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Late City
A visionary and poignant novel centered around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die, Late City covers much of the early twentieth century, unfurling as a conversation between the dying man and a surprising God. As the two review Sam's life, from his childhood in the American South and his time in the French trenches during World War I to his fledgling newspaper career in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties and the decades that follow, snippets of history are brought sharply into focus. Sam grows up in Louisiana, with a harsh father, who he comes to resent both for his physical abuse and for what Sam eventually perceives as his flawed morality. Eager to escape and prove himself, Sam enlists in the army as a sniper while still underage. The hardness his father instilled in him helps him make it out of World War I alive, but, as he recounts these tales on his deathbed, we come to realize that it also prevents him from contending with the emotional wounds of war. Back in the U.S., Sam moves to Chicago to begin a career as a newspaperman that will bring him close to all the major historical turns of the twentieth century. There he meets his wife and has a son, whose fate counters Sam's at almost every turn.
As he contemplates his relationships-with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son-Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.
As he contemplates his relationships-with his parents, his brothers in arms, his wife, his editor, and most importantly, his son-Sam is amazed at what he still has left to learn about himself after all these years in this heart-rending novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published September 7, 2021
100 people are currently reading
1352 people want to read
About the author
Robert Olen Butler
86 books452 followers“I’ll never stop believing it: Robert Olen Butler is the best living American writer, period.”
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
– Jeff Guinn, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Robert Olen Butler has published sixteen novels—The Alleys of Eden, Sun Dogs, Countrymen of Bones, On Distant Ground, Wabash, The Deuce, They Whisper, The Deep Green Sea, Mr. Spaceman, Fair Warning, Hell, A Small Hotel, The Hot Country, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, Perfume River—and six volumes of short fiction—Tabloid Dreams, Had a Good Time, Severance, Intercourse, Weegee Stories, and A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Butler has published a volume of his lectures on the creative process, From Where You Dream, edited with an introduction by Janet Burroway.
In 2013 he became the seventeenth recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His stories have appeared widely in such publications as The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, The Hudson Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, and The Sewanee Review. They have been chosen for inclusion in four annual editions of The Best American Short Stories, eight annual editions of New Stories from the South, several other major annual anthologies, and numerous college literature textbooks from such publishers as Simon & Schuster, Norton, Viking, Little Brown & Co., Houghton Mifflin, Oxford University Press, Prentice Hall, and Bedford/St.Martin and most recently in The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, edited by Richard Ford.
His works have been translated into twenty-one languages, including Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Polish, Japanese, Serbian, Farsi, Czech, Estonian, Greek, and most recently Chinese. He was also a charter recipient of the Tu Do Chinh Kien Award given by the Vietnam Veterans of America for “outstanding contributions to American culture by a Vietnam veteran.” Over the past two decades he has lectured in universities, appeared at conferences, and met with writers groups in 17 countries as a literary envoy for the U. S. State Department.
He is a Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University. Under the auspices of the FSU website, in the fall of 2001, he did something no other writer has ever done, before or since: he revealed his writing process in full, in real time, in a webcast that observed him in seventeen two-hour sessions write a literary short story from its first inspiration to its final polished form. He also gave a running commentary on his artistic choices and spent a half-hour in each episode answering the emailed questions of his live viewers. The whole series, under the title “Inside Creative Writing” is a very popular on YouTube, with its first two-hour episode passing 125,000 in the spring of 2016.
For more than a decade he was hired to write feature-length screenplays for New Regency, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney, Universal Pictures, Baldwin Entertainment Group (for Robert Redford), and two teleplays for HBO. Typical of Hollywood, none of these movies ever made it to the screen.
Reflecting his early training as an actor, he has also recorded the audio books for four of his works—A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, Hell, A Small Hotel and Perfume River. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the State University of New York system. He lives in Florida, with his wife, the poet Kelly Lee Butler.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 162 reviews
December 1, 2021
Robert Olen Butler's latest novel has the last WW1 veteran and former Chicago Independent newsman, Samuel Cunningham, aged 115, on his deathbed in a Chicago nursing home in 2016 as the election results confirm Donald Trump as the new American president. A compassionate God turns up to nudge Sam to reflect on his life in the long last day of his soul, lived through a turbulent century of American history and the social norms and attitudes that flourished in these times. Born in 1901, glimpses of Sam's childhood reveal an abusive, racist father who draws his circle in the dirt that includes only those that matter, who beats his mother and him, whose unattainable approval he could not help yearning for. He spends time reading newspapers in detail, so desperate in his desire to escape his father and his home in Lake Providence, Louisiana, that he lies about his age to join the army as a sniper in WW1, killing over 100 men in the horror of the French trenches.
Sam is unable to understand the compassion that soldiers show to the dying, including fellow countryman, Johnny Moon, finding himself inhibited by his picture and judgements of what a man should be that he cannot step up when faced with the worst of moments. Having become a killer for his country, a damaged Sam returns after the war for a quick stop to see his mother, before leaving for Chicago with his ambitions of becoming a journalist, a passion that is fanned by young widow Colleen Larson, the woman he goes on to marry and have a son, Ryan, with. He begins a career with the Chicago Independent that will see him rise to the highest echelons of his profession, a job that is to limit the time he is able to spend with Ryan, missing out on his formative years as he chases stories covering the likes of Al Capone. His regrets and failures come to fore as he looks back on his marriage to Colleen and his deficiencies in his relationship with Ryan, both now long dead as he seeks some form of atonement.
