was pure of heart and very childlike. It’s almost like he and Billy were peers. Woolly reminded me of Forrest Gump. He’s an adult, able to go to school and navigate the world in his way – but his mind operates completely differently from “normal” people. Even Woolly’s love of commercials was very Forrest-like (Jenny: “Forrest, I’m sick.” Forrest: “From cough due to cold?”).
With that comparison in my head, and thinking about Woolly’s sweet disposition, I couldn’t make the jump to suicide. But I guess it happens under many different circumstances that don’t always seem to make sense.
What do you think the “medicine” was that Woolly took (and was possibly addicted to)? Was Sarah using the same thing (and while pregnant?)? And where did the pills come from?
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They never said what the RX that Woolly took. It was some liquid plus Sarah took some pills. It was good that Emmett saved Sarah the grief of finding her RX bottle by Woolley’s body. I don’t know what things were being prescribed back in those days.
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Perhaps this?
What was nerve medicine in 1950s?
Perfectly legal and easily available by prescription, Miltown was the first drug in a class that physicians started calling “minor tranquilizers” in the mid-1950s; instead of sedation, these pills offered peace of mind.
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Maybe Wooly got something similar in liquid form.
I am now reading “ the empire of pain- the sackler dynasty” ( only read if you are prepared to get very angry and disgusted with the opiod tragedy) The Sackler family’s pharma businesses produced and sold , Librium ( benzodiazepine) and Valium in the 50’s, which became extremely common prescription. Valium was known as “mother’s Little helper” and I thought maybe it was one of those drugs was what Sarah had, But, they weren’t released until after 1954 !
Also, looks like Miltown, also was released in. 1955 ?
What do you think would be Woolley’s medical diagnosis today ?
Interesting about “Miltown”
“Miltown’s introduction into the market was initially underwhelming, selling just $7,500 dollars worth during the first month after its launch in May 1955. But by the end of that year, sales hit $2 million.
Hollywood had discovered Miltown — and from then on, the pill became a cultural phenomenon.”
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@HImom, that photo and description are perfect. I bet Miltown is what Towles was using as his reference, despite the minor release date difference. He probably took just a little license there.
Today, maybe Woolly would be prescribed Prozac to combat anxiety?
@jerseysouthmomchess, I watched the mini-series “Dopesick” about the Sacklers. Infuriating for sure!
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