Crossing to Safety (Wallace Stenger)

I really don't understand how Stenger can justify calling this book Crossing to Safety. In truth, the characters seem to be firmly aground in the land of safety from beginning to end. In other words--nothing fucking happens. Published in the 1970s, this book is the autobiographical musings of the narrator about his and his wife's friendship with another couple that began in the 1930s. They have and lose jobs, they succeed and fail, they have lots of babies, endure disease and disappointment as well as enjoy each other's company through (wow! can that really be so fun?) sing-a-longs and oral poetry discussion (at parties no less!).

It is the story of ordinary, well-lived lives and the narrator digresses on this matter at the end of the book. Being the writer, he is urged toward the end of their lives to capture the legacy of these life-long friends. He ponders, "How do you make a book that anyone would read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicious waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends?"

As I read along, I asked myself, "Where indeed? Give me alcohol, drugs and kinky sex in order to save me from smothering in the smarm fest." Why then did I continue reading this "smarm fest," as I would like to call it? Well, the lives of these people (though boring and glowingly girl-scout perfect) are exactly the romanticization of what I would want my life to be. The narrator is a college professor, a writer, a novelist. His buddy is a professor of literature. They walk around being rich through inheritance, with big beautiful antique roadsters (I love those!) and wives with bobbed haristyles (I love those, too!). They spend the school year teaching and cocktail partying only to retire to their country lake house for three months in the summer. The writers and professors have their own "think shacks" where they slave away for academia and posterity until the afternoon swim, nap and sun-downer.

I continued reading out of pure envy. Whaa-ha-ha, I am the evil green monster reader from hell who will feed my hunger for life by sucking your book of beauty and then diss you in public. I am going to go to my think shack now and sulk.