Breaking Out of Bedlam (2010) by Leslie Larsen

 1,001 Novels: A Library of Ameri ca

Breaking Out of Bedlam (2010)

by Leslie Larsen

Joplin, Missouri

Missouri: 5/11

   Breaking Out of Bedlam is a 1,001 Novels: A Library of American mainstay, about a 300 pound, 82-year-old mother of three who has just been confined to an assisted living facility by her "loving" children.  Surprisingly, the narrative structure takes the form of narrator Nora Sledge deciding to tell her story by writing in a journal.  Author Larsen thus avoids the central dilemma of the entire 1,001 Novels project: How to write an interesting book about a character or characters with little or no formal education and never go anywhere or do anything.   As Sledge herself makes perfectly clear, she fits this description.  It's unclear if she has ever read a book.  But she is a lively and engaging narrator, and the low-stakes plot about assisted living shenanigans kept me engaged.

  The 1,001 Novels project has this book mapped but it is hard to say why.  The nursing home where 100% of the action takes place is in suburban San Diego- it sounded like the Clairemont Mesa area to me.  The written flashbacks to Sledge's past live must be happening in or around Joplin, Missouri though Sledge doesn't tell us much about the place other than her own story- getting pregnant as a teenager and then tricking her husband into marrying her to give the illegitimate child a home.

Mrs. Bridge (1959) by Evan S. Connell

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Mrs. Bridge (1959)

by Evan S. Connell

Kansas City, Missouri

Missouri: 4/11

     Mrs. Bridge was a genuine pleasure to read and Connell a genuine discovery for me, one of only a limited number of authors thus far in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.   Mrs. Bridge is a really well-done portrait of an upper-class matron in Kansas City, Missouri in the early-middle 20th century- apparently based on Connell's sister, who was an upper-class matron in Kansas City, Missouri.   Connell was raised there, though he resided in San Franscico and later New Mexico as an adult.  I couldn't find any information about him being a member of the LGBT community at any point, but his romantic history is limited to a single woman who sounds like a beard to me.  He never got married, never had any kids and shunned publicity.  Sounds pretty LGBT to me!

    Mrs. Bridge works because he tells the story of this objectively uninteresting woman in the form of a hundred little episodes, leaving the reader to piece together the more prosaic moments of her life.  What is fantastic about this technique is that it transforms an uninteresting subject into an interesting subject without demanding an excessive amount of time from the reader.  Surely, Connell was ahead of the curve in that regard.  This approach wasn't characteristic of all his books- later in his career he wrote a 450-page non-fiction book about the life of General Custer that was his biggest commercial hit.