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American Rust A Novel Philipp Meyer 9780385527514 Books

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American Rust A Novel Philipp Meyer 9780385527514 Books

Meyer has a very different writing style from most authors. It's train of thought for the characters, full of thoughts that change direction mid-stream. For the first 50 pages I wasn't sure that I wanted to bother finishing the book. I'm glad I stuck it out. I'm not going to talk about the plot - you can read that in the book description.

There are so many towns like this across our country that were once booming and then fell flat when jobs were outsourced to other countries ("Outsourced" is such a nice word to use when you really just mean that outrageously paid executives decided to save the company money by sending jobs overseas to countries that have no EPA, OSHA, etc.) This book looks at a half dozen people in one of these dead end towns. It seems that the whole book hinges on one event, but as the story is told, you not only see what that event leads to, you learn the past choices of the characters, and how life gets pushed in one direction. You may think that a character's choice is just that - a choice, but when you get in their head, you understand that there didn't seem to be much of a choice most of the time.

It's a bit depressing. I usually stay away from depressing books. (I read two books by Jane Smiley, and vowed to never read another.) But this is different. I guess thoughtful would be a better adjective to describe this than depressing.


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American Rust A Novel Philipp Meyer 9780385527514 Books Reviews

The first word in the book (after the epigraph) is Isaac. So the author is just begging the reader to look for sacrifice as a theme. Sure enough, it's central. However, this story doesn't unfold quite like Isaac's in the Old Testament, even if the latter is a touchstone. Rather, almost all the characters here in a dying Pennsylvania community perceive themselves as either sacrificing for another or benefiting from the sacrifice of another.

Going back to the epigraphs from Kierkegaard and Camus, though, Meyer alerts the reader to watch for hope. And this despite a sense throughout that all characters are heading for an ugly denouement. Here too, the Old Testament lurks. Perhaps the inverted existentialism of the epigraph is meant to cloud the meaning of savior?

The writing was fine and Meyer handles the various interior monologues nicely, differentiating appropriately from one to the next. But the story was all a bit too heavy-handed and derivative. I had the sense of being led by the nose. Still, I recommend reading it.
This was one of the best novels I’ve read in recent years. Its reviews were good but, perhaps because of the recent TV adaptation of the author's subsequent novel, The Son, my expectations were not too high. The novel is set in Buell, PA, a down-on-its-heels (and fictional) distant suburb of Pittsburgh. The steel industry that defined the area economy has failed and faded to rust years ago. The two main characters are Isaac English and Billy Poe, unlikely friends a couple years out of high school and unemployed. Isaac is slight and naturally brilliant, Poe is tall, athletic and instinctual but not disciplined or book-smart. Poe’s mother, her erstwhile boyfriend (the local police chief) and Isaac’s Yale-educated sister from Connecticut round out the main cast. Early on and by mischance, Isaac and Billy find themselves in a threatening situation with three drifters in an abandoned mill, one of whom they kill, almost by accident. That sets into motion what promises to be a classic tragedy. Meyers plots and tells the story with great skill and brings it tightly to conclusion.
I first encountered Meyer’s writing back in 2015 by way of S.C. Gwynne’s incredible Empire of the Summer Moon. His story of Quanah Parker, the offspring of a kidnapped white woman and a Comanche, who went on to become one to become one of the greatest native American warriors of all time led me to Meyer’s The Son (now an AMC mini-series). Meyer’s well-researched piece of Texas history (well, historical fiction) has a central character that is kidnapped by Indians as a child.
All that to say, The Son was so well written that I was eager to read anything else written by Meyer. That led me to Meyer’s first novel, American Rust, which reads like a sorrowful swan song to the American rust belt. The story brings to light the consequences of the steel industry’s death as the reader is drawn into the lives of several families and their struggle to love, survive, and escape. The narrative centers in on the plight of Billy Poe, a driftless, could-have-been, washed up former high school football star, and Isaac, an unmoored genius who struggles to escape the gravity of his impoverished circumstances. Throw in a little murder and a love triangle and you have a story you won’t soon forget. My only critique is that I wished Meyer had wrapped up the story a little more neatly but we can leave that for the eventual movie version.

Key Quotes
You ought to be able to grow up in a place and not have to get the hell out of it when you turn eighteen.”
“this is what it means to get old, you don’t look forward to pleasure so much as easing pain.”
“Same as what they taught you as a lifeguard- you have to save yourself before you can save anyone else. ”
“And one day...there would be no record, nothing left standing, to show that anything had ever been built in America. It was going to cause big problems, he didn't know how but he felt it. You could not have a country, not this big, that didn't make things for itself. There would be ramifications eventually.”

Key Takeaways
Lee English is the one character that escapes the gravity of the town and graduates from Yale University, later marrying into a wealthy family. In commenting on her cohort of acquaintances in colleges she comments that most of them will never experience the feeling on wanting something and never getting it. She views this as a weakness but it's also seeded in the bitterness of her own background where that's the central feeling that most people experience (Chapter 5, 3308 in the audiobook).
The soul and society crushing reality of losing a skilled steel-making job and no longer having something that you're good at (Chapter 14, 0616).
The idea that rich people view the world the same way as someone with brain damage--they don't understand the realities of life (Chapter 20, 1855).
Meyer has a very different writing style from most authors. It's train of thought for the characters, full of thoughts that change direction mid-stream. For the first 50 pages I wasn't sure that I wanted to bother finishing the book. I'm glad I stuck it out. I'm not going to talk about the plot - you can read that in the book description.

There are so many towns like this across our country that were once booming and then fell flat when jobs were outsourced to other countries ("Outsourced" is such a nice word to use when you really just mean that outrageously paid executives decided to save the company money by sending jobs overseas to countries that have no EPA, OSHA, etc.) This book looks at a half dozen people in one of these dead end towns. It seems that the whole book hinges on one event, but as the story is told, you not only see what that event leads to, you learn the past choices of the characters, and how life gets pushed in one direction. You may think that a character's choice is just that - a choice, but when you get in their head, you understand that there didn't seem to be much of a choice most of the time.

It's a bit depressing. I usually stay away from depressing books. (I read two books by Jane Smiley, and vowed to never read another.) But this is different. I guess thoughtful would be a better adjective to describe this than depressing.