The Green Suit, a novel by Dwight Allen, is comprised of short stories disguised as chapters. Similar to Ernest Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories, Dwight Allen’s narratives, when pieced together, create a chronicle of one man’s life.
While Hemingway wrote of an outdoorsman, Allen writes of an author wannabe and average middle-class American; Peter Sackrider leads a normal imperfect life filled with adolescent turmoil, relational hardships, and sexual confusion. He is introduced as a hormonal teen in Kentucky, drinking beer and trying to score, but with the turn of a page, he becomes an editor’s assistant in New York City, typing short stories and still trying to score. With each new chapter, Sackrider’s life steadily advances.
Despite the novel’s breakneck pace, it contains everyday moments presented in unique and creative ways; well-structured prose and realistic dialogue accurately express life’s haphazard complexity. Simple settings are catalysts for contemplative thought. Even tennis court banter contains slight profundity - “Who ever really forgives anybody? If forgiving is forgetting.”
This introspective questioning often generates glum dissatisfaction. One disenchanted husband feels ancient at 27 - trapped by the domesticity of marital cohabitation, where life revolves around yard work and fertilizer spreaders. Henry David Thoreau understood: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Dwight Allen’s words eloquently depict the emotional hurly-burly of being, but Sackrider’s textual talent is not as moving. He enjoys the romanticized idea of a writer’s life but not the literary effort it requires. He dreams “of writing books…though doing this, he has figured out, takes work” - work that he is rarely willing to do. Despite Sackrider’s authorial apathy, most of The Green Suit is written in his voice. He opens and closes the novel, and his acquaintances take care of the middle, offering alternating perspectives that enhance character development, create a better understanding of Sackrider, and offer a more complex reading experience.
Dwight Allen increases the complexity further by performing artistic sleight of hand; after moving to New York from a small town, Peter Sackrider writes a short story about someone moving to New York from a small town. He titles the story The Green Suit, making Dwight Allen’s novel his fictional fiction - M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands, redrawn with words.
Allen continues his prosaic puzzle with a chapter written by Sackrider’s ex-girlfriend. She, Nora Sue, discusses a Peter Sackrider short story that appears earlier in The Green Suit as a Dwight Allen chapter. In the short story [previous chapter] Nora Sue is named Ranada to protect Sackrider from a fictional lawsuit. The real [but still fictional] Nora Sue tells her side of Sackrider’s story [Allen’s chapter] and adds additional insight into Sackrider’s confused sexuality. Got that? [Got that?]
Dwight Allen does. With imaginative literary architecture, he builds an engaging novel of everyday existence. Allen states “there are a million ways to come loose from faith,” but The Green Suit does not loose faith in itself or the human condition; it embraces the certain uncertainties in life. It gains literary momentum as Peter Sackrider’s flawed life unfolds – a life filled with exhilaration, depression, pain-in-the-ass friends, dysfunctional relatives, loving parents, and a lush who won’t get out of his hammock. All in all, that sounds about right.
...
Originally published in the Charleston City Paper.
While Hemingway wrote of an outdoorsman, Allen writes of an author wannabe and average middle-class American; Peter Sackrider leads a normal imperfect life filled with adolescent turmoil, relational hardships, and sexual confusion. He is introduced as a hormonal teen in Kentucky, drinking beer and trying to score, but with the turn of a page, he becomes an editor’s assistant in New York City, typing short stories and still trying to score. With each new chapter, Sackrider’s life steadily advances.
Despite the novel’s breakneck pace, it contains everyday moments presented in unique and creative ways; well-structured prose and realistic dialogue accurately express life’s haphazard complexity. Simple settings are catalysts for contemplative thought. Even tennis court banter contains slight profundity - “Who ever really forgives anybody? If forgiving is forgetting.”
This introspective questioning often generates glum dissatisfaction. One disenchanted husband feels ancient at 27 - trapped by the domesticity of marital cohabitation, where life revolves around yard work and fertilizer spreaders. Henry David Thoreau understood: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Dwight Allen’s words eloquently depict the emotional hurly-burly of being, but Sackrider’s textual talent is not as moving. He enjoys the romanticized idea of a writer’s life but not the literary effort it requires. He dreams “of writing books…though doing this, he has figured out, takes work” - work that he is rarely willing to do. Despite Sackrider’s authorial apathy, most of The Green Suit is written in his voice. He opens and closes the novel, and his acquaintances take care of the middle, offering alternating perspectives that enhance character development, create a better understanding of Sackrider, and offer a more complex reading experience.
Dwight Allen increases the complexity further by performing artistic sleight of hand; after moving to New York from a small town, Peter Sackrider writes a short story about someone moving to New York from a small town. He titles the story The Green Suit, making Dwight Allen’s novel his fictional fiction - M.C. Escher’s Drawing Hands, redrawn with words.
Allen continues his prosaic puzzle with a chapter written by Sackrider’s ex-girlfriend. She, Nora Sue, discusses a Peter Sackrider short story that appears earlier in The Green Suit as a Dwight Allen chapter. In the short story [previous chapter] Nora Sue is named Ranada to protect Sackrider from a fictional lawsuit. The real [but still fictional] Nora Sue tells her side of Sackrider’s story [Allen’s chapter] and adds additional insight into Sackrider’s confused sexuality. Got that? [Got that?]
Dwight Allen does. With imaginative literary architecture, he builds an engaging novel of everyday existence. Allen states “there are a million ways to come loose from faith,” but The Green Suit does not loose faith in itself or the human condition; it embraces the certain uncertainties in life. It gains literary momentum as Peter Sackrider’s flawed life unfolds – a life filled with exhilaration, depression, pain-in-the-ass friends, dysfunctional relatives, loving parents, and a lush who won’t get out of his hammock. All in all, that sounds about right.
...
Originally published in the Charleston City Paper.
