The Promise of Elsewhere

by Brad Leithauser

A comic novel about a Midwestern professor who tries to prop up his failing prospects for happiness by setting out on the Journey of a Lifetime.

Louie Hake is forty-three and teaches architectural history at a third-rate college in Michigan. His second marriage is collapsing, and he's facing a potentially disastrous medical diagnosis. In an attempt to fend off what has become a soul-crushing existential crisis, he decides to treat himself to a tour of the world's most breathtaking architectural sites. Perhaps not surprisingly, Louie gets waylaid on his very first stop in Rome--ludicrously, spectacularly so--and fails to reach most of his other destinations. He embarks on a doomed romance with a jilted bride celebrating her ruined marriage plans alone in London. And in the Arctic he finds that turf houses and aluminum sheds don't amount to much of an architectural tradition. But it turns out that there's another sort of architecture icebergs the size of cathedrals, bobbing beside a strange and wondrous landscape. It soon becomes clear that Louie's grand journey is less about where his wanderings have taken him and more about where his past encounters with romance have not. Whether pursuing his first wife, or his estranged current wife, or the older woman he kissed just once a quarter-century ago, Louie reveals himself to be endearing, deeply touching, wonderfully ridiculous . . . and destined to find love in all the wrong places.

Genres: Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 26, 2019

About the author

BRAD LEITHAUSER is a widely acclaimed poet and novelist and the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a MacArthur Fellowship. This is his seventeenth book. He is a professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and divides his time between Baltimore and Amherst.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can typically tell if I'm going to enjoy a book or not after reading the first page. But, in case the author is a slow starter, I typically give it 25 pages to get off the ground. The time I spent reading the first 25 pages of this book comes under the category of Time Out of My Life Wasted that I'll Never Get Back. His writing is so pretentious that reading 25 pages was an affront to my standards as a reader. It's evident that he indeed is familiar with a great many $10 words in the English language -- and wants everyone to know it. Skip it.

[Jeanne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I couldn’t empathize nor care about any of the characters not situations. Sadly, I couldn’t finish this one though I tried
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me this arc for an honest review

[Bonnie E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A review in the Chicago Tribune piqued my curiosity about this book, with travels to Rome, London and Greenland featured in the story line. Having been to the first two places and wanting to get to the last, I was interested in reading about the main character's experiences in each.

Louie Hake is the middle aged traveler who heads out into the world from his home in Michigan where he has been a architectural history professor at Ann Arbor College for his entire career. His second wife Florence has just left him for another man who is the director of a local theater group and Louie has recently been diagnosed with a rare neurological disease which is leading to blindness. He's also bipolar. He has no children. He is close with his older sister who is a force of nature and who follows her brother's world travels through a very detailed collage she has created on her refrigerator door. His original plan was to visit Italy, Turkey, India and Japan to see great architecture, but after his time in Rome doesn't go as well as he'd hoped, he changes course and flies to London next. He meets some interesting people along the way, including a robust 29 year old woman who is in London on her honeymoon without her groom who changed his mind about marriage a week or so before the wedding. The groom's mother is a travel agent who commiserates with the jilted bride and insists that her "almost daughter-in-law" go on the trip anyway since it's all been paid for. Louie and the bride find solace in friendship.

Louie changes plans again and opts out of Turkey, India and Japan to travel instead to Greenland via Iceland, where he is sick most of the time, meets a very strange failed atomic physicist and rents a room at the Rotten Egg in the small town of Qaqqatnakkarsimasut. He lays about for the most part in pretty squalid surroundings until he finally finds bliss on a trawler out on the ocean where he gets to witness fantastic icebergs like the kind painted by Frederic Church many many years ago.

Louie is an interesting character who can be pedantic but also very amusing. He is a romantic who spends much time mulling over his failed relationships with his first wife, his second wife and a few others from his past - and winds up sending rather disastrous emails to each of them through the course of his adventures. Louie is memorable for his many failings and odd quirks as well as his openness and joy in meeting fellow travelers, each with his or her own unique stories. Rich and vivid pictures are painted of the places visited along his journey - gorgeously so like the splendor of the Pantheon or in an off putting way like the spooky nocturnal howling of the sled dogs in Greenland. Overall, it's a terrific read.

