I got this invite in the mail a couple weeks ago. Oh, maybe it was three weeks ago. It was certainly long enough ago to give me plenty of time to respond appropriately. Because this was no ordinary invite. This was Jim’s 90th birthday celebration…and Connie and Jim’s 70th wedding anniversary.

Connie and Jim met in High School. Here they are tooling around on Jim’s bike. Looks like the same bike Marlon Brando rode in that movie the Wild One.

March 9th 1955 Jim turned 20. Three days later he married Connie

I’m not positive but I think Connie was 18. Does it matter? What matters is they were kids. Barely out of high school. They got married and stayed married for 70 years. 70 years and counting. Who knows how long it’ll end up being. One thing I know for sure. Neither of them plan to file for divorce, claiming irreconcilable differences.

Why’d they invite an old cuss like me?

Jenna, my daughter, is Connie and Jim’s Granddaughter. So I’m kinda sorta like part of the family. That’s not the main reason. They seem to like me. Which is weird. True, I’m the Gloomy Boomer. But I can be engaging when I choose. Especially when I’m especially fond of the people I’m engaging with. Maybe that’s it.

I’ve had the pleasure of sharing company with Connie and Jim over the years. Always in one of their family gatherings. Kim, Jenna’s Mother, invites me to these gatherings. I keep showing up. I always enjoy myself. Connie and Jim have three children. Kim, the oldest. Then Harry. Then Tony. Kim and Tim have been married going on fifty years. Harry and Lori, maybe forty years, maybe longer. Tony and Sharon, same deal. All these people just stay together! Connie and Jim set a convincing example for their children.

A Happy Marriage

Connie and Jim have a happy marriage. It would be hard to argue otherwise. They like being together. They enjoy each other’s company. Everybody agrees. They like to hang out together. As if they’d rather be with each other than with anybody else…

Here they are as a younger couple, having fun.

They raised three kids. Spent dozens of years traveling the world together. Always together. I’ve never seen them look at each other with anything short of fondness. Seventy years in each other’s company and they still act like they’re on a first date. Well, I’d say that’s a happy marriage.

But what do I know?

I’m the Gloomy Boomer. I don’t believe in a happy anything. The way I see it, life sucks and then you die. Fair to say, I’m cynical by nature. I don’t know how I got this way. I like to think it comes from clear headed observation of the Human Condition. That, and the fact I’m haunted by a Dickensian Childhood…

Yeah, so I had a depraved and squalid childhood. See Oliver Twist for details. I’m not complaining. I’m just saying. In the end I made it through with my soul fairly intact. There’s a reason Huck Finn is my favorite character in fiction. Suffice it to say I have less than a generous view of humanity.

A Great Novel

I like to think my cynicism is also a result of all the “Great Novels” I’ve read. Novels that reinforce my view of the world. There are two types of novels. NOVELS and GREAT NOVELS. The great novels are part of the cannon…the ones I was forced to read in college. One of the Great Novels the Professors made me read was ANNA KARENINA by Leo Tolstoy, the dude who wrote WAR AND PEACE. Anna Karenina is his other great novel. I barely got through the thousand or more pages. Each of the dozen or more characters had three or more names. Russians are as bad as the Spaniards. I think I gave up reading Anna Karenina and turned to the Cliff Notes. Still, I was enormously impressed by the opening sentence of Anna Karenina. It goes like this:

In Tolstoy’s world, a Family meant the same as a Marriage. So he could just as well be saying all happy marriages are alike, while each unhappy marriage is unhappy in it’s own way.

Man, was I impressed by this sentence when I first read it in college! I thought to myself, how profound and how true.

In the intervening fifty years I’ve learned a bit about writers, great or otherwise.

Turns out the first sentence in Anna Karenina is what’s called a Zinger. Tolstoy needed a terrific opening sentence to launch his narrative into the story of a profoundly unhappy marriage. A marriage not unlike his own unhappy marriage, one that started out well but grew increasingly acrimonious near the end. It is just as true to say all unhappy marriages are the same. The same cheating, screaming, bickering…the same non-communication. All unhappy marriages result in the partners growing apart. All unhappy marriages end in dissolution. Physically or in spirit. Leo and Sofia stayed together in an unhappy marriage. Almost to the end. He left her finally. Two weeks later he was dead.

I think Sofia wanted the marriage to work in spite of Tolstoy’s genius. But when he decided to give all his money away and go live in a hut, she demurred. He caught her going through his papers to find out if he changed his will. He was outraged and took a train for the coast. I’d say they suffered from a failure to communicate.

What makes a Happy Marriage?

I’m assuming for the sake of argument that all Happy Marriages are not the same. If Tolstoy meant to say Happy Marriages are devoid of conflict and drama and therefore are all the same he may have been approximating the truth. I would rather think that all marriages, good or bad, are unique. Good or Bad in their own way. Still, I wonder what it means to be happy in a happy marriage.

