However, fate takes them to New York to pursue Duchess and Woolly. refrigerated boxcars in America. TheLincoln Highwayallowed me to veer again in that the novel focuses on three eighteen-year-oldboys on a journey in 1950s America that lasts only ten days. Emmett seeks Duchess and his Studebaker, as do the police. Though capable and self-reliant, Emmett is hardly the master of his own destiny. That the photograph should be of the very spot where the Lincoln Highway begins seemed a coincidence too great to ignore, so I added the chapter of Woolly reading the old headlines. The major difference is that private highways would be much better, and much less choked by traffic, precisely because price signals would inform usage. Duchess interprets this as his needing to keep everything in balance by meting out his own form of justice, to repay his debts, collect whats his due and ensure others pay their debts. Duchess is a persuasive and original figure, an avenging moral accountant with a ledger of debts to collect (and occasionally to pay). Its tempting to speak of the books cast of minor characters, though one gradually learns that there are no minor characters. Several segments of the Lincoln Highway route followed historic roads: a road laid out by Dutch colonists of New Jersey before 1675 the 1796 Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania the Chambersburg Turnpike, over which much of the Army of Northern Virginia marched to reach the Gettysburg Battlefield, a part of which is traversed by the Lincoln Highway. The Lincoln Highway is a joyride. Townhouse is a character who appears throughoutHighwayeither in recollection form, or live. When I began writing the book, it was laid out in sections titled Day One, Day Two, Day Three, and so on. Girlscame to mind while readingHighwaybecause for a variety of reasons, three of the novels main characters (Emmett Watson, Duchess Hewett, and Woolly Martin) are in the proverbial pawn shop. At no point in prior history did teenagers anywhere in the world have an effective means by which they could share their perspectives with each other. The "Broadway of America" later served as the inspiration for the Federal . Its not unrealistic that their heirs are too. What do you consider an heroic act? thissection. The Lincoln Highway Character List These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. The connections to you? The man who was convicted for a crime he didn't commit. "Most of us shell our days like peanuts. What distinguishes the two in your mind? Lincoln Boulevard is a major northwest-southeast boulevard near Santa Monica Bay in Los Angeles County in California. California it would be. The Lincoln Highway contains stories within stories within stories. He wears a watch with a second hand and carries in his Army surplus backpack a flashlight, a compass and a folded road map, along with his mothers postcards and a well-thumbed compendium of adventure stories featuring 26 heroes, from Achilles to Zorro. His decision to start fresh leads to a second choice Texas or California? You can be having such a nice conversation and someone will raise a question and the next thing you know youre headed off in a whole new direction. Generally, I will revise the book from beginning to end at least twice before it reaches the reader. In the years that follow, Ill keep returning to the idea, picturing the characters, the settings, the events, eventually filling a few notebooks while slowly gaining an understanding of the story as a whole. Escaped prisoner. Helps Billy on the train and throws out Pastor John. The Lincoln Highwa y is a coming-of-age tale about the transition from teenager to adulthood. Duchess dreams of creating a restaurant maybe in California where everyone would feel like the night was something special. It doesnt matter that his plan is lawful, well conceived, well researched. Can you talk about the structure of the book? during some parts of the novel, and quite simply out there, at others hes lucid and biting; telling sister Sarah that he and Duchess are back in New York Gadding about, I suppose. The Lincoln Highway is a fast paced and reflective adventure story centered on three young men from disparate backgrounds, whose incarceration together in a juvenile detention center brings them together on the outside where conflicting motives and moralities set them on a course for collision across the United States. The quotation marks around Denniss name are also something of a Woollyism. Emmet Watson has been released from a juvenile detention facility where he was serving one and a half years sentence due to manslaughter. Ulysses is a symbol of something much bigger as readers ofHighwaywill see, but for the purposes of this review he asserts that everything of value in this life must be earned. So true, but also wording that conservatives would in particular cheer. Most chapters end with cliff hangers of sorts, which meant I kept turning the pages until work commitments forced me to stop reading. Amor Towles talks at length in his interviews about the historical placement of this tale, in particular the events that are soon to occur desegregation, the advent of the birth control pill and rock and roll coming to the stage. With the Korean War having concluded in July 1953, America was at peace in 1954; but the countrys entanglement in the Vietnam War was about to begin. . AKA: Professor Abercrombie, Sam. While Billy wants to locate their mother, Emmet wants to advance his dream of flipping houses as a real estate agent. The novel begins on June 12, 1954 and ends on the same date, clearly not coincidentally, as A Gentleman in Moscow. How did the multiple perspectives enhance or detract from the novel for you? So, while the great cultural shifts that defined America from 1955 to 1970 were not yet dominating the headlines in 1954, they were simmering just below the surface. He convinces Emmett to travel to San Francisco and seek out their mother, who abandoned them eight years prior. Do you find a need to ensure everyone gets their just desserts, something like Duchess going after the bystander in the cowboy hat? From the cherished book, he knows the tropes of the travel tale, the requirements of heroes. Abernathy