[David Jacobson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel, about a middle-aged academic's wanderings through Europe, is full of astute little observations about the world and the people who inhabit it. The author is an upbeat Michel Houellebecq. What the book best captures is that feeling, while traveling, that all the world is not so much a place to be seen as the backdrop for a reckoning with one's own thoughts. Some might call this, and much of this book, eminently self-indulgent, but I think it does capture the transcendent experience of travel as it really is.

[Nichola Gutgold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eat Pray Live from a man’s perspective, sort of. Did not connect with many of the characters, particularly Louie, BUT enjoyed the part with Shelley. Great observations of human nature.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louie Hake, an art history teacher, has a life that is falling apart. He decides to use a small inheritance to travel to the top architectural sites in the world. After he stops taking his medication for bipolar disorder, his life gets even more weird.

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A synesthesic, bipolar professor of art takes a journey to Rome, London and Greenland and ruminates on past missteps and romances.

[Kirk Weikart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Louie Hake, an Art History & Architecture professor at a self-described second rate college in Michigan, takes a summer trip to see four great architectural wonders. Will the trip help him teach architecture in the future?

It turns out that the trip becomes a pilgrimage of self-discovery. Louie meets interesting people on his Journey. He also reminisces on past failed romantic relationships. What will he learn? What will he conclude?

The prose is magnificent; complicated, clever, perfectly structured, and witty. An excerpt: "Louie admires the vocabulary, which must be incorporated elsewhere, somewhere, in some choice place: denudation, incursus, concubinage, retardive. Louie admires the graceful and old-fashioned phrasing: 'these sea-girt and mountain-shackled lands,' 'as tendentiously as wrongly,' 'such mind-cargo is rarely lost to human memory.' Sentence by sentence a conviction of artistry grows, and with it an unexpected urge at emulation, as Louie aspires as he hasn't dared aspire in years" It is used to provide extreme depth to all characters. It was a pleasure to read every night, no matter what was happening in the plot.

My main criticism is that Louie seems to be on a destructive path. He is bipolar, but stops taking his medication early in the Journey. He has just been diagnosed with a disease that will eventually cause him to lose his eyesight, but never deals with this issue. It is one thing to create characters with foibles and vulnerabilities, but another to seem to celebrate a person's ignorance of reality. I was also disappointed to see how the allusions of an extraterrestrial encounter in Louie's childhood was never adequately addressed.

The author is also a poet, and I would be interested in reading him in this different genre.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS I'm giving this three-and-a-half stars. Even though I like novels with a lot of dialogue and inner thoughts, the first 30-50 pages seemed boring and didactic to me, harping on the same 2-3 topics. It wasn't until Louie met the other Louie and other characters along his journey that things began to get interesting. I'm glad I stuck with it to the end. It's a quirky read and insightful at times. I usually read midlife breakup travel adventures written by women and it was refreshing to read the man's point of view. Louie's pedantic phrasing and professorial words made it like a slog to read at times, but that's in keeping with his character as a self-important college professor. It's a bit curious that his eye diagnosis was never brought up again once he weaned off the lithium and found peace of mind.

[Jordan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy, you can tell this guy's a poet. But his way with words doesn't save the book from a mundanely crappy protagonist and a lackluster, plotless character study that (ironically) ends up going nowhere and only serves to make you like the main character even less. It's not that I'm necessarily against this kind of protagonist, it's just that if you're going to have them then you should end up saying something meaningful about why they're crappy, what they could do / could have done about it, etc. They should either be held accountable or work towards redemption, and Louie Hake does neither, just drifting through the story of his life learning nothing and feeling sorry for himself.

There are the ingredients here for a decent novel, but he left out the baking powder, so it just kind of sits there, flat and lifeless, with occasional bubbles of good writing.

