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Hemingway's Chair by Michael Palin
St. Martin's Press, $22.95
Review by L.D. Meagher
May 20, 1998
Web posted at: 1:38 p.m. EDT (1338 GMT) (CNN) -- Martin Sproale knows just what to expect of his life. Each day, he leaves the house he shares with his mother, pedals his bicycle into the fading English seaside resort of Threston, and assumes his duties as Assistant Manager of the Post Office. After a day of doling out postage and pension benefits, licenses and unemployment payments, he pedals home again. Once a week, he has dinner with his co-worker and girlfriend Elaine. In the fullness of time, he will achieve his ambition to become Postmaster of Threston.Everything seems quite conventional about the protagonist of "Hemingway's Chair". But this is the first novel by Michael Palin, celebrated world traveler, actor, and founding member of Monty Python's Flying Circus. So not everything is quite as conventional as is seems.
Martin has a secret passion. In his small bedroom, upstairs in the house he shares with his mother, he has constructed a shrine to his hero, Ernest Hemingway. He has collected photographs and other memorabilia of the great author's life. And, every once in a while, he pours himself a glass of vodka, or whiskey, or grappa and talks to the life-size photograph of "Papa" that hangs over his fireplace.
Martin also has some unexpected problems. When his boss retires, he is passed over for promotion. Instead, he finds himself working for Nick Marshall, a slick up-and-comer who wreaks havoc on Martin's life. Nick pushes plans for modernizing Threston's quaint post office, sacks a couple of Martin's long-time co-workers, and ropes the assistant manager into a complex and not-entirely-ethical scheme to bring a new telecommunications center to his quiet town.
Nick also manages to steal Martin's girlfriend along the way.
Adding to the swirl of events engulfing Martin's life is another newcomer to Threston. An exotic American woman is spending a year in England writing a scholarly book about Ernest Hemingway. When she's not trying to untangle the knotty personal life of the Nobel laureate, Ruth Kohler is trying to understand Martin's unique fascination with him. There are times the personality of the mild-mannered postal clerk seems to disappear, to be replaced by the very spirit of Hemingway.
On a visit to Oxford, Ruth comes across something she knows Martin would appreciate. It's a chair from a deep-sea fishing boat, the very chair where Hemingway sat while trying to land marlin during a trip to South America in 1956. The prospect of owning such a treasure drives Martin firmly into the arms of his underhanded boss, and down a slippery moral slope.
Palin has a sharp eye for the mundane details of small-town life and the people who live it:
"Pamela Harvey-Wardell was the self-appointed queen of Threston society. She was a woman of such epic and ineffable unselfconsciousness that, if born poor and unwelcome, she might well have been certified mad! A keen ornithologist, she could often be seen on the marshes at dawn, glasses raised, scouring the reed-beds. She was over six feet tall and from a distance, in her deer-stalker, Barbour jacket and matching thigh-high waders, she might easily be taken for a small tree."
As he chronicles Martin Sproale's increasingly chaotic life, Palin also allows us to peek behind some of the doors the good citizens of Threston would prefer to keep closed. There's the question of former girlfriend Elaine, and the story of why her father's businesses always seem to fail. And just what was promised to the mayor in exchange for his support of the secret telecommunications project?
At the urging of his new friend Ruth, Martin sets out to derail the machinations of Nick Marshall. He makes a terrible hash of it and finds himself unemployed.
It is only when he reaches his lowest point, when his life is most out of control, that Martin finds the inspiration to become the man he always wanted to be. That man, of course, is Ernest Hemingway. The way he ultimately deals with all his life's myriad problems is amusing, touching, and thought provoking. The quiet and ordinary postal clerk is transformed into an extraordinary man of action. And his actions provide a particularly apt climax to the book.
Michael Palin has made us laugh on large screens and small. He uses his first novel to explore a subtler sense of the absurdities of everyday life. He offers each of us a chance to sit in "Hemingway's Chair". Like Martin, many readers will find the invitation far too tempting to resist.
L.D. Meagher is a News Editor at CNN Headline News. He has worked in broadcasting for nearly 30 years.
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