Day 670, Quasi-Quarantine: "Lincoln Highway" Offers Nostalgic Escapism At The Right Time

"But for most people, it doesn't matter where they live. When they get up in the morning, they're not looking to change the world. They want to have a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, put in their eight hours, and wrap up the day with a bottle of beer in front of the TV set. More or less, it's what they'd be doing whether they lived in Atlanta, Georgia, or Nome, Alaska. And if it doesn't matter for most people where they live, it certainly doesn't matter where they're going.

"That's what gave the Lincoln Highway its charm."

Borrowing heavily from themes of "O Brother, Where Are Thou," "On the Road," and Huckleberry Finn, Amor Towles painstakingly reconstructs the road-trip/quest genre. 

Set in the 1950s, "The Lincoln Highway" features a memorable cast of characters, led by the mercurial Duchess and the conflicted Emmett. The novel shifts in perspective among a number of narrators, a tricky approach that takes a deft author to pull off -- and Towles does it with aplomb.

"Like I said before, Emmett Watson understands the whole picture better than most. He understands that a man can be patient, but only up to a point; that it's occasionally necessary for him to toss a monkey wrench in the workings of the world in order to get his God-given due."

"'If we've got unfinished business, let's finish it.'

You could wait your whole life to say a sentence like that and not have the presence of mind to say it when the time comes."

"You could almost hear the thumb of reality beginning to press down on that spot in the soul from which youthful enthusiasm springs. Reality was almost certainly going to leave its mark on Billy Watson tonight."

For this reader, the ending felt like a missed opportunity and unnecessarily abrupt and confusing, representing my only concerns with "The Lincoln Highway." 

Despite that nit, the book is engrossing and intense, taking place across a rapid-fire nine days and reeling you deeply into the story as the miles rocket past.

"And yet, despite the fact that Emmett and Townhouse were two young men on the verge of heading out in different directions with no real assurance of where they would land, when Townhouse said at their parting, I'll see you, Emmett hadn't the slightest doubt that this was true."

"When you put, said Woolly to no one but himself, while wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, when you put it all together 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."