Jernigan (1991) by David Gates

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Jernigan (1991)

by David Gates

Trenton, New Jersey

New Jersey: 6/14

  Jernigan was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1992.  It was the first novel by author David Gates, who went on to publish one additional novel and two collections of short stories, most recently in 2015.  It's pretty crazy to read a novel by an author who made it to the last three of the Pulitzer Prize with his first book and then basically quit. Like the protagonist of The Sports Writer, he did parlay it into a journalism career, where he was a writer and editor at Newsweek until 2008.   Jernigan is an example of a sad dad, suburban New Jersey type, vice: alcoholic, issue: PTSD from wife's dramatic death(running drunk out of their suburban pool party, getting behind the wheel of her car and backing out of the driveway into the path of an oncoming truck, which hits her car and kills her). 

  Like all substance abuse narratives, I found the character rather self-dramatizing. Substance abusers are all similar in that they act like they are the only people to grapple with a particular problem and uncaring of the fact that their particular failure also impacts other members of their community who often are suffering from the exact same issue.  Picking up in the aftermath of his wives death, Jernigan suffers another trauma when his famous-painter dies in a house fire, which also destroys all his unsold paintings. This double trauma sends him into a real spiral, where he falls in bed with the singlish mom of his son's girlfriend, and finds himself living in her "suburban survivalist" home, where she brews moonshine and raises rabbits in the basement to eat. 

  Single mom and her daughter have their own issues, and the whole situation can only be described as a god awful suburban mess. At least, though, Jernigan is an interesting, articulate guy, and there was enough incident in the plot to keep me from crying tears of boredom.