dreams of living life more fully through exploration. The book was feeling unwieldy, with sections that were cumbersome, slow, or off track. They were serving time at Salina with Emmett, and theyd climbed into Warden Williamss trunk ahead of him driving Emmett home. His mother is long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett intends to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they . Smith observed inThe Wealth of Nationsthat the most decisive mark of prosperity of any country is the increase of the number of its inhabitants. Emmett would agree. More on what bothered me later on. Set in that same month, " The Lincoln Highway " charts the cross-country adventures of four boys: Emmett Watson, an 18-year-old Nebraskan farm kid just released from a Kansas juvenile detention. Late in The Lincoln Highway Woolly gives Billy an old officer's watch that has been handed down through his family from generation to generation. The warden in charge when Emmett arrived in Salina. Emmett's co-prisoner. After you claim a section youll have 24 hours to send in a draft. California, here we come. As Duchess himself notes (when he comes to), all he need do is lean back and paddle slowly, in order to make it safely to shore. Emmett is the central character in the novel as he goes on both a literal and figurative journey as he learns to control his anger. When I conceived of the story, I had no idea that it existed. But the revolution would really take off when the Pill was approved in 1961, giving women and men the ability to engage in sexual activity with less concern over long term repercussions. For kindness begins where necessity ends. chapter Nine Sally. Woolly shares with Billy about how every day is an every day day at Salina and reflects that it also was the way of life at boarding school and many other places. But once Ive completed the draft and cleaned it up, I give it to my wife, my editor in New York, my editor in London, and a few friends, asking that they all give me feedback within a few weeks. What a question? One character says we must break bread, Jake Snyder (brother of the Jimmy Snyder who was inadvertently killed by Emmett) has wingmen with him when he settles a score with a back-from-Salina Emmett, nutjob comes up once, and then Ma Belle (head of a raffish circus lounge, and realistically a brothel), upon hearing that Woolly attended (and was kicked out of) prominent boarding schools of the St. Pauls, St. Marks, and St. Georges variety, explains to one of the women in her employ that those are WASP schools; the problem there that WASP wasnt yet part of the lexicon in 1954. It turned out that she kept sending them postcards for the first days of her travel, leaving a trail for them to travel after her. Volunteer and former English teacher Paula Weisberger, of . It's something Towles never forgets. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement," Towles wrote in his first novel. And you guessed it, really through no fault of his own. It was in December 1953 that Hugh Heffner published the first issue of Playboy with an old nude of Marilyn Monroe serving as its centerfoldlaunching a new era of publicly acceptable pornography. Helps Billy on the What the worthy endeavor requires is planning, effort, attentiveness and the willingness to clean up. chapter Nine Sally. Can you talk about some of the movies that are mentioned in the book? An author Billy likes. Two years before, he turned around to punch a Morgen local who was taunting him endlessly about his failed father. Billy is determined to follow the Lincoln Highway west to San Francisco, where he hopes to find his mother, who abandoned her family when he was a baby and Emmett was 8. The novel begins with the warden of a juvenile work camp in Salina, Kansas taking Emmett back to his familys farm in Morgen, Nebraska. This helped clarify for me what belonged in the story and how it should be told. Some have wondered how Emmett will be able to live with the knowledge that Duchess has drowned; but Emmett is not likely to ever find out. Duchesss absentee father is a boozy, spottily employed actor in the mold of John Barrymore whose best friend is Fitzy FitzWilliam. His debut novel Rules of Civility has been a book club favorite, and A Gentleman from Moscow was an instant bestseller, now . You may opt-out by. It stretches from Times Square all the way to Lincoln Park in San Francisco. In my case, I finished what is a 576 page book in a little over 48 hours despite much of those hours being occupied with unrelated work. While Im writing chapters, I am constantly revising the back half of the outline or adding to it, as I gain a better understanding of my story. I suppose thats because they have such strong and vocal personalities. Each one of them, Towles implies, is the central protagonist of an ongoing adventure that is both unique and universal. Again, one of the ideas Towles explores is how evil can be offset by decency and kindness on any rung of the socio-economic ladder. Charles Watson has died and his young son is left alone at home. Do you share stories orally or in print or in other media? Duchess, the felonious foil to law-abiding Emmett, does not open Amor Towles' new novel, " The Lincoln Highway ," with those words. Still, Emmett (and by extension Towles) isnt totally bereft of Bastiat, or Adam Smith. Right at the start of the novel, Towles shares the value of the written word writing about Emmett reflecting on the value his father placed on written words, ..that most sacred and noble of mans achievements, the ability to set down his finest ideas and sentiments so that they might be shared through the ages. chapter Ten Emmett. It is because those of us who claim a libertarian bent have long made the point that assuming a lack of massive federal highway spending, highways would still be all over the United States. When we were boys in the 1970s and Claudio would come to New England for the summer, he would be horrified by the American insistence upon drowning all pasta in a thick red sauce. Can you talk about the shifting points of view in the book? At this exhilarating point, California vanishes, the novel moves steadily east by car and train, and Towles goes all in on