The Lincoln Highway ~ Amor Towles

 

Every book takes us on a journey, whether figurative or literal. You might suspect that Amor Towles’s Lincoln Highway merely falls into the latter category only, but you’d be wrong. In most texts, the most important road trip or journey that the central character takes in an internal, psychological one, no vehicles required, and this book is surprisingly such a one.

The journeying that preoccupies Towles in this book is not only inward moving, but it also extends outward, exploring great literary works, referring to Shakespeare’s Othello and Hamlet, and Homer’s The Odyssey. There are also many allusions to other texts, that add additional resonances in the plot line of  Lincoln Highway. Consider how each journey of the central male narrators in the book mirrors the journeys of  the heroes of The Aeneid, Moby Dick, Don Quixote, and Hamlet, but I will leave you to figure out who is who.

Towels’s preoccupation with books and stories continues in how, during the course of the book, various characters ponder the art of storytelling itself, like when one describes the arc of a story as a diamond, with the story’s beginning and ending tapering away, and the climax of the drama spreading to the widest point. Towles even holds a mirror up to the audience, when he presents us with an image of an old man, sitting alone in his bedroom, who has the worst addiction of all, to reading! He could be a future you or me, or the author himself!

There is even one character, young Billy, who carries a beloved book with him wherever he goes, as if his life depended on it. He keeps a journal and decides that the best place to begin a story is in the middle of the action, in medias res. This meta, self-reflective element of the novel is delightful, and serves as an homage to classic books and to book-lovers like us.

While Towles describes the book’s structure as a diamond, it seems to me that the intersection of the five main narrators creates something of a five-pointed diamond or star, which turns as the narrative moves forward, each point linked to the previous narrative and the one following, reflecting light on the story as a whole. 

One character, Emmet, ponders a theory that every character has a positive personality trait that, in them, is so exaggerated that it becomes a flaw. We recognise that it is so with the characters that Towles has gathered in the world of this novel. But not only that, it seems that each character has flaws that connects with others in the group, creating a suite of doppelgängers. 

We are told that Sarah’s flaw is that she is too kind, and that Sally’s is that she is too generous. Billy’s flaw is that he remembers to much, while Duchess forgets nothing. Emmet’s flaw is that he is a realist, a pessimist. He always expects the worst and this leads him to insist on always doing the ‘right’ thing. Contrastingly Wooly’s flaw is that he is a dreamer, an optimist: he always expects the best in others, but other people inevitably let him down.  In this wonderful way, Towles has created a kaleidoscope of characters whose journey in the novel refracts and reflects one another’s, making this an unforgettable novel that delights the careful reader,  and will make you want to read and re-read it again and again. 

This is a book about a journey, but not the one you are expecting. The twists and turns on the Lincoln Highway will send you off in the wrong direction again and again, as you try to predict where the story is will end up. You’ll skirt roundabouts and pot-holes, back roads and dead ends before you reach your destination. I only wish I could take that journey with you again for the first time. But for now, roll down the window, and treat yourself to a road trip on the Lincoln Highway. Enjoy the ride. 

By Michelle Burrowes