[Mary Keen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only got about 1/3 through, may possibly go back later as he continues with his travels. Fell asleep while he was in Rome, may pick it up again in London and the Arctic, which sound more interesting.

There are a lot of thoughts that I've thought and some great insights, but overall, i felt bad for him, ---disgusted with him at the same time. I'd like to try other Leithauser titles --hadn't heard of him before.

But right now, so many good books out there and too little time...

Overdrive 1.25 speed

[Leslie]

I hated this book... I cannot even tell you what is was about. Louie Hake is the most boring person. I literally fell asleep every time I attempted to read this book. I am the kind of person that has to slog through a book once started; but I dreaded reading it but I got through it.

[Ray Hubley · Rating 3 out of 5]

witty, well-written, intermittently compelling.

[Katherine Sisak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall:
This novel isn’t going to be to everyone’s taste. If you want a book with a concrete plot, fast-paced (or any kind of) action, and conflicts that have resolutions, this is not the book for you. If you’re in the market for a contemplative character study with interesting prose, search no further. The novel starts off slow as we get to know Louie Hake and feel his frustration towards his failed relationship and stalled-out career in academia. However, once Louie starts his journey of a lifetime and decides to start adjusting his medication for his bipolar disorder, the writing begins to really sparkle. The tonal shifts in Louie’s narration reflect his high and low moods, which affects how the reader experiences the setting: One day, Rome is full of magic and Louie is bubbling over with the promise of renewal and rejuvenation (both professional and personal) and the next, he’s a slightly jaded, anxiety-riddled cynic who is let down by everything around him.

The Character:
The indirect characterization is excellent. When I read the scene where Louie is fretting over whether he’s in the right mindset to truly appreciate some of the great Italian landmarks, whether he’ll be able to appreciate these ‘masterworks’ and how these anxieties lead to him wanting to skip the whole visit for fear of falling short, I knew that I was going to stick with the book. Louie is an overthinker and this book exemplifies the best and worst aspects of carrying a whole world around in your head. Louie’s inner world is full of romance, beauty, adventure and abound with grand ideals and future plans. He’s a dreamer, passionate about art, history, beauty, love, and culture. Conversely, he’s also plagued by anxiety, self-doubt, egotism, self-acknowledged pretentiousness, and regrets over past relationships.

The 'Action' (or lackthereof):
Conversations between Louie and the people he meets on his journey are enjoyable to read: The dialogue makes it easy to tell when both participants are on the same wavelength and when they’re so caught up in their own problems that they’re just monologuing at each other. These characters are the catalysts that prompt Louie towards new goals—they serve as the primary ‘action’ in the book. They also help bring the reader back down to Earth and act as a tether to normalcy—it’s incredibly easy to get lost in Louie’s mile-a-minute (intrusive) thoughts. Fair warning: if you don’t like navel-gazing, you won’t like this book.

The Prose:
Leithauser’s prose is rich with imagery. I learned many new adjectives and the specificity of some descriptions made me laugh. Case in point: when Louie orders a chicken dish in London and gets too much dark meat, he picks them out and “arrays [them] along the plate’s scalloped rim, positioning them like hunkering mini-spectators around the amphitheater of the oval dish.” I am also grateful this book introduced me to Frederic Church’s Iceberg Paintings! The cover of the book tempted me into reading it and being able to see the visual influence of Church’s work (after I looked it up) in the cover photography brought the reading experience full circle.

[Madison Putnam · Rating 1 out of 5]

The ‘impressive’ vocabulary and complex (and self congratulating) sentence structure do little to hide the nonexistent plot. The Journey (capitalized to convey it importance of course) is meaningless, there simply is no point. Louie, whose personality swings from pitying to pompous, achieves no growth. He bemoans his lack of achievements, his failing relationships, but he concern never moves into action. The writing produced during his great Journey is only focused on harnessing his past romantic partners. At times he has relevances about those relationships, but they are quickly forgotten and give way to more self pitying thoughts. He discusses past manic episodes with regret and shame, but throughout the novel he embraces a path that will only lead to past repeating itself.