The Late City edition of the Cunningham Examiner here chronicles articles that cover Sam's life as he lies dying, covering issues such as the race riots, politics, the war and the human interest stories that made his name. Obviously only certain events can be picked and chosen, a focus on those in his circle, Colleen and Ryan, but if he thinks he knows all there is to know about his loved ones, his blind spots ensure that he is oblivious, left to be surprised by eye opening 'news'. As the novel concludes, God leaves a golden opportunity for Sam to redeem himself before his death. This is a beautifully written and profoundly moving novel about America seen through the flawed but human Sam, what it was like to grow up in the Jim Crow American South, a coming of age in the nightmare of WW1, of family, marriage, fatherhood, love and loss, and the relationships between fathers and sons. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
Sam is unable to understand the compassion that soldiers show to the dying, including fellow countryman, Johnny Moon, finding himself inhibited by his picture and judgements of what a man should be that he cannot step up when faced with the worst of moments. Having become a killer for his country, a damaged Sam returns after the war for a quick stop to see his mother, before leaving for Chicago with his ambitions of becoming a journalist, a passion that is fanned by young widow Colleen Larson, the woman he goes on to marry and have a son, Ryan, with. He begins a career with the Chicago Independent that will see him rise to the highest echelons of his profession, a job that is to limit the time he is able to spend with Ryan, missing out on his formative years as he chases stories covering the likes of Al Capone. His regrets and failures come to fore as he looks back on his marriage to Colleen and his deficiencies in his relationship with Ryan, both now long dead as he seeks some form of atonement.
The Late City edition of the Cunningham Examiner here chronicles articles that cover Sam's life as he lies dying, covering issues such as the race riots, politics, the war and the human interest stories that made his name. Obviously only certain events can be picked and chosen, a focus on those in his circle, Colleen and Ryan, but if he thinks he knows all there is to know about his loved ones, his blind spots ensure that he is oblivious, left to be surprised by eye opening 'news'. As the novel concludes, God leaves a golden opportunity for Sam to redeem himself before his death. This is a beautifully written and profoundly moving novel about America seen through the flawed but human Sam, what it was like to grow up in the Jim Crow American South, a coming of age in the nightmare of WW1, of family, marriage, fatherhood, love and loss, and the relationships between fathers and sons. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
October 1, 2023
Late City
Loved this book. It’s going to the top part of my “favorites,” list.
An author’s number one goal is to evoke emotions in the reader. This is accomplished by employing a number of methods. In commercial fiction the methods are pretty much set in stone. Readers go to commercial fiction because these writing precepts never change. In literary fiction the author has more latitude to break all these rules. Commercial fiction targets a broader market. Literary can be hit-and-miss. But when they hit the book is sold word-of-mouth. For example, most recently, Lessons in Chemistry (excellent read).
Late City is what I would describe as being deep into literary fiction. Loved, loved this book.
In my reviews I don’t usually break down the storyline. I discuss the craft of writing and why it worked so well for me. But in order to describe the marvelous craft in this book I will have to give away some of the story.
One of the rules that is discarded in this book and is a no-no in commercial fiction is disrupting the “Fictive Dream.” Here Butler doesn’t disrupt the story once or twice but does it in every sequence. This method works well because Butler is a master craftsman (wordsmith) of the highest order.
Butler uses the old saying, “My life flashed before my eyes,” as a “frame,” or structure to this book. The story opens with a man, a hundred and sixteen years old in a hospital bed. He is dying. The entire book happens during that moment of death. The character Sam is talking with God and God is talking to him. This is not a spiritual book, this interaction (which is truly brilliant) is a vehicle used to establish transitions from scene to scene, and more importantly as a way to get information out in dialogue instead of “Telling,” (a big bozo no-no in writing—if it can be avoided it’s always better to “show”).
I’ve seen a frame like this in another favorite book of mine, “Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. Loved-loved that book as well. That book opens with a journalist sitting down with a hundred and twenty-year-old man in a rest home and asks him to tell his story. Wonderful book if you haven’t read it.
In Late City, Butler also brilliantly uses a second vehicle to get the information to the reader without the “telling.” The character Sam is a newspaper man. Butler blends in historical information through news stories. Loved it.
The one long moment in death spans decades. The four c’s of writing (conflict, complication, crisis, conclusion) is so subtle here that if you’re not watching for it you’ll miss it. Blending in with all the historical events is Sam growing up and moving through his life. The motivation or conflict is set early on with Sam’s contentious relationship with his father. This relationship, motivation—conflict is interwoven throughout the story. This is a truly brilliant book. I’m not sure I have ever read a book, that for me, evoked more emotion. And he accomplished it even while dispelling the fictive dream as often as every few pages.
I could go on fifteen pages more, talking about this book, but you don’t want to hear it. What you might want to hear is that I have all the rest of this author’s books lined up on the TBR pile.
David Putnam author of the Bruno Johnson series.
Loved this book. It’s going to the top part of my “favorites,” list.
An author’s number one goal is to evoke emotions in the reader. This is accomplished by employing a number of methods. In commercial fiction the methods are pretty much set in stone. Readers go to commercial fiction because these writing precepts never change. In literary fiction the author has more latitude to break all these rules. Commercial fiction targets a broader market. Literary can be hit-and-miss. But when they hit the book is sold word-of-mouth. For example, most recently, Lessons in Chemistry (excellent read).
Late City is what I would describe as being deep into literary fiction. Loved, loved this book.
In my reviews I don’t usually break down the storyline. I discuss the craft of writing and why it worked so well for me. But in order to describe the marvelous craft in this book I will have to give away some of the story.
