Early Warning by Jane Smiley

The story of one family set against the panorama of a hundred years of American history means you get a very broad overview of the lives of an extended farm family.  With each new addition, each new generation, the Langdon family, which began its history in 1920 in the small farming community of Denby, Iowa, starts spreading far and wide.   The family tree, thankfully illustrated at the front of the book, is growing and getting more complicated, which is not surprising since the Langdons are a complicated family.  Not a few of them have messy lives, sometimes unhappy lives, but then when is life not a little messy and occasionally unhappy anyway?

Early Warning picks up the story of the Langdons, where things left off in 1953 in Some Luck.  This is the second book in a trio known as the Last Hundred Years trilogy and will see the family through most of the eighties where things  leave off in 1986.  I've been reading the books alongside Buried in Print, which has been helpful in a variety of ways.  We chat about the stories as we go; I often complain about some of the characters (and find I am not alone in my opinions) or need clarification of who's who, and most helpfully reading in tandem helps keep the momentum going. 

As much as I enjoy these books, since this is an epic family saga, and I like epic family sagas, the stories are less your traditional historical fiction and more firmly planted in reality.  As fine a line as there might be between historical fiction and fiction grounded in reality, I think there is indeed a distinction (though I am not sure I can adequately explain what I mean by it).  I fully expect drama in historical fiction, but in the Smiley novels the overlap with real life can sometimes be startling and I sometimes feel an emotional weariness, which might sound a little curious in such a broadly written story.

Birds eye view or not, these are fictional characters who do feel flesh and blood and who the reader revisits year after year and who are portrayed not only in their own words or actions but also through the eyes of their children, siblings, parents and the rest of the extended family, which is always illuminating.  This installment opens with a funeral and there are other tragedies along the way.  Walter Langdon, the patriarch dies in the previous novel and here the family gathers together at his funeral.  And, also much like real life, the next three decades races by in what feels like the blink of an eye. 

I've been trying to decide whether the cultural/historical markers along the way have been simply background detail, the world's events playing out as backdrop, or whether they should really be read with weightier significance.  Is this all a Forrest Gump moment (where he is at every important historical moment), rather than as with an actual diary, where the diarist happens to be alive at a most important moment yet is focused on the personal rather than the political without hardly a single mention of world events.  I'm guessing it is a little bit of each.  It's the personal with the Langdons that comes to the fore, yet their lives are sometimes touched by those events that touch everyone's lives. 

The story opens with a funeral but then there is a plane on the tarmac of a foreign country and bags of money involved. Clandestine actions in tricky places.  There is the Kennedy election, and the Cuban missile crisis.  There are the Beatles touring America and the Vietnam War and even Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple.  There's Nixon shaking hands with Mao, Reagan and the beginnings of the HIV crisis. 

But the historical becomes the personal.  Frank's wife Andy is long in therapy, there is anxiety of nuclear war and the some of the Langdons go to, or try to anyway, Vietnam.  There are interracial relationships, disaffection with the Communist Party, breast cancer diagnoses and other health scares, a near miss with a cult, sibling rivalry, affairs, failed marriages, disappointed children and disappointed parents.  So, life basically, in all is hope and glory and all its regrets and sadness.  So you see where there might be a little emotional fatigue going on? 

The third book, Golden Age, is already in hand and 1987 has come and gone and now I will see out the 80s and the story will take me beyond even the coming year.  I'm curious to see how Smiley handles those years that have not even yet been lived, but then this is fiction and I wonder what, if any, cultural markers will be.  Since I grew up in the 80s and know the years after intimately I am looking forward to seeing where they take the Langdon family which will be well into the third generation. 

It's too hard with a book as broadly told as Early Warning to talk about specifics, but Smiley managed to surprise me (and then not at all really, considering it's all so consistent with real life) with a few twists among the characters and their interactions.  Some Langdons I like very much and others not much at all.  Sometimes I feel like I am just looking in, as if at a snow globe, at this curious Langdon family, fictional, yet so very real, too.  Smiley did just enough at the end of this book to shake things up, shake up the Langdons and so the momentum keeps going.  And hopefully my reading momentum will as well.  I get to meet (and return to) the Langdons in their Golden Age.

Comments

[Janet]

I'm through the 2nd of these, but not the third. I liked the 2nd one a lot because those are my years too.

[Judith]

I've very much enjoyed your questions in this piece--your wonderings, in fact. I have long contemplated embarking on this trilogy, and I have no doubt the effort would be worth it, yet I still hesitate to begin. I think it may be because I haven't heard comments from readers who have completed the journey.

However, in your astute comments, and in asking the questions you have, I feel more likely to plunge in than otherwise.
Judith

[Danielle]

I liked the second book even more than the first as well and am curious to find out where Smiley takes the Langdons next. The family tree, I see, has grown immensely so there will be a lot of orienting myself, I think.

[Danielle]

I think you will be happily surprised by the books and find that they are good and thought-provoking. I like the way in which she is telling the story. I thought it might feel somewhat disjointed or that I never quite got a feel for the characters, but despite the broad overview in which she seems to tell the story, some characters you really feel as though you know intimately. I have been thinking about the book a lot even after turning those last pages, which for me is a sure sign that she did something right and that makes this novel shine above so many others! You'll have to let me know what you think if you decide to give the stories a go. I am looking forward to seeing how Smiley takes the Langdons well into the 21st century!

[Caroline]

This sounds rather good. I think I know what you mean about the historical versus realistic. I just read an interwsting article that explained that most writers of historical fiction only use the history as a vehicle to illustrate contemporary problems or as escapism, while this sounds much closer to depicting the way it really was. Does that make sense?

[iliana]

I don't think I've read a family saga like this that takes place over various books. Enjoyed hearing about your reading of these and might have to consider giving them a go!

[Stefanie]

sounds like a good continuation! I will be curious how the third book ends too. I bet Smiley didn't imagine our president elect.

[Danielle]

That article sounds interesting--I do think the Smiley novel (all three books actually) is much less a traditional historical fiction novel and more a story simply set across the span of the last century--so those events don't necessarily stand out but they are the world the characters inhabit. I think I understand what you mean and you're right in how those details work in the Smiley novel. she is a good writer and I am glad I have finally read her!!

[Danielle]

Each book covers about 30 years or so. I like the idea a lot and it works in the way she is telling the story. I think you would like them!

[Danielle]

It was sort of weird reading about the Kennedy election just as our own election was happening--and the elder Langdons were balking at a Catholic president! And then the whole Reagan era didn't sit well with the younger generation. None of us imagined quite what is happening I think! I am very curious what those last chapters/years will be like--I hope to get the last book read this year still--or get very close anyway.