Throughout the Rome and London section I had hope of something, anything meaningful occurring by the end. Getting through the Greenland section was rage inducing. Louie is at his worst. He is purposeless, his interactions with the children are disturbing. This gives way to a serious depressive episode which Louie seems unaware. The reader is aware that since Rome, Louie has been off some of his meds. The only foreseeable outcome is a full bipolar episode. We get hints of it, but there is no pay off. The therapist’s email “I am concerned for you” and Annabelle’s unexpected arrival hints at a more serious situation than we were previously aware of. As the novel is told from Louie’s perspective and we spend most of the novel drowning in his pretentious thoughts, it would have been interesting to experience a complete undoing of our understanding of the character.

Louie is an unreliable narrator, everything that occurs in the novel is filtered through his interpretation of reality, thus there was room with Annabelle’s arrival for us to be returned to a different non-Louie reality. This Journey is not healthy for Louie, being alone has allowed him to spiral and now through Annabelle we could face that. But the novel ends after her arrival with no real conclusion. While reading the book I could not wait for the end, but when it came it was unsatisfying. There was no point to the end, no adequate conclusion to the characters growth nor even arrival back to Michigan where the novel began. This was a painful read and I wish I had given up.

[Chuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a cerebral novel in two respects. First, the prose style has an academic hue, with a vocabulary to match. Second, the author provides an intellectual investigation into the emotional lives of his characters, but in doing so he fails to elicit any significant emotional response.

The protagonist, Louie Hake, is an academic serf, serving an apparent life sentence as an architectural history professor at a mediocre college in Ann Arbor, envious of his better-respected and better-paid colleagues at the renowned University of Michigan. Although Louie seems to possess some talent, he also has some psychological problems, apparently modulated by prescribed pharmaceuticals. He also hasn't managed to publish anything, so his belief that he belongs at a major university is now pushing up against reality.

Once divorced, and newly singled (his amateur-actress wife has run off to the Virgin Islands with her theater director), Louie decides to spend his saved-up inheritance on a Journey of His Life. He maps out an ambitious world tour, but his itinerary is curtailed along the way. For example, despite having planned to visit Turkey, he realizes at the last minute that he knows nothing of that country: "What sort of modern pilgrim blunders into a land not knowing the word for toilet? Or beauty?" [p. 97]. Accordingly, Louie's foreign travels are ultimately limited to Italy, England, Iceland, and Greenland. In each instance, he meets up briefly with someone companionable, but nothing lasting develops from any of those connections, and he abruptly moves on.

It's possible that Louie's final adventure in Greenland truly begins to unlock some of his creative potential, but one can't really tell from Brad Leithauser's text, since the ending is dominated by the unexpected and worried arrival of Louie's older sister, who has hovered over him from childhood. She has arranged for the two of them to return to the States, but then what? Well, she will rearrange the travel magnets on her refrigerator, but Louie's future seems cloudy at best.

Near the end of the book, Leithauser constructs a poignant lament for the rapidly disappearing Arctic icebergs, and -- like them -- his prose often shimmers when it isn't self-consciously highbrow.

[Ellyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overwrought & laborious...maybe I just missed the point?

I struggled with this book, but was determined to see it through. It was on a reading list proffering humorous titles - I chuckled only once & not until the last few pages. Maybe it’s just not for me. It took past page 100 to even compel me in the slightest, but I read on trying to figure out why this book was recommended. It was in part a social experiment. This is the only book I’ve read where I couldn’t place where I’d left off previously. So I did a lot of extra re-reading trying to reorient myself each time.
From the beginning it felt like word choices were so effected making this book not very approachable for the average reader. You need a dictionary/thesaurus companion to decipher the text which doesn’t allow for any pleasurable flow. Maybe that was homage to the quirky academic that is Louis Hake, but that could have been more effectively (& enjoyably) conveyed. So this was a lot of work, not very fun, & rather bizarre - but I persevered & am ready to move on to something else..finally!

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found this book at the Dollar Tree store and the title caught my interest. I’d been wanting to broaden my reading experiences so I thought I’d give it a try. The book is divided into three sections according to Louie’s travels.

Part 1 Rome- My curiosity to this book grew the more I read this section. I wanted to find connections I had with Louie and find out where this book would take us both. I kept thinking if I just keep reading I’ll get to what I’m expecting to find.

Part 2 London- this was an enjoyable section for me to read. I really enjoyed Shelly and could relate to her story. I felt the book had finally found it’s way.

Part 3 Greenland- just bizarre. But at this point for some reason I kept reading. I wanted more “story” instead all I got was words and locations I couldn’t pronounce.

My take away from this book is it was at the Dollar Tree for a reason.

[Paul Henry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very entertaining read about a university instructor who plans a trip to Italy, Turkey, India, and Japan to research four famous buildings, for use in an art history class he teaches. He continues to make bad decisions during the trip. After Rome he decides to add London to his itinerary, and then adds Greenland. He takes a commercial airline flight while sick. He's finally rescued from his errant decision making by his draconian sister. It's very well written, believable dialogue, great narration with no clumsy sentence constructions, dangling participles, etc. Reminded me of reading Hemingway: very enjoyable, but afterwards, you're left wondering, "What was the point?"

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

At the beginning I seemed to be of a boys memory's of his early years growing and his father. Then it switched to the grown man and my thought was 'what an unhappy looser who would want to read about him'. Feeling his life is at a low point Louie decides to go on the 'journey of a life time'. Starting in Rome, he soon changes his plans,heading to London to recapture his memories of a time when his life held promise and happiness. On impulse Louie heads to Greenland. I loved the ending of the book it was so unexpected and heart-warming.

[Marie Jensen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really this is more like 1 1/2 stars. More than once I put it down to return to library but it had some promise of going somewhere, anywhere. I don't think the author captured the bi-polar personality; at times the manic was hinted at but for the most part, Louie had a pretty depressive personality. I just don't enjoy reading a character who lives solely in his own head. I have to agree with the woman who was his first "romance". Please no write more.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the author’s writing style and am a big fan of Hence and A Few Corrections. I like how he gets inside the head so deeply, and captures the reality of conversations where people often don’t listen. This character was often friustratingly misguided and the premise is a bit sad, to the point I almost gave up around page 200, but then it suddenly improved for me. I liked the ending though i’m not sure I totally believed it.

[Deena · Rating 1 out of 5]

Life is too short to waste on anything you do not enjoy. That’s how I felt about this book. Stopped ready almost immediately. Didn’t even try to pick it up again to give it another chance. Wasn’t worth it. Read the author’s note on the first page and you will get a feel for the “writing” that follows.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Started off a little slow and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but the story picks up momentum and the writing gets into a groove. Ended up being a delightful read and one that fully exceeded my expectations. Some lovely lyricism and rhythm in the author’s style that pulls a slightly wacky story together nicely.

[Winthrop Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

In three parts, three acts in which the main

character takes stock of his life, the women in his life, his career as professor of architecture, art, his late parents, his present sister.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my first Brad Leithauser book. I think I’ll read another after this. Old-timers will remember the author Saul Bellow, who I thought of when I read this book, in particular, “The adventures of Audie March” and “Henderson, the Rain King.”

[Joy]

I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

I didn't finish this one. I went back to it twice and just couldn't do it. The main character was supposed to be from Michigan. I thought "why not" but I just never really got into it.

Sorry

[CMAC · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too hard to get through the writing.
I understand some books can be slow starters, so I really tried .... but I had not one twinge of interest as I read. I gave it two days before giving up.
Couldn't finish.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's writing was a bit ostentatious, but in a playful way, which I found entertaining. The chapter, when Louie has dinner with his new-found friend, Louie the dentist, was quite funny. But I did not appreciate the nasty Trump comments, and the ending was anticlimactic.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful writer. Will definitely read other works.

This novel offers a journey on many levels, woven nicely throughout.