One of the rules that is discarded in this book and is a no-no in commercial fiction is disrupting the “Fictive Dream.” Here Butler doesn’t disrupt the story once or twice but does it in every sequence. This method works well because Butler is a master craftsman (wordsmith) of the highest order.
Butler uses the old saying, “My life flashed before my eyes,” as a “frame,” or structure to this book. The story opens with a man, a hundred and sixteen years old in a hospital bed. He is dying. The entire book happens during that moment of death. The character Sam is talking with God and God is talking to him. This is not a spiritual book, this interaction (which is truly brilliant) is a vehicle used to establish transitions from scene to scene, and more importantly as a way to get information out in dialogue instead of “Telling,” (a big bozo no-no in writing—if it can be avoided it’s always better to “show”).
I’ve seen a frame like this in another favorite book of mine, “Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. Loved-loved that book as well. That book opens with a journalist sitting down with a hundred and twenty-year-old man in a rest home and asks him to tell his story. Wonderful book if you haven’t read it.
In Late City, Butler also brilliantly uses a second vehicle to get the information to the reader without the “telling.” The character Sam is a newspaper man. Butler blends in historical information through news stories. Loved it.
The one long moment in death spans decades. The four c’s of writing (conflict, complication, crisis, conclusion) is so subtle here that if you’re not watching for it you’ll miss it. Blending in with all the historical events is Sam growing up and moving through his life. The motivation or conflict is set early on with Sam’s contentious relationship with his father. This relationship, motivation—conflict is interwoven throughout the story. This is a truly brilliant book. I’m not sure I have ever read a book, that for me, evoked more emotion. And he accomplished it even while dispelling the fictive dream as often as every few pages.
I could go on fifteen pages more, talking about this book, but you don’t want to hear it. What you might want to hear is that I have all the rest of this author’s books lined up on the TBR pile.
David Putnam author of the Bruno Johnson series.
March 15, 2022
A beautiful paragraph from this book:
"We got no choice in this life," he says.
"We are here to
figure out one thing. Who are we? Where do we belong? There
has to be a circle around us. Because we ain't everywhere.
And we ain't everybody. We all understand that, deep down.
Sometimes who's in that circle with you is clearly for the best.
Sometimes it's regrettable. But you have to figure out where
it must be drawn."
One of the most beautiful and moving books I have read for the 2022 Pulitzer. Holy shit.
As a man is passing out of this life, he has an intimate talk with God and they review his life together, the good and the bad. This book was extremely well-written and drives the reader forward page after page. I truly got pulled into the story and felt for the protagonist.
Among the 20-odd books I have read in trying to guess the Pulitzer winner, this one comes very close to the top. I am not sure the Butler deserves a second Pulitzer, I think that The Five Wounds should get it, but still, this particular book was just of such excellent quality...
My Pulitzer 2022 reviews and guesses here
"We got no choice in this life," he says.
"We are here to
figure out one thing. Who are we? Where do we belong? There
has to be a circle around us. Because we ain't everywhere.
And we ain't everybody. We all understand that, deep down.
Sometimes who's in that circle with you is clearly for the best.
Sometimes it's regrettable. But you have to figure out where
it must be drawn."
One of the most beautiful and moving books I have read for the 2022 Pulitzer. Holy shit.
As a man is passing out of this life, he has an intimate talk with God and they review his life together, the good and the bad. This book was extremely well-written and drives the reader forward page after page. I truly got pulled into the story and felt for the protagonist.
Among the 20-odd books I have read in trying to guess the Pulitzer winner, this one comes very close to the top. I am not sure the Butler deserves a second Pulitzer, I think that The Five Wounds should get it, but still, this particular book was just of such excellent quality...
My Pulitzer 2022 reviews and guesses here
February 5, 2022
This was a tedious rumination on his past by a dying 115 year old man. The premise is that he is taking to God. That felt weird and awkward. It was a short book, but it felt long and slow. Obviously, a lot of readers love this author, but his writing style is not for me. I tried him once before and didn’t like that book either. I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publisher.
January 6, 2022
While I picked this up with much anticipation, I found it ultimately generic. When you read a lot, you expect more from your fiction that a rehash of material you've encountered before. Sam Cunningham lies on his deathbed the night of tRump's win, and he goes over his life with much clarity beginning with his Louisiana boyhood and his coming of age during WWI as a sniper. He makes his mark as a Chicago newspaperman, Zelig-like being present at turning points and meeting iconic figures, but it felt like a flip calendar progressing through the years. Love, marriage, birth, you know the drill. Sorry I didn't like it more.
February 9, 2022
Having met and been impressed by an author it is good to continue to read his work, even if you have to follow his career from afar.
I look out for his latest novel and I have not been disappointed by any that I have subsequently read.
He has an ear for authentic dialogue and an eye for detail and a balanced truth. This latest project allows him to explore recent American history and in Sam Cunningham he has a protagonist who has lived through many of his country’s notable events.
The basis of the novel is a variation of the sense of life after death. A meeting with God to review one’s own actions and relationships where the future is withheld so revisions cannot be made with the benefit of hindsight.
A deep and serious look at relationships as much as attitudes to life and decisions made. It overarches the concept of faith without being religious, focusing on personal responsibility and intent. The author resists the urge to paint a perfect life or play God himself. As a reader you are able to be impartial and reflective as with any autobiography one reads.
