Mackinley Greenlaw<\/p>\n
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You\u2019d assume that a story called The Man in a Hurry<\/em> would be an exercise in efficiency\u2014a flash-seared piece of meat with the fat trimmed, and the garnish minimized.\u00a0 But, you probably assume a lot.\u00a0 You assume you can drive through that yellow light without some bozo turning left into you.\u00a0 You understand your situation, so naturally everyone else should.\u00a0 It\u2019s common sense that one can\u2019t turn left into an oncoming car, and yet there you sit in the hospital, getting shards of glass tweezed from your face, having made too many assumptions about mankind\u2019s observational skills, and your own capacity for control.\u00a0 Is it your lot to barrel through the yellow lights, willing the cosmos to ferry you through unscathed?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that brand of arrogance what elevates us from ape status?<\/p>\n Oh\u2014but I digress.\u00a0 And so does The Man in a Hurry<\/em>.\u00a0 Quite often.<\/p>\n Written by Paul Morand in 1941 (and recently translated from the original French), the novel has a quaint take on short attention spans.\u00a0 We open with Pierre Niox, the titular hurryman, unable to wait for his aged server to fetch his drink.\u00a0 So, he leaps up and grabs it himself from behind the bar, only to return to his table and realize that he was never thirsty to begin with.\u00a0 It\u2019s a flawless character introduction\u2014rife with behavior that stands perfectly on its own.\u00a0 But Morand reveals his intentions after the first line break, as Pierre is approached by an actual psychoanalyst (a German Jew, no less!), who proceeds to parse out our protagonist\u2019s actions and motivations across multiple pages of exposition.\u00a0 The two men talk and talk\u2014analyzing, musing, making historical references.\u00a0 It\u2019s all extremely French.<\/p>\n And herein lies the horror of The Man in a Hurry<\/em>.\u00a0 Nothing is left open for interpretation.\u00a0 All informative actions are immediately intellectualized.\u00a0 It\u2019s like a precursor to the nation\u2019s new wave cinema, which often treats audiences to aggressive narration and dialogue, while the protagonists sit staring at each other in a bedroom, or over coffee at a street side caf\u00e9.\u00a0 It\u2019s terminally cerebral, which is all well and good, were it not for the fact that speed is inherently visceral.<\/p>\n As Pierre manages to alienate his friends and employees throughout the first half of the book, the reader finds that it\u2019s not so much a result of haste, but of dour self-obsession.\u00a0 Pierre never shuts up about himself.\u00a0 Even when left alone, he exists to soliloquize\u2014pacing around his flat, trying to jam himself (a square peg) into the round opening of his own life.\u00a0 Aside from the occasional near-miss traffic accident, this seems to be the only \u201churry\u201d he\u2019s in\u2014to justify himself.<\/p>\n When he meets the requisite love interest, Hedwige, she provides some sedative relief.\u00a0 But her pregnancy thrusts him back towards mania\u2014He simply can\u2019t wait nine whole months for a baby.\u00a0 In this fashion he pushes away his love, falls ill, and finds that the only thing that can sate him is complete demoralization brought on by acute mortality.\u00a0 That finally shuts him up, but implies that the only solace a man in a hurry can find is in sadness, and ultimately death.\u00a0 Bleak stuff.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Morand\u2019s distaste for a life briskly lived is palatable.\u00a0 Pierre is drawn as a joke, but one that is specifically unfunny.\u00a0 The joke\u2019s on him, is<\/em> him, and he\u2019s left twisting in the wind for crimes that don\u2019t seem altogether punishable.\u00a0 One can only imagine how the author would survive the digital age, where all information is available immediately, and even food is slung at you the second you order it.\u00a0 It kind of makes Pierre seem sluggish in comparison.\u00a0 Sure, the man likes his drinks served straightaway, but he\u2019s happy to ruminate on that drink for all eternity.\u00a0 Is he really that hurried?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Man in a Hurry<\/em><\/p>\n Paul Morand<\/p>\n Pushkin Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mackinley Greenlaw You\u2019d assume that a story called The Man in a Hurry would be an exercise in efficiency\u2014a flash-seared piece of meat with the fat trimmed, and the garnish minimized.\u00a0 But, you probably assume a lot.\u00a0 You assume you can drive through that yellow light without some bozo turning left into you.\u00a0 […]<\/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-599","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\/599","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=599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.owu.edu\/nightowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}