Slowly over the past semester I have read “Crossing to Safety”, the book selected for my book club meeting in May. “Safety” is Stenger’s last novel and was originally published in 1987. It is a work that has echoes from multiple time periods. Most obviously, the story centers around two couples who meet in post-depression, pre-WWII America. Thus, the characters themselves are of distant time. But there are other aspects of the book that seemed to hint at the end of an era. It is the kind of novel that English professors used to write (Stenger was an English professor and the book is about academics in that discipline). The writing is steeped in literary history, Christian archetypes, and a gentleness that was probably already foreign to the wider world by the time it arrived in bookstores. I may just be seeing my own historical perceptions in the work, but there is evidence that Stenger believed things were changing as well. The fact that he added disclaimers to explain to the readers that the simpatico between two characters was not homosexual, suggests that he was already aware that the literary audience was a different than it had once been. To me, the era that Stenger is writing about is as distant from the author as his forms are from the audience. This distance permeates the melancholy subject matter with an over-arching sense of loss.
The basic skeleton of “Safety” is a study of the seemingly self-contradictory nature of humanity. The main characters are two couples who become friends when the men are colleagues for a year at the University of Wisconsin. Sid and Charity are from the eastern US. They have Ivy League educations, money and good looks and are also genuinely kind and generous people. Larry and Sally are ‘upwardly mobile’ folks from the west. They have nothing but ambition and are grateful to be taken in by their new compatriots.
The story follows the couples through their lives allowing the reader to absorb the complex personalities. Just as Stenger sets up the couples to be economic opposites, so he sets up each couple as antipodal pairs. Larry is a motivated workhorse and traditional man. When his wife, Sally, is crippled by polio, she becomes dependent on him for nearly everything. For Sid and Charity, the dependence is emotional and in the opposite gendered direction. Charity is the motivated one. So motivated that she tries to control nearly every aspect of others lives. None, of course, more than her husband’s. Sid might rather be writing poetry then pursuing tenure, but he is so dependent on Charity for direction that he always bows to her wishes.
Finally, each character is contraction unto his- or herself. Sally is crippled, but is the most emotionally strong and competent person in the group. Larry is successful, but seems to both resent and pity his friends who were born to status and wealth. Charity is constantly forcing her will onto others and is often insensitive to their feelings. However, her motivations are — at least in her own mind — selfless and generous. She only wants what is “best” and “rational” for people. Finally, Sid is independently wealthy and extremely attractive, but he is also a dreamer who seems unmotivated to do anything but be ‘managed’ by his wife.
For me the most striking characters were Sid and Charity. I found my levels of empathy with the former and frustration with the latter were quite high. These sensations were elevated further after discussing the novel with my book club members. I realized that many thought the way that Charity ran rough-shod over Sid throughout the book was a failing on Sid’s part. The implication was that if he was only more of a “man” he would have stood up to his wife and not lived this life of uncomfortable servitude. For me, I could only see how Charity never even tried to understand her husband — only to tell him what was best for him and to try to avoid his emotions. I couldn’t help but think that if the roles were reversed — that is, if Charity was a man — that my discussants could have seen her for the abusive, emotionally closed, and cruel person she was. (Obviously, that would still have been cold comfort because in both situations the man would have been to blame.) But that led me to wonder: were the characters set up to beg the question of gender roles? I cannot say, but it was the most striking element of the story for me.
In the end, this is not a story about greatness. It is about meekness. Small successes and small failures. It is about the depth of friendship and the impossibility of truly understanding one another. I really enjoyed it, though I found the implications about humanity disturbing. Stenger seems to express the sentiment that life is frail and short and that even the best of intentions are so often misguided, misconceived, and misunderstood
Rating: 7.5 of 10