Sam is a newspaper man, a journalist working for an Independent Chicago paper. His recollections are a series of clippings replayed from his life with the pain and insight of that time. In this way he isn’t so much rewriting his life story but producing the final print run, the Late City edition. This is a clever approach to the idea of a life passing before your eyes in the moments before death.
This is a very approachable piece of writing. A real sense of our humanity shines through. It is life affirming and challenges each about prejudice and speaking the truth. I loved the touches of humour most notably the timing of death which allowed a liberal journalist witness a new presidents election.
Above all it is an everyday story of human struggle, growing up in the Southern states, going to war and the quest for a work life balance that seldom satisfies. I enjoyed the lack of understanding Sam initially has over the responsibilities he has mismanaged, the time wasted and the prejudice that withheld his support or involvement. Whether spoken or unsaid the perception others make of our own life often does not match our own self estimate. The acts of killing others in the Great War seems to Sam to make him less worthy of mercy or acceptance.
A remarkable and inspiring novel full of insight, language and historical review. Ultimately it is about self awareness, the chance and ability to change but owning our words and actions to our last breath. A book that challenges us to make use of our time; to take personal responsibility and enjoy life for the influence and comfort our presence brings.
I look out for his latest novel and I have not been disappointed by any that I have subsequently read.
He has an ear for authentic dialogue and an eye for detail and a balanced truth. This latest project allows him to explore recent American history and in Sam Cunningham he has a protagonist who has lived through many of his country’s notable events.
The basis of the novel is a variation of the sense of life after death. A meeting with God to review one’s own actions and relationships where the future is withheld so revisions cannot be made with the benefit of hindsight.
A deep and serious look at relationships as much as attitudes to life and decisions made. It overarches the concept of faith without being religious, focusing on personal responsibility and intent. The author resists the urge to paint a perfect life or play God himself. As a reader you are able to be impartial and reflective as with any autobiography one reads.
Sam is a newspaper man, a journalist working for an Independent Chicago paper. His recollections are a series of clippings replayed from his life with the pain and insight of that time. In this way he isn’t so much rewriting his life story but producing the final print run, the Late City edition. This is a clever approach to the idea of a life passing before your eyes in the moments before death.
This is a very approachable piece of writing. A real sense of our humanity shines through. It is life affirming and challenges each about prejudice and speaking the truth. I loved the touches of humour most notably the timing of death which allowed a liberal journalist witness a new presidents election.
Above all it is an everyday story of human struggle, growing up in the Southern states, going to war and the quest for a work life balance that seldom satisfies. I enjoyed the lack of understanding Sam initially has over the responsibilities he has mismanaged, the time wasted and the prejudice that withheld his support or involvement. Whether spoken or unsaid the perception others make of our own life often does not match our own self estimate. The acts of killing others in the Great War seems to Sam to make him less worthy of mercy or acceptance.
A remarkable and inspiring novel full of insight, language and historical review. Ultimately it is about self awareness, the chance and ability to change but owning our words and actions to our last breath. A book that challenges us to make use of our time; to take personal responsibility and enjoy life for the influence and comfort our presence brings.
April 26, 2021
A panoramic view of American history through the eventful 20th century as told by Sam Cunningham, a former newspaperman as he lay dying at the age of 116 on the eve of Donald Trump's victory to the WH. Sam's conversation with God as he chronologically recalls his personal and professional life from the dawn of last century to 2016 can be at times exhilarating and sad but also very tedious and downright boring. Robert Olen Butler is a fantastic writer and this novel might actually be his big American opus but unfortunately you may need to muster lots of patience and plenty of forbearance in order to make it through the end. I had some difficulties at times with the self absorbing ego of the protagonist and a personal narrative that threatens too many times to get bogged down into fictional navel gazing. A literary tendency that I profoudly dislike and constantly decry overhere in France when it comes to contemporary fiction. Hopefully it won't become a new trend in American letters in the future.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC
Many thanks to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for this ARC
February 27, 2022
I had never read this particular author before, but will probably dig into his backlist.
August 31, 2021
The synopsis offered for LATE CITY was so intriguing that I was eager to read author Robert Olen Butler’s newest book. The oldest living WWI vet, upon Trump’s election in November 2016, reviews his life as he approaches death. His review is a conversation, of sorts, with himself or God. But, honestly, the conversation and the ensuing book, is incredibly tedious. This is just a long, slow book without much of a payoff. I received my copy from the publisher from NetGalley.
March 16, 2024
Holy moly, this was fantastic. Read it in one sitting on a flight from St. Lucia to NY and loved every word.
September 22, 2021
What a surprise! I picked up this book at random off a library shelf. I’d never heard of it, nor had I ever heard of the author.
I thought it was very well-written, and I was profoundly moved by it. It’s the story of a 116 year-old-man on his death bed, looking back at his life. One might think this a perfect set-up to inspire emotion. But it could have easily been mishandled. I felt that the man (Sam) could have been a real person.
It made me start to think about how to look back at my own life. The main character made grave mistakes in his life, but his final redemption was sweet.
The only nit I had was with the initial premise: a 116 year-old man, the last living veteran of World War I, lies dying as the 2016 election results are announced. I didn’t feel the election of Donald Trump added anything to the story. And a 116 year-old man seems improbable.
I thought it was very well-written, and I was profoundly moved by it. It’s the story of a 116 year-old-man on his death bed, looking back at his life. One might think this a perfect set-up to inspire emotion. But it could have easily been mishandled. I felt that the man (Sam) could have been a real person.
It made me start to think about how to look back at my own life. The main character made grave mistakes in his life, but his final redemption was sweet.
