Do you think this is true to life? Were there casual encounters or decisions that you made, which in retrospect were watershed events?ĥ.) When I told my seven-year-old son that I had written a book that was going to be published, he said: That’s great! But who is going to do the pictures…?While the Walker Evans portraits in the book may not meet my son’s standards of illustration, they are somewhat central to the narrative. Where does your judgment fall on Tinker? Is Katey wholly innocent of Tinker’s crime? Where does simulation end and character begin? Which of Washington’s rules do you aspire to?Ĥ.) A central theme in the book is that a chance encounter or cursory decision in one’s twenties can shape one’s course for decades to come. A sort of How to Win Friends and Influence People 150 years ahead of its time.” But Dicky sees some nobility in Tinker’s aspiration to Washington’s rules. What sort of things is Katey slow to reveal and what drives her reticence?ģ.) After seeing Tinker at Chinoisserie, Katey indicts George Washington’s “Rules of Civility” as “A do-it-yourself charm school.
Are Dicky Vanderwhile, Wallace Wolcott, Bitsy, Peaches, Hank and Anne Grandyn as essential to Katey’s “story” as Tinker and Eve? If so, what role do you think each plays in fashioning the Katey of the future?Ģ.) Katey observes at one point that Agatha Christie “doles out her little surprises at the carefully calibrated pace of a nanny dispensing sweets to the children in her care.” Something similar could be said of how Katey doles out information about herself. You may submit your thoughts or questions to me at my Contact page on this site.ġ.) At the outset, Rules of Civility appears to be about the interrelationship between Katey, Tinker, and Eve but then events quickly lead Eve and Tinker off stage. What follows are some questions for discussion. So, if you’ve come this far, I owe you my heartfelt thanks. We started with Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and have since worked through the works of Twain and Faulkner, Cervantes and Marquez, Tolstoy and Nabokov – meeting once a month for dinner, dwelling on our favorite passages, on themes and ambiguities, sharing our perspectives.Īs someone who has written quietly for twenty years, the notion that a group might gather to discuss a book of mine seems something so fantastic it must be a mirage. Five years ago, three friends and I set out to read some of the “great books” – or those works of literature which would merit re-reading several times over the course of our lives.
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