RandyDandy, an American Expat in London

I finished reading Richard Russo’s well-structured and brilliantly funny novel “Straight Man” a few days ago. My friend Mitzi Scott gifted the book to me a little over a year ago as we were browsing through a mammoth “Half Price Books” store in north Dallas, and it took me far too long to crack it open. The protagonist (and also quite an antagonist) is a middle-aged English professor, department chair, and one-time novelist.

An excerpt:

Solange’s story is titled “The Clouds of August,” and it’s as full of vapor as Leo’s was of misogyny. Every time something threatens to happen in the story, the sky clouds over and the young woman protagonist stops whatever she’s doing to contemplate the clouds. These become progressively darker and more ominous, until by the end of the story they positively rain significance.

“I like the clouds,” somebody offers. If we’re going to have to talk about the story, this is as good a place as any to begin. “They’re, like, a metaphor.”

This comment deeply satisfies Solange, everyone can tell.

“They are a metaphor,” I point out. “If they were like a metaphor, they’d be, like, a simile.”

Meteorologists surely have it easy over here. The forecast doesn’t vary much: Grey skies with a chance of sun. Periods of rain mixed with periods of dry. Certainly nothing which prompts mass evacuation. And how English novelists ever thought to use clouds and rain as significant metaphors, similes, like, whatever, is beyond me, since it seems to be the default meteorological condition.

At dinner last Friday, my companions and I somehow happened upon the subject of Doppler radar. Neill, a Brit from Lincolnshire who spent six years working in Houston for his company, brought up the topic and used it as an example of certain technology which doesn’t quite catch on this side of the Atlantic.

“What use would it be here, really?” I questioned. I grew up in Oklahoma, where meteorologists and “weathermen” (unfortunately they are different beasts) relied on doppler imaging to observe potentially dangerous rotation in storm cells. We needed the technology to survive.

Three years ago I ignored all of the pressure from friends, family, and that pesky radar to evacuate in advance of Hurricane Rita. I stayed and battled instead the anxieties which followed, as well as the pleasures immediately preceding the storm: calm streets, friendly people in the park actually talking to one another, and a brief respite from the heat of the late Houston summer.

This week I feel those butterflies in my stomach all over again watching Ike’s progress, even though I am many miles away. To my Houston friends, I wish you all the best as you hit the roads, hunker down, or party. I’ll be thinking of you in London, umbrella in hand, contemplating the clouds.

Tags:   books · clouds · doppler radar · Houston · hurricane · Hurricane Ike · Hurricane Rita · London · metaphors · novels · Richard Russo · similes · Straight ManNo Comments