the kind of episodic, exuberant narrative haywire found in myth or Homeric epic. He imagines driving the Lincoln Highway and heading west with Billy and Emmett and Woolly to fulfill his dream. In 1954, the sexual revolution was about to begin. In the novel The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, when 18-year-old Emmett Watson told his younger brother William "Billy" Watson they needed to make a fresh start, Billy suggested they follow the route their mother took when she abandoned them, along the Lincoln Highway. In the case of this novel, the single biggest surprise was the Lincoln Highway itself. (Rock Around the Clock would have a particularly large impact when it was chosen to accompany the opening credits of the 1955 movie The Blackboard Jungle, a drama about an inner-city high school, starring the young Sidney Poitier.) Because I have a detailed outline in place, when Im starting a chapter I dont have to wonder what the setting or key events are going to be. The chapters of six characters are told in a third person that reflects their point of view and tone, while the chapters of Duchess and Sally are in first person. What do you remember of how you fashioned who you are today as you came of age? As so many do in real life, she was looking to shift the blame for her declining situation to others only for a grizzled, one-time character to tell her something along the lines of Ive never seen anyone at the pawn shop because of what others did.. The Lincoln Highway is, among other things, about the act of storytelling and mythmaking. And to what degree do we fashion it on the fly based on our own instincts and experience? In 1954, television and rock & roll, two of the greatest cultural influences of the 20th century, were about to take off. That same year, the Kinsey Report on female sexuality was released, bringing private discussions of bedroom behavior into the public square. But then one night the shapely daughter of an industrialist asked him to impersonate Karl Marx at a gathering put on by the Greenwich Village Progressive Society. In 1954, America had 6% of the worlds population and 60% of its cars, but the automobile was primarily used as a local convenience. When Woolly was in boarding school he unexpectedly takes a taxi to visit his sister. Realistically carpenters would have much more work building more houses to reflect demand for same that is always a consequence of production first. everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of The Lincoln Highway. AKA: Professor Abercrombie, Sam. The Lincoln Highway is a character-driven tale that is and pulled along through narratives of each major individual in the story. None of this is to sayHighwayisnt an enjoyable story. So I hope that the following resources, character list, timeline and thematic topics will help you on your own journey deeper into the novel and its connections to your life. Because those who are given something of value without having to earn it are bound to squander it. These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. Mrs. Simpson's husband. The novel offers a glimpse into who each of these individuals will become what each sees as right and wrong, what each is willing to do and unwilling to do. Unlikely. The two boys are alone, but have each other. Can you tell us something about the origin of the story? Tirzah Price 2022-07-29. While Duchess and Emmett are the titles for most of the chapters, eight characters in total have named chapters. Woolly observes, When you put it altogether just like that with the beginning at the beginning, the middle in the middle and the end at the end, there is no denying that today was a one of a kind, kind of day. chapter Two, Woolly. The story indicates that the good time had by their mother made her realize she could be happy again, but only if she left the failed existence created by her husband. Shortly after the warden drives off, two fellow inmates turn up, stowaways from the warden's trunk trouble-maker Duchess and his hapless but sweet proteg, Woolly. [ Read an excerpt from The Lincoln Highway. ]. The three movies also happen to be American classics and definitely worth a watch. There were also words that read as very out of place, or not of 1954. The novel opens wide, detours beget detours, the point of view expands and rotates. What are the traits you see in others that you view as kindness? To give some sense of the world at the time, the top thirty songs at the end of 1953 according to Billboard included the likes of Nat King Cole, Patti Page, Eddie Fisher, Tony Bennett and three songs by Perry Como. Another fortuitous discovery relates to the photograph thats in the book. Theres a very uplifting story of a black man by the name of Ulysses who saves Billy from being robbed (and arguably worse) in a box car on the train ride to New York. Duchess ultimately borrows Emmetts Studebaker, only for him and Woolly to head east. What elements did you embrace and what did you reject as you came of age? Warden Williams tells Emmett you have your whole life ahead of you more than once, neighboring farmer Ed Ransom has known Emmett since the day he was born. Emmett was made a hearty breakfast, and then the night before Emmetts depressed mother left the family, the family actually had a wonderful time at a fireworks show in Seward, Nebraska. She shared that there were two types of wrongdoing. The man who was convicted for a crime he didn't commit. But for all his shortcomings Charlie Watson had never come close to betraying Emmett in the manner that Harry Hewitt had betrayed Duchess. chapter Three Emmett. In the same pan, fry the bacon with the bay leaf until the bacon is brown but not crisp. What will be described asHighwaygoing forward is Towless third book, after he garnered major popularity with his debut (The Rules of Civility), followed byA Gentleman In Moscow. The battle for civil rights in America is as old as the Union itself, but in 1954, the modern civil rights movement was about to begin. Except for when Towles wanted him to not be. When I renamed the sections as a countdown, I assumed I would eventually restore the Day One, Day Two, Day Three titles. 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