The only nit I had was with the initial premise: a 116 year-old man, the last living veteran of World War I, lies dying as the 2016 election results are announced. I didn’t feel the election of Donald Trump added anything to the story. And a 116 year-old man seems improbable.
September 24, 2021
This is a fictional book about 115-year old Sam Cunningham, the last surviving veteran of WWI, who is dying as Trump is declared the winner of the 2016 election. As he dies, he tells God the highlights of his long life, starting in racist Louisiana, then WWI, and to Chicago to be a newsman and start a family. I absolutely loved this book. Here are my brief thoughts:
1. I'm not sure of the genre, but I love the "old man/woman looking back at their life" kind of books. and this was one of the better ones.
2. This book has historical fiction elements. There were many parts that had me looking up corresponding facts on Wikipedia, like Al Capone's HQ or Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson. The fact that I live in Chicago made this even more enjoyable as much of this story takes place in Chicago.
3. Only highlights of his life are told and much is left out. There is very little after 1950. I often think books should be shorter or tightened up, but I would have been happy to get another hundred pages of memories from his later years.
4. I originally thought him dying while Trump was being elected was just a random cultural reference point for us to place the story, but it seemed like many of his important life events were kind of related to the rise of Trump - the racism of Louisiana, the criminality of Al Capone, the demagoguery of Huey Long, and the complicity for the rise of Hitler. I'm not sure exactly how it's all connected, but I see a connection. Maybe it's a "We Didn't Start the Fire" thing (like the world's always been burning) or maybe Trump just lives rent-free in my head.
Anyway, I hope it's obvious I was quite impressed with this book. Books like this remind me why I love to read. What higher compliment can I give?
1. I'm not sure of the genre, but I love the "old man/woman looking back at their life" kind of books. and this was one of the better ones.
2. This book has historical fiction elements. There were many parts that had me looking up corresponding facts on Wikipedia, like Al Capone's HQ or Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson. The fact that I live in Chicago made this even more enjoyable as much of this story takes place in Chicago.
3. Only highlights of his life are told and much is left out. There is very little after 1950. I often think books should be shorter or tightened up, but I would have been happy to get another hundred pages of memories from his later years.
4. I originally thought him dying while Trump was being elected was just a random cultural reference point for us to place the story, but it seemed like many of his important life events were kind of related to the rise of Trump - the racism of Louisiana, the criminality of Al Capone, the demagoguery of Huey Long, and the complicity for the rise of Hitler. I'm not sure exactly how it's all connected, but I see a connection. Maybe it's a "We Didn't Start the Fire" thing (like the world's always been burning) or maybe Trump just lives rent-free in my head.
Anyway, I hope it's obvious I was quite impressed with this book. Books like this remind me why I love to read. What higher compliment can I give?
January 3, 2023
Robert Olen Butler is one of my favorite authors, and his most recent novel Late City did not disappoint. Th novel centers around former newspaperman Sam Cunningham as he prepares to die and relives the most important memories of his life; some good and some painful.
Late City is the intimate and mesmerizing account of one man's reckoning and I savored every single word.
Late City is the intimate and mesmerizing account of one man's reckoning and I savored every single word.
April 6, 2022
Sam Cunningham was raised by a racist father in the Jim Crow south. He came of age down in the trenches during WWI (lying about his young age in order to enlist). After the war, Sam worked as a Chicago newsman, reporting on the likes of Al Capone and other historical figures. He married, had a son, and outlived them both.
Now, at age 115, Sam is dying in a nursing home. And his deathbed visitor is none other than God.
At God's urging, Sam revisits the pivotal moments and important relationships in his life. In other words, Late City is the last edition of Sam Cunningham's story (the book title a reference to the name of the late evening newspaper edition).
As Sam relives the moments that shaped him, the reader is deftly provided a snapshot of history and society through the years. Much has changed in the span of one man's lifetime, while many things have not.
The book reflects on what it means to be a man, and the measure of masculinity.
Sam realizes that even after such a long life, many of his most important relationships were riddled with misunderstanding. Even at age 115, he can still learn a few things about himself.
Late City is the intimate and mesmerizing account of one man's reckoning. And although the story is gut-wrenching, Butler's light hand makes the story fluid and elegant. An absolutely lovely read from one of my favorite authors.
Favorite Quote: Just know that sometimes a bad thing can be shared by the multitudes. While for a good thing, there might be only a few of you.
Now, at age 115, Sam is dying in a nursing home. And his deathbed visitor is none other than God.
At God's urging, Sam revisits the pivotal moments and important relationships in his life. In other words, Late City is the last edition of Sam Cunningham's story (the book title a reference to the name of the late evening newspaper edition).
As Sam relives the moments that shaped him, the reader is deftly provided a snapshot of history and society through the years. Much has changed in the span of one man's lifetime, while many things have not.
The book reflects on what it means to be a man, and the measure of masculinity.
Sam realizes that even after such a long life, many of his most important relationships were riddled with misunderstanding. Even at age 115, he can still learn a few things about himself.
Late City is the intimate and mesmerizing account of one man's reckoning. And although the story is gut-wrenching, Butler's light hand makes the story fluid and elegant. An absolutely lovely read from one of my favorite authors.
Favorite Quote: Just know that sometimes a bad thing can be shared by the multitudes. While for a good thing, there might be only a few of you.
March 28, 2022
116-year-old Sam Cunningham is finally dying. God joins him in his nursing home room and together they perform a review of Sam's long life. It's like a final edition of Sam's story, which is where the book title comes from. The "late city" edition of a newspaper was the last edition of the day.