If there is such a thing as a happy marriage, I would argue Connie and Jim have it. I’ve watched them together over the years at family gatherings. I’ve wondered what is it about these two that make them so happy together. What makes a steady pilot in a tumultuous sea? Two steady pilots, that is. I’ve watched Connie and Jim at functions and wondered what it is that keeps two creative and intelligent people together all their lives…not just together but happy together. It’s a mystery to me. I mean, it’s almost as if this is how it’s meant to be!

These two even photograph happy.

Often I find myself searching for an answer and I’ll miss the obvious. The bone-headed answer. Which is, Connie and Jim are good people. Plain and simple. Unpretentious. Generous. Kind. Tolerant. Dedicated. Unselfish. Willing to sacrifice for the common good. All these qualities define Connie and Jim. I have read about these kinds of people. I don’t actually personally know anybody like that.

Wait a minute! I know Connie and Jim.

Thinking about it, I have to admit there are others like Connie and Jim. Lots of marriages, in fact. You just don’t read about them in the news. They’re not the primary focus of the Great Novels. Why? Because there’s no dirt worth digging up. The more you dig the less you find. The vein of promising dirt peters out. You end up with a portrait of good people. Plain and simple.

Good People make a happy marriage. So what makes a good person?

I don’t know.

I’m not a philosopher. I’m not a good person, either. I’ve tried to be good in my life but it never worked out. If somebody came between me and me, a potential life partner, I’d find a way to screw it up. So I’ve pretty much given up on trying to be good. I’m not whining. It is what it is. But just cuz I’m not good doesn’t mean I can’t recognize good when I see it in others. I take the view of Ernest Hemingway, who said, “About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after”. In other words, it’s a gut feeling. I know a pair of good people when I see them. Connie and Jim are good people.

Plain and simple.

One problem I have with trying to define good people and what makes them good is the paucity of information, in the media and in literary circles, concerning Good People. It’s almost as if the subject of a good person is taken for granted to be ludicrous and low brow in the extreme. Good People are best confined to fairy tales and should be mentioned only in Sunday School and maybe employed as examples to ween nasty children of the healthy urge to steal a playmate’s cell phone or designer crayons..

Good People are not the primary focus of the Great Novels. Or any Novel for that matter. It makes no sense on a practical level to spend a year or longer attempting to write a novel about good people. I mean, where’s the drama? Where’s the conflict? Nobody cares to read about them. Good People are boring. At least they seem to be. So why write about them?

One Great Novelist tried.

A great novel about good people

This guy, David Foster Wallace, attempted to write a Great Novel about essentially Good People.

His first novel Infinite Jest was about a pack of self-absorbed, brilliant, tortured, narcissistic, urbane, iconoclasts. Wastoids, he called them. In other words, Post-Modern Characters. The Novel was a huge success. Labeled Incandescent Genius. The work propelled Wallace into the Great Novelist category.

With his second Novel, however, Wallace meant to move in a new direction. He decided he would write about those he considered to be Good People. That is, people dedicated to the mundane courses of everyday life. He chose as his characters a group of IRS employees. He wasn’t being ironic. These were the people who paid attention to the boring details of our existence. Paying one’s taxes. Accounting for our incomes. Accounting. People who raised “Accounting” to a great cause. People who are not self-absorbed. People who lack drama. Who shun conflict. Who follow the rules. Who desire that others follow the rules. Because you need rules. You could call this conformity. And it is. Because you need to conform. For the common good.

Anyway, David Foster Wallace set out to write this novel. He worked on it for years. IF he succeeded, this would change the course of American Literature. He needed to get it right. He tried and he tried and he tried and he tried. He tried so hard he hanged himself.

The novel was left unfinished at his death. But finished and published by his widow.

The novel is called The Pale King.

It makes the argument that the boring but necessary work you dedicate yourself to in life helps to make you a good person.

Maybe a marriage also helps to make people good!

Being bad myself, I have no credibility to offer a judgement concerning this matter. I sometimes act good but it’s a phony goodness I’m projecting. I’m phony to the bone and I hate myself for being so phony. But now I’m thinking about it, I don’t hate myself for being phony at all. I actually kind of think it’s a good trick. And part of my work arsenal back when I did time as a door-to-door salesman. I envy people who don’t feel this kind of conflict. (I actually don’t. I dislike most people too much to envy them).

You see how screwed up I am?

This is one of the main reasons I admire Connie and Jim. They don’t bestow their goodness like a magic wand or a horse whip. They’ve accepted me for what I am. They don’t judge. (I know this because I don’t feel judged by them.) They’re just good people.

Okay, so how do you become good like Connie and Jim?

Are you born that way? No. We’re all born selfish.

I think one of the ways you become good in the way that Connie and Jim are good is by committing yourself to another person. Like Connie and Jim have done with each other. By elevating one person’s welfare above your own. By making the other person more important than yourself. Like the Pale King’s characters, you find a way to eradicate your own ego. I mean, it’s not like you’re such a big deal anyway. Connie and Jim have dedicated their lives to each other. They made a vow to honor and obey each other and they stuck to it.

So, in effect, their Marriage, their strong and enduring bond they developed for each other, made them better people!

This is what a successful marriage does. It takes regular people or even bad people and it makes them better. Until, in the end, they become Good People.

Being bad myself, I’m kind of awed by this metamorphosis.

This would account for the luminescent glow Connie and Jim project when they’re together.

Fascinating.

A love story

I once had the urge to write a great novel. I worked diligently at it. Day in, day out. Thirty years I worked at it. This is how crazy I was. This Great Novel idea took precedent over everything in my life. Marriage. Family. Work. Civic Responsibilities. Ultimately, it became an excuse to avoid all responsibilities. Which is probably how Great Novels get written. “You have to get obsessed and stay obsessed,” John Irving once said. And yet, in spite of all this effort, I fell short. I don’t know if it was simply a lack of talent. The Killer in me was absent. I’m a kind of half-ass Narcissist. You need to kill and enjoy killing to be a Great Novelist. And yet in my small way, I kept at it. Trying and failing and trying again…

One day it occurred to me how Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity might apply to me: “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” That’s when I stopped trying to write a Great Novel and settled on just a Novel. And before I knew it I popped one out. Writing it was even kind of fun. I might even write another one, just for the hell of it. But if I do, it certainly won’t be a Great Novel. I’m done with that kind of insanity.

But for the sake of speculation, say I decided to write a Great Novel. I never will. But imagine another me. Another me on another planet earth. Say this other me decides to do the impossible. That is, write a Great Novel about Good People. Like David Foster Wallace tried to do with The Pale King. Only my Great Novel would not be about IRS workers in Des Moines. My Great Novel would be a love story.

A Great Novel about two people, decent law abiding people, people who appear simple and ordinary because they go about their lives without creating drama, without hurting innocent people, only trying to do the right thing as they see it, day after day, year after year. People like the Good People David Foster Wallace set out to edify in The Pale King.

The story of a young couple, barely out of high school, two kids who fall in love. They decide to throw caution to the wind and get married. Toss in their lot with each other. They have no grandiose goals, like writing great novels, curing cancer, achieving world peace or building a marketing empire that’ll revolutionize the way we spread disinformation. All they wanna do is be together and raise a family. Which they do. Their first child is born before the year is out. Two more children follow. The new father works construction and does well. He likes his work. The new mother may question her role as a housewife but ignores her doubts. She falls into the routine of raising kids and managing a family, and comes to enjoy her life of stability with the man she chose.

Now comes the hard part. Telling the story of two people getting along together through the course of their “seemingly” ordinary lives. Unlike Anna Karenina, there’s no Plot Arc. No exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Anna Karenina is doomed. Like the character in another Great Novel, Madame Bovary, she makes choices that’ll end in her suicide. This is her plot arc. Most Great Novels have them. Those that don’t, face challenges only a genius can overcome. Marcel Proust told the story of his life without a standard plot arc. He wrote over a million words. Three thousand pages. 7 volumes. It holds the Guinness record of the longest novel ever written. And he died before he finished it. He didn’t kill himself. He just died.

The beauty and genius of Remembrance Of Things Past is Proust’s ability to bestow “seemingly” ordinary moments and characters with the magic they deserve.

The day to day course of life, faced heroically in that undramatic way good people have of just plugging along. This is Magical. We just don’t see it. Allowing us to see the magic requires the talent of a Great Writer like Marcel Proust. Or David Foster Wallace.

Connie and Jim are good people who’ve lived productive lives filled with magical moments. They’re still going strong. They are a Great Novel. They need a Great Writer to tell their story. Or maybe not. Maybe the story of their lives together is far greater than any novel that attempts to portray them. A single life is a greater miracle than any work of art. Do I actually believe that? Quick as I’d pick up a dime I do. What’s perplexing to me is our need to record our lives rather than just live them. As if nothing is of value unless we write it down or paint it on a canvass.

Connie and Jim are a Great Love Story. Still going strong. They don’t need a novel. They’re already on the record books, just ask any of their kids. Grandkids. Friends. Me.

But say this other me, this me on another Earth, say I decide to write a Great Novel about two people and their journey through life together.

I’d title it Connie And Jim. Not Jim And Connie. Jim wouldn’t want it that way.

Connie and Jim…

A Love Story.