I love Steve Martin as a writer. Back in 2005, I read Shopgirl in one sitting and was taken by his gentle, quiet and comforting handle on prose. This past New Year’s Eve, I was eating dinner with Alan and his friend Andrew before a night out. Over dinner, Andrew and I traded notes on favorite books and he mentioned how he really loved Steve Martin’s books and cited The Pleasure of My Company as his absolute favorite book. Using, Shopgirl as my measuring stick, I didn’t doubt that I was going to be pleased.
That said, Steve Martin totally exceeded my expectations! He composes a story about a man named Daniel, a neurotic genius with amusing, outlandish, and endearing compulsions. For instance, he needs to have a certain amount of wattage lit in his house (1250 watts if memory serves?) and has a fear of crossing curbs. A pretty isolated person who is literally held prisoner in his home by his neuroses, he manages to have tiny windows open that made it possible to meet no more than a handful of people. These select people eventually draw him of his world and expand it.
Martin gives us more access to the characters in this novella than he did in Shopgirl (In hindsight, he kept the characters in Shopgirl a little at arm’s length) which made me grow to care for each of them (most especially, Daniel). I found myself rooting for him, hoping for him, and finally applauding for him.
My Two Favorite Excerpts
“What if during the entire trip I would not allow myself to speak any word that contained the letter e? This is the kind of enormous duty that could supersede and dominate my other self-imposed tasks. I quickly scanned my vocabulary for useful words- a, an, am, was, is, for, against, through- and found enough there to make myself understood. Thus “let’s eat” would become, “I’m hungry, baby! Chow down!” I couldn’t say “I love you,” but I could say, “I’m crazy about you,” which was probably a better choice anyway.
“I thought of the names in and around the magic square. I thought of their astounding number, both in the present and past, of ***** and *****, of *****, of *****, even of my father, whose disavowal of me led to this place, and I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart. ”
(names blacked out to not spoil anything :))