Sam grew up with an abusive father and lied about his age to join the army during World War One, to get away from home. He stops at home briefly after the war, but then heads for Chicago to make his way as a newspaperman. He falls in love, marries, and has a child. He succeeds in the newspaper business. But there are important things that he doesn't know about the people he loves the most, and, at the end of his life, God reveals to him all that he's been blind to.
I like novels that tell a character's whole life story, because I'm very interested in how experience sparks growth and change. So this book was very satisfying for me.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saints Mistress https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
Sam grew up with an abusive father and lied about his age to join the army during World War One, to get away from home. He stops at home briefly after the war, but then heads for Chicago to make his way as a newspaperman. He falls in love, marries, and has a child. He succeeds in the newspaper business. But there are important things that he doesn't know about the people he loves the most, and, at the end of his life, God reveals to him all that he's been blind to.
I like novels that tell a character's whole life story, because I'm very interested in how experience sparks growth and change. So this book was very satisfying for me.
Like my reviews? Check out my blog at http://www.kathrynbashaar.com/blog/
Author of The Saints Mistress https://camcatbooks.com/Books/T/The-S...
August 27, 2021
This fits firmly in the genre of man looking back on his long life and is distinguished by the fact that Sam, the protagonist, is talking with God. It's 2016, he's 115, and he's seen a lot. His experiences with a challenging father and in WWI set him up for a career in journalism that seems to give him the ability to comment on many world events. As is the case with these novels, there are unresolved family issues and pain that Sam, in this case, finally recognizes and accepts. While I'm a fan of Robert Olen Butler, this felt stale to me because we've seen this plot before. Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. Read this for the writing.
February 26, 2022
At first, I was merely annoyed by the refusal to use chapters. I find that a pretentious convention. I got over it. The story moved into doing some things well, even movingly. There’s some really nice stuff here on the feelings of incompetence in fatherhood. But anything Butler did with skill and subtlety at points is undone by his ham-handedness with the ending. So many 21st century tropes he really had to make sure you picked up on. It was eye rolling. He was close to actually finding his way to weaving a spell. Then he ruined it by shouting, “PLEASE LOOK AT THE SPELL I AM WEAVING.” Poof. Gone. The only thing that disappeared was the magic itself.
January 31, 2022
It's a quarter to 2 in the morning on November 9th, 2016 and just ten minutes after Donald Trump was elected President of the USA, 115-year-old Sam Cunningham starts to die in his Chicago nursing home. With his family long passed before him, Sam is alone but then he hears the voice of God and so begins this high concept, thoughtful contemplation of his life.
I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Olen Butler's Paris in the Dark when I read it a few years ago and although Late City is a very different sort of novel, there is a similar perceptive restraint to the vignettes of events from Sam's past. As an atheist, I wondered if I would find Late City too mawkish or proselytising but the God here is best viewed as a conduit, allowing the present day, dying Sam to access his memories according to His commandment to "live your stories just as they felt in their own moment, with the next day's news yet to happen."
As a newsman, Sam's life becomes a series of stories in the late city edition of his own, personalised Cunningham Examiner and what is left out is perhaps just as important as the moments he does relive. With such a long life behind him, this flowing narrative has no chapters and becomes a reflection of the American century which finds Sam observing and occasionally having a small role in the events that made the country – for good or ill. As his consciousness flits between the conversations he has with God in his darkened room and the real-time accounts from his past, Robert Olen Butler keeps the novel engagingly condensed, with most of the time-frame taking place between his childhood and the end of World War II as this was the period which most shaped the man.
Growing up in the Deep South means race relations inevitably feature in the early part of the book as his domineering, violent father casually explains away racial segregation as something reasonable and necessary, then later beats Sam for the sin of criticising America. If this was a harsh judgement then Sam faces further blows, albeit of the emotional kind as he confronts the mistakes and shortcomings which still haunt him on his deathbed. From the closed-off attitude he learned from his father, which renders him almost paralysed by inaction during a particularly poignant scene during his service in France as an underaged sniper in WWI to his long career at a Chicago newspaper where his obsessive attention to the job steals away his time from his wife and son and results in him repeating and reframing his own flawed masculinity, Sam is always a sympathetic character but he is no more blameless than anybody else.
His interactions with real-life figures of the period, most notably Al Capone and Huey Long means comparisons with Forrest Gump are inevitable but despite his proximity to major events such as the Chicago race riots of 1919 or his personal connection to the first ever nuclear weapon, this is less an extraordinary tale of one man's influence upon a nation than a look at how somebody becomes moulded by where, when and with whom they live.
The final part of the novel allows Sam and the reader a glimpse into the stories of others and I read the last few pages with tears in my eyes. Late City is a profoundly moving, beautifully written look at a country which seems to be destined to repeat its preference for bitter division over unity and an intimate, sensitive portrait of a man who has to learn to accept and forgive himself. I thought it was wonderful and highly recommend it.
I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Olen Butler's Paris in the Dark when I read it a few years ago and although Late City is a very different sort of novel, there is a similar perceptive restraint to the vignettes of events from Sam's past. As an atheist, I wondered if I would find Late City too mawkish or proselytising but the God here is best viewed as a conduit, allowing the present day, dying Sam to access his memories according to His commandment to "live your stories just as they felt in their own moment, with the next day's news yet to happen."
