Jerome Stenger<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Most of us will never really know what separates a great mechanic from a decent one.\u00a0 We submit our broken cars and leave.\u00a0 The craft takes place under a hood behind a garage door.\u00a0 We return later and the funny noise is gone, erased by a greasy magic trick that leaves us feeling both grateful and taken advantage of.\u00a0 It is a field ripe for some novelistic examination.<\/p>\n
In Wayne Harrison\u2019s debut novel, The Spark and the Drive, we witness the inner-workings of a renowned garage.\u00a0 After a brief internship months before, Justin, a recent high school grad without a niche, is hired full-time as an apprentice mechanic at Nick Campbell\u2019s auto shop, Out of the Hole, in Waterbury, Connecticut in 1985.\u00a0 Justin is our narrator and explores this drama as a reflective adult.\u00a0 Nick\u2019s reputation as a muscle car specialist stretches over the Northeast Corridor, down the east coast.\u00a0 He was a Road Rage cover story.\u00a0 He is a man of few words.\u00a0 His wife Mary Ann runs the desk.\u00a0 The garage is populated by gruff veterans Ray and Bobby and later, Rod, a young hotshot who represents an industrial shift towards computer-based diagnostics.<\/p>\n
While the story promises a coming-of-age motif, Harrison thankfully isn\u2019t too interested in understanding the decisions young Justin makes.\u00a0 Instead, the story revolves around the tragic loss of Nick and Mary Ann\u2019s one-month old child Joey, which occurs just before Justin is hired on.\u00a0 Every choice, every interaction between these three characters is framed by this darkness.\u00a0 It compels Nick to consider moving the shop to Miami, without Mary Ann.\u00a0 It compels Mary Ann to give herself to Justin.\u00a0 The relationship of Nick and Mary Ann is complex and private, and information drips into Justin\u2019s bucket as he falls deeper in love with Mary Ann and balances an odd paternal loyalty to Nick.\u00a0 The two adults, lost in themselves, lean heavily upon an eighteen-year old.<\/p>\n
A lot of big life things happen to these characters in a relatively short period of time.\u00a0 Whirlwinds of character struggle tend to read cheaply, but Harrison, with grounded compassion and simple declarative descriptions, writes a story with real weight and not a sniff of self-indulgence.\u00a0 It is expertly paced, never overwrought, often funny.\u00a0 Justin, on losing his virginity: \u201cIt was my first sex but not hers, and the hay gave me a rash on my knees; it was not romantic (though I\u2019d brought candles) but stiff and determined, at times unfriendly.\u201d\u00a0 Bobby, on his fear of the shop being bought out by Precision Tune: \u201cHave you ever seen a Precision Tune?\u00a0 They\u2019re bright yellow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harrison was a mechanic himself and it quickly becomes evident. The challenge in being a specialist at a thing and also writing a novel about that thing lies in the writer demonstrating their knowledge without losing the reader in lingo.\u00a0 Harrison is a natural.\u00a0 He teaches without letting you know you\u2019re in class.\u00a0 \u201cOut in the shop, the Corvette was holding a big choppy idle in the first bay, the massive camshaft lobes I\u2019d held now pushing against the heavy valve springs.\u00a0 Nick was adjusting the mixture on the bottom of the carburetor.\u00a0 He revved it only minimally and the sound was how the world would end at low volume.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cars are alive and provide our humans with pedals to push, metal to lean on.\u00a0 They purr and hum and roar, propelling Harrison\u2019s passengers into the unknown. \u201cNick was right about engines,\u201d Harrison writes.\u00a0 \u201cThey didn\u2019t change.\u00a0 Even the computer-controlled ones just became more efficient at what they did.\u00a0 Fuel and air and spark, for a hundred years.\u00a0 I wanted the mechanical simplicity to overrun my mind and wash out everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Spark and the Drive<\/p>\n
by Wayne Harrison<\/p>\n
St. Martins Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jerome Stenger Most of us will never really know what separates a great mechanic from a decent one.\u00a0 We submit our broken cars and leave.\u00a0 The craft takes place under a hood behind a garage door.\u00a0 We return later and the funny noise is gone, erased by a greasy magic trick that leaves us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":540,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-written-by"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":6}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/540"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":299,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}