Good Faith Book

Of all the Jane Smiley books I've read, this was difficult to finish or like. I disliked every character, the plot was too real, the ending obvious.

There are things about being a normal human in a small town that while perfectly everyday and natural, have always filled me with profound disgust. It's a tone of self-satisfied family life coupled with middle-class beautiful home graspiness and greed, accompanied by respectable social club conformity. It feels like a Republican Party caucus, before they included the deranged, apocalypse-believing (not only the religiously defined destruction of all), haters of difference, the kind of folks who defined America in the 1950's. It is a tribute to Smiley that she nailed those aspects perfectly.

Although the book occurs around 1982 and has as the main story a plot about how a bunch of small town businessmen, mostly real estate salesmen and bankers, become involved with property and stock market speculation, it is also about how the seduction of the con underlies supposedly honest entrepreneurship (I suspect marriage, being a legal, contracted relationship is included). Since I first became aware of how some are attracted by these forms of dishonest gain, I have always been revolted by it. I have never been able to finish watching movies or tv episodes about any kind of cons, even the ones so admired by Hollywood, and the Academy Awards. I can't stand game shows, either, for they also have that whiff of suspended self-respect and honor in pursuit of beating the con, the crooked game, for a gain which smells of too much greed and suspension of fairness. Everyone likes to win, but the feel of a self-compromising win feels awfully slimy to me, unbearably so. This kind of con is a real life selling of one's soul to a flesh and blood devil. If reporting a con makes you look bad because it is obvious you were trying to be dishonest and cheat someone yourself, no matter if it is legal or its appearance of safety, then you have bit a piece of the apple from Eden and you have no right to any supposed moral superiority.

There is no uncompromised character in this novel, but one. He is a construction worker that the others dislike working with because he values quality and esthetics over tawdry, of-the-moment style and flashy distractions. A number of characters literally and figuratively lose themselves because of siren calls to Desire of various false 'winning' situations, which actually come about from existing faults within each fallen antagonist. While I admire the expertise of the author's subtle outing of each character's flaw that shows the self-inflicted inner rot and the less than admirable, but ordinary, business of town life, it was obvious to me how the story would end. (A name like 'Burns' is a clear clue, as perhaps 'Mark-us'). All of these characters were so obviously, to me, corrupt behind their small world businesses that whatever usually pulls me into stories was missing. No one possessed any honor or worthy goals, except for the one 'carpenter' character, and he was not someone I liked much because he was so unbending.

As representing real life, the book is a five star winner, but as a novel to spend time reading, it's like eating stale cake while reading the Old Testament.