As a newsman, Sam's life becomes a series of stories in the late city edition of his own, personalised Cunningham Examiner and what is left out is perhaps just as important as the moments he does relive. With such a long life behind him, this flowing narrative has no chapters and becomes a reflection of the American century which finds Sam observing and occasionally having a small role in the events that made the country – for good or ill. As his consciousness flits between the conversations he has with God in his darkened room and the real-time accounts from his past, Robert Olen Butler keeps the novel engagingly condensed, with most of the time-frame taking place between his childhood and the end of World War II as this was the period which most shaped the man.
Growing up in the Deep South means race relations inevitably feature in the early part of the book as his domineering, violent father casually explains away racial segregation as something reasonable and necessary, then later beats Sam for the sin of criticising America. If this was a harsh judgement then Sam faces further blows, albeit of the emotional kind as he confronts the mistakes and shortcomings which still haunt him on his deathbed. From the closed-off attitude he learned from his father, which renders him almost paralysed by inaction during a particularly poignant scene during his service in France as an underaged sniper in WWI to his long career at a Chicago newspaper where his obsessive attention to the job steals away his time from his wife and son and results in him repeating and reframing his own flawed masculinity, Sam is always a sympathetic character but he is no more blameless than anybody else.
His interactions with real-life figures of the period, most notably Al Capone and Huey Long means comparisons with Forrest Gump are inevitable but despite his proximity to major events such as the Chicago race riots of 1919 or his personal connection to the first ever nuclear weapon, this is less an extraordinary tale of one man's influence upon a nation than a look at how somebody becomes moulded by where, when and with whom they live.
The final part of the novel allows Sam and the reader a glimpse into the stories of others and I read the last few pages with tears in my eyes. Late City is a profoundly moving, beautifully written look at a country which seems to be destined to repeat its preference for bitter division over unity and an intimate, sensitive portrait of a man who has to learn to accept and forgive himself. I thought it was wonderful and highly recommend it.
January 28, 2022
I read and thoroughly enjoyed Paris in the Dark, the fourth book in the author’s Christopher Marlowe Cobb historical crime series, in 2018. Late City is an entirely different kind of book but one I absolutely loved.
The book could have been a straightforward fictional story of a man’s life, albeit one that has spanned over a century, but what sets it apart is how the story is structured as a conversation between Sam and a figure representing God. The God of Late City is not only omniscient but understands sarcasm and can even take, or make, a joke. ‘Listen, Sam. A lot of stuff that tries to pass for my voice is just humans tweeting in all caps in the middle of the night.’ Offering Sam by turns sympathy, encouragement or gentle rebuke, God acts as a combination of guide, judge and therapist.
God’s stipulation is that Sam may not have foreknowledge so Sam’s experience is not so much reminiscence as a reliving of events in his life. It’s akin to real-time reporting, reflecting Sam’s career as a journalist. God refers to Sam’s reliving of events as the Cunningham Examiner, the late city edition of the title, explaining. ‘You put it all in the story by today’s deadline and tomorrow you wait for further developments.’ Occasionally events in Sam’s life are rendered in the form of newspaper headlines. One gets the sense that the purpose is not for Sam to obtain God’s forgiveness but to allow Sam a way to forgive himself for things he did, things he failed to do or things he failed to say.
As is evident from the book description, Sam is a participant in, or a Forrest Gump-like witness to, many significant historical events and has first-hand encounters with historical figures such as Al Capone. The book illustrates the malign influence that can be wielded by those in positions of power. (The author may have a modern day example in mind given the event that opens the book.) There’s also a message about the importance of standing up for causes you believe to be right, whatever the cost. As God says (and I never thought I’d write that!) ‘Just know that sometimes a bad thing can be shared by multitudes. While for a good thing, there might only be a few of you’.
There are some particularly tender moments between Sam and his son, Ryan, and between Sam and his wife, Colleen and I loved the way these relationships were explored. By the end of the book, Sam has come to understand what’s really important in life and also had revealed to him ‘untold stories’ about those close to him, things he never knew but perhaps should have done if he’d only listened more, been present more. As God explains, ‘There are some stories waiting for you, written for the Cunningham Examiner. But they never appeared. Never made it as far as your editor-in chief’s desk.’ Coming to terms with the revelations in these stories requires a tolerance that was sadly lacking in society when Sam was growing up but it results in him finally realising how a small act can bring solace to another human being when it really matters.
I thought Late City was a beautifully written and thought-provoking book and I’ll freely admit the ending moved me to tears.
The book could have been a straightforward fictional story of a man’s life, albeit one that has spanned over a century, but what sets it apart is how the story is structured as a conversation between Sam and a figure representing God. The God of Late City is not only omniscient but understands sarcasm and can even take, or make, a joke. ‘Listen, Sam. A lot of stuff that tries to pass for my voice is just humans tweeting in all caps in the middle of the night.’ Offering Sam by turns sympathy, encouragement or gentle rebuke, God acts as a combination of guide, judge and therapist.
God’s stipulation is that Sam may not have foreknowledge so Sam’s experience is not so much reminiscence as a reliving of events in his life. It’s akin to real-time reporting, reflecting Sam’s career as a journalist. God refers to Sam’s reliving of events as the Cunningham Examiner, the late city edition of the title, explaining. ‘You put it all in the story by today’s deadline and tomorrow you wait for further developments.’ Occasionally events in Sam’s life are rendered in the form of newspaper headlines. One gets the sense that the purpose is not for Sam to obtain God’s forgiveness but to allow Sam a way to forgive himself for things he did, things he failed to do or things he failed to say.
