The Lincoln Highway - August CC Book Club Selection

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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I feel the same way! I liked the book and I’ve thought about it a lot. It drew me in completely, yet also frustrated me often. I’m going to chalk up the appeal to Towles’ skill as a writer — especially his ability to create distinctive, memorable characters (like ‘em or not).

Would I recommend it? Yes — especially for book clubs because there are so many facets to it, and it can stir up some feelings.

I recently read the book Outlawed, which I would not recommend — one reason being that I could not keep the characters straight; they were drawn too similarly and blended together into a single identity. No such problem with The Lincoln Highway!

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I agree the reason the book is still okay to read, despite some missing depth, is Towles’ skill with his pen.

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I’m a fan of this book, flaws and all

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I basically liked the book too, despite being annoyed by it. I’ll definitely read Towle’s next book whatever it might be. (Well unless someone says it just like Catcher in the Rye.) One thing I like about Towle’s characters is that they are mostly optimists moving forward with their lives. Ulysses was in a rut, but I love the idea of him going off with the Abacus for new adventures. There’s an element of I’m not quite sure what to call it - magical realism? fantasy? You have to suspend your disbelief, his books are a bit of myth making.

Lot of people really hated that A Gentleman in Moscow kind of ignored all the bad stuff about the USSR. And of course it did, but it didn’t bother me a bit. It bothered me a little more here.

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I agree: Towles’ characters are mostly optimists. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy reading him.

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Since I feel I’ve been a bit hard on the book, let me “balance the accounts” (as Duchess would say) and post a really glowing review from NPR:

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Usually,when I read a book set in a different era, I take several detours to look up historical tidbits. The Lincoln Highway led me to some interesting sites.

I, also, take many detours, and one I took with this book, was, as Robert Frost said “ THE ROAD NOT TAKEN” ….and that is The Lincoln Highway.

I marvel, that a short 106 years ago the first transcontinental Highway was constructed, a young 28 year colonel named Dwight Eisenhower happened to be on a early trip. This adventure motivated him, to create the National Highway system in 1950’s.

We’ve come a long way baby !!!
it was noted that one of the early groups traveled 57 miles in 11 hours! A stunning feat. can you imagine that!

( we now travel that distance in one hour ! Easy peasy,

Now in 2022, Elon musk and other daring entrepreneurs are funding the next frontier, space. It seems improbable to many now, just as the Lincoln Highway certainly did in 1916.

Some links for some of those detours ……

“ One of the participants in the convoy was Lieutenant Colonel Dwight D. Eisenhower, and it was so memorable that he devoted a chapter to it (“Through Darkest America With Truck and Tank”) in his 1967 book At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends (Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1967). “The trip had been difficult, tiring and fun,” he said. That 1919 experience on the Lincoln Highway, and his exposure to the autobahn network in Germany in the 1940s, found expression in 1954 when he announced his “Grand Plan” for highways. The resulting Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 created the Highway Trust Fund that accelerated construction of the Interstate Highway System.

Fisher’s idea that the auto industry and private contributions could pay for the highway was soon abandoned, and, while the LHA did help finance a few short sections of roadway, LHA founders’ and members’ contributions were used primarily for publicity and promotion to encourage travel on the Highway and to lobby officials at all levels to support its construction by governments.

On June 29, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, authorizing the construction of the Interstate Highway System. The New York-to-San Francisco transcontinental route in the system, Interstate 80, would however largely follow a different path across the country than US 30. I-80 would also not be signed all the way to the New York City, instead terminating in Teaneck, New Jersey, west of the Hudson River just a few miles short of the George Washington Bridge.

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“ Early in his presidency, Eisenhower created the President’s Advisory Committee on the National Highway System, known as the Clay Committee after its chairman, retired Gen. Lucius D. Clay. The committee developed a plan to spend $50 billion of federal funds over 10 years to build a “vast system of interconnected highways.” It also warned of the need for large-scale evacuation of cities in the event of nuclear war. Eisenhower and Congress followed up with the Interstate Highway Act, and by the end of his second term the system was well on its way; eventually it would encompass 46,000 miles of road.

The hidden hand behind this new national infrastructure was inexpensive fuel. The success of Eisenhower’s vision depended on a readily available supply of the petroleum that drove Americans’ internal combustion engines. In the 1950s, it was so cheap and plentiful that even sober, long-range planning — like the Clay Committee’s — assumed it would never run out.”

“ In fact, early on, electric batteries showed the most promise for personal transportation, particularly in urban areas. Although Henry Ford’s cheap, reliable Model T made the personal automobile universally available after 1907, in 1912 Ford and Thomas Edison released an electric version that Ford believed would define American transportation. He might have been right — were it not for World War I and Eisenhower’s convoy.

Electric batteries had no place on the battlefield. In fact, the war began on a landscape from the 19th century: Oxen and horses pulled wagons, and pigeons carried handwritten messages. New technologies needed to be self-sufficient and easy to maintain if they were to be released directly onto the battlefield. So by the end of the war, the internal combustion engine, increasingly reliable and powered by cheap gasoline, was everywhere, in trucks, tanks and all manner of stationary devices.”

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@mary13 here’s a road trip not far from you.
The National headquarters of the Lincoln Highway, in
Franklin Grove, Illinois! Who knew?

A short video shows just how daring it was to take that trip in 1916!

Oh, and a man named EMMETT j Flyn, wrote and directed a silent movie in 1919 called the Lincoln Highwayman ( ya think it’s a coincidence Emmett is Towles main character in book ? )

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0010360/

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@Mary13 I don’t think you were too hard, on this book, at all. Valid observations and criticisms ! It was great selection for book discussion, variety of views :clap:
It is nice to read this NPR review, thanks for posting

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I just finished West with Giraffes and the Lee Highway was the southern route from New York to California. The Lincoln Highway was also mentioned.

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I’ve been reading through quite a few reviews, many of which touch on what we’ve discussed, both the good and the not-so-good.

I’m still bothered by what @jerseysouthmomchess called Duchess’ “psychotic break” at the end. I attribute it to the fact that he knew that the summer home was the absolute end of the line for him. If there was no money, he was up you-know-what-creek, and finding Woolly dead just increased his desperation. But it’s sad that the character who reflects this deeply on his friend could be so unfeeling later about his death:

Raised in one of those doorman buildings on the Upper East Side, Woolly had a house in the country, a driver in the car, and a cook in the kitchen. His grandfather was friends with Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, and his father was a hero in the Second World War. But there’s something about all that good fortune that can become too much. There’s a tender sort of soul, who, in the face of such abundance, feels a sense of looming trepidation, like the whole pile of houses and cars and Roosevelts is going to come tumbling down on top of him.

I see that in re-reading that passage, it does foreshadow Woolly’s suicide.

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I think duchess may have had abandonment issues, wrapped around narcissistic personality disorder-
Lack of empathy,

he saw Woolly as a means to and end- a con man and the con was over- history repeating itself -

His dream -fantasy - consisted of his buddies - the money and the restaurant- beyond that nothing……

“Narcissistic personality disorder — one of several types of personality disorders — is a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that’s vulnerable to the slightest criticism.”

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Mary posted this passage with the link to Towles’ Q&A earlier in the discussion.

The next paragraph continues clarifying the reason for counting down the chapters.

From Towles Q&A:
When I renamed the sections as a countdown, I assumed I would eventually restore the Day One, Day Two, Day Three titles. But when I finished the first draft, it seemed to me that the reader deserved to have the same experience while reading the book that I had while writing it: of knowing that the story was not open-ended, but ticking down day by day to its inescapable conclusion.

I am disappointed in Towles answer. I didn’t feel a sense of conclusion to the story at all. It was the beginning of Billy and Emmett’s road trip to California. I thought Towles planted a deeper meaning to the chapter numbering and Billy wanting to write his story in medias res.

From The Lincoln Highway:

—I see that you haven’t filled in any of the You chapter. Now, why is that? —Because I want to start in medias res, explained Billy. And I’m not sure yet where the middle is.

Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway (p. 410). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Billy learned the term in medias res from Abernathe’s book where it mentioned:

In chapter one of the Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers—after the part when Professor Abernathe explains how many of the greatest adventure stories start in medias res—

*Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway (p. 557). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. *

—Homer began his story in medias res, which means in the middle of the thing. He began in the ninth year of the war with the hero, Achilles, nursing his anger in his tent. And ever since then, this is the way that many of the greatest adventure stories have been told.

Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway (p. 159). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

More from Billy on in medias res:

To be in medias res, thought Billy, there should be just as many important things that have happened as important things that haven’t happened yet.

Towles, Amor. The Lincoln Highway (p. 511). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This all made me think the backwards numbering of chapters was related to Billy writing his story and starting a story in the middle.

I guess I was giving Towles too much credit?

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The reverse numbering didn’t quite work for me. Towles writes that it’s a countdown to the story’s “inescapable conclusion,” but as some of us have noted, there’s not really a satisfying conclusion. Rather, it’s a countdown to the beginning of their original plan that will hopefully succeed this time. I wasn’t bothered by the numbering, but it seemed like a writer’s affectation more than anything else.

I think being a gifted writer with a stellar reputation can be both a blessing and a curse with each subsequent novel. Readers expect a lot and (at least in my case) have less tolerance for missteps (thinking…“It’s Amor Towles! He should know better than to do this or that”). I do give him a lot of credit for, once again, writing something completely different than what he wrote before. He said in an interview that his goal with each book is to move in a completely new direction, and he achieved that.

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Mmmmmmmmmmm I don’t think this was a book about Billy and Emmett’s quest to find their mother.
It was about three boys, Emmett, Woolly,and Duchess and their journey.

For me, the conclusion was what happened in the Adirondack’s-
Woollys death, Duchess demise, and Emmett’s survivals….and his future which we are told was bright and successful. Billy, too,

As I said I had a “ thelma and Louise “ premonition while reading the book
So the 10,9, 8,7, ……countdown makes sense, to me.

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I must not have explained myself well. I did not think this book was a book about Billy and Emmett’s quest to find their mother. I was referring back to the writing style of in medius res and wondering if the conclusion of this story was the middle or beginning of Billy’s story. When reading the book I thought that Towles set it up intentionally . I was wrong.

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There were things I liked about this book, things I didn’t. But it does seem a good choice for a book club (already read it last winter for a Zoom book club) because it provides so many talking points. Certainly I liked A Gentleman in Moscow better, one of my favorites. I read that one on my own, without much yearning to discuss its few flaws etc. So I’m a happy camper here, glad to have had some commentary from others on our August choice.

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In the weird way memory works, I remember when I first learned the term in media res. It was in high school (I wasn’t as precocious as Billy :slight_smile: ) and we weren’t reading Homer; we were reading Jane Eyre. The opening sentence is “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”

I looked up some others, and the opening sentences of in media res novels can be fun to read:

The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “At length I returned from two weeks leave of absence to find that my patrons had arrived three days ago in Roulettenberg.”

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett: “The small boys came early to the hanging.”

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: “Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer; how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.”

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green: “The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath.”

From various articles I’ve read, it appears that books that begin in media res can be difficult to write. It seems easy to just write down a catchy first sentence, but then structuring the novel to deftly move around in time in order to explain what is going on (while keeping the reader’s attention) can be challenging.

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We can select our October book whenever you’re ready!