This Side of Brightness (1998) by Colum McCann

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Side of Brightness (1998)

by Colum McCann

Manhattan: 32/33

New York: 84/105

  Ireland is a location that forms authors of literary fiction the same way the pressures of central American cities form great basketball players- if you go to Ireland, the landscape inspires literary musings the same way the Venice Beach outdoor basketball courts inspire show-offy slam dunks during pick-up games. Case in point is Colum McCann- an Irish author and National Book Award winner who I'd never read before I started the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.

  Most recently he published Apeirogon, about the conflict in Israel/Palestine, told from the perspective of fathers on both sides who have suffered loss during the conflict. At the time, I was troubled by the confidence with which an Irish author who lives in New York wrote a book about Israeli and Palestinian characters.  Reading This Side of Brightness, his 1998 book about a "sand hog"(workers who dug the tunnels for the New York City subway system) and his progeny, I was again taken aback by his confident depiction of African-American characters living in New York City.

  McCann was the first Irish writer to win the National Book award for his 2009 novel, Let the Great the World Spin, which was about 9/11 and that dude who tightrope walked between the twin towers back in the mid 1970's.  Anyway, if you read anything about McCann you will learn that he is a huge advocate for writing as an empathy generator- I agree and that almost of all (all of them?) involve writing stories that share little or nothing in common with his personal background. 

  This book, which flashes between historical backstory about this particular family, and the present, where a man named "Treefrog" lives as one of the Mole People of the New York City subway system.  It was nice to see the Mole People represented in the tapestry of New York City but overall I thought his characterization of the experience of this mixed-race New York City family wasn't particularly coherent, and several of the plot points seemed rote or stereotyped. 

  Almost at the end of the Manhattan sub-chapter, with the rest of NYC and New Jersey also in range for completion. New York City has been rough- it truly is a concrete jungle, and more so for the folks at the bottom of the socio-economic scale. I am consistently surprised, however, by the passivity of he protagonist in many of these books, and how few of them take it upon themselves to leave their dysfunctional surroundings and start anew somewhere-anywhere- else.  I guess that wouldn't make for an interesting novel- no struggle, no trauma, no publisher.