As is evident from the book description, Sam is a participant in, or a Forrest Gump-like witness to, many significant historical events and has first-hand encounters with historical figures such as Al Capone. The book illustrates the malign influence that can be wielded by those in positions of power. (The author may have a modern day example in mind given the event that opens the book.) There’s also a message about the importance of standing up for causes you believe to be right, whatever the cost. As God says (and I never thought I’d write that!) ‘Just know that sometimes a bad thing can be shared by multitudes. While for a good thing, there might only be a few of you’.
There are some particularly tender moments between Sam and his son, Ryan, and between Sam and his wife, Colleen and I loved the way these relationships were explored. By the end of the book, Sam has come to understand what’s really important in life and also had revealed to him ‘untold stories’ about those close to him, things he never knew but perhaps should have done if he’d only listened more, been present more. As God explains, ‘There are some stories waiting for you, written for the Cunningham Examiner. But they never appeared. Never made it as far as your editor-in chief’s desk.’ Coming to terms with the revelations in these stories requires a tolerance that was sadly lacking in society when Sam was growing up but it results in him finally realising how a small act can bring solace to another human being when it really matters.
I thought Late City was a beautifully written and thought-provoking book and I’ll freely admit the ending moved me to tears.
November 13, 2021
Sam Cunningham is dying and as he lies on his deathbed in a Chicago nursing home, in the long dark night of the soul, he reflects and reminisces and reviews his long life – all 115 years of it – and discusses all that he has experienced with a rather unusual God, who has come to speed him on his way. A chatty God is a risky narrative conceit, but I found it worked well and for me it paid off, giving Sam an interlocutor to help him reassess, and I found their exchanges amusing. But this isn’t just a saccharine account of an old man at the end of his life, but as we look back with Sam we too relive the events of the 20th century and we too reassess some of those events. I found the book engaging and entertaining, but with a serious and thoughtful aspect to it as well, and overall a really great read.
May 4, 2022
Brilliant! This book deserves a brilliant review, but for now, it'll have to wait. I will think about this for a very long time...
January 26, 2025
Should be 2.6 stars, weighted down because the author was surely capable of more, of better.
This is essentially a biography of a fictitious man that the author hoped to spice up by adding God. It fell flat and bland. It read as a boring, monotone read with no personality or presence.
The characters are generic at best and offer nothing compelling. There are not surprising or even interesting plot points. It feels exceptionally scripted and rehearsed. There is nothing new here, there is nothing intriguing. This story makes no statements and asks no questions about who we are, about where we’re going, about anything.
The characters have already faded three minutes from reading their last words.
The book feels as though it came about from the thought of a single gesture and the author wanted to turn that gesture into a novel but found nothing of substance upon which to base it. The author wrote five characters who were all easily described by one word. But people are messy and people surprise you. People have traits that don’t perfectly align with their beliefs. People are interesting. This book missed that. The main character is completely devoid of weight. He has no flaws, his writing is generic, he has no quirks. Even in his own recounting of himself, he cannot find personality.
To make the other characters interesting, the author randomly assigns the father as abusive and the child and mother as gay. It is a bit insulting to treat them as such after thoughts. It’s as though the author thought, “yikes. Didn’t quite develop these characters, better make em gay.” It felt contrived and flippant.
The inclusion of Trump’s election merited one conversation. The main character, who was naturally from the south in the 1900s and not at all racist, was also completely within sin or judgement and always had scrupulous morals. Nazis are bad. Gangs are bad. Racists are bad. Violence is bad. Birth control is good. I will be the sole messenger of everything good and right and will be unfailing in my perfect morals.
Bleh.
This is essentially a biography of a fictitious man that the author hoped to spice up by adding God. It fell flat and bland. It read as a boring, monotone read with no personality or presence.
The characters are generic at best and offer nothing compelling. There are not surprising or even interesting plot points. It feels exceptionally scripted and rehearsed. There is nothing new here, there is nothing intriguing. This story makes no statements and asks no questions about who we are, about where we’re going, about anything.
The characters have already faded three minutes from reading their last words.
The book feels as though it came about from the thought of a single gesture and the author wanted to turn that gesture into a novel but found nothing of substance upon which to base it. The author wrote five characters who were all easily described by one word. But people are messy and people surprise you. People have traits that don’t perfectly align with their beliefs. People are interesting. This book missed that. The main character is completely devoid of weight. He has no flaws, his writing is generic, he has no quirks. Even in his own recounting of himself, he cannot find personality.
To make the other characters interesting, the author randomly assigns the father as abusive and the child and mother as gay. It is a bit insulting to treat them as such after thoughts. It’s as though the author thought, “yikes. Didn’t quite develop these characters, better make em gay.” It felt contrived and flippant.
The inclusion of Trump’s election merited one conversation. The main character, who was naturally from the south in the 1900s and not at all racist, was also completely within sin or judgement and always had scrupulous morals. Nazis are bad. Gangs are bad. Racists are bad. Violence is bad. Birth control is good. I will be the sole messenger of everything good and right and will be unfailing in my perfect morals.
Bleh.
June 2, 2022
Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler, best known for his short story collection A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, has written a slight book about 116 years of a man’s life. Obviously, he has to skip much of the story. As the book begins, 116-year-old Sam Cunningham is dying in his nursing home bed on election night, 2016. Cunningham, a former Chicago newspaper editor from Louisiana, is presented to God, asking him to define his life and choices as he would have covered them in the paper. The narrative tool isn’t necessary, and one can’t help but wish Cunningham’s story was given to an author that had some affection for Cunningham. We see the American century through his life – kind of. Young Sam is taught to shoot and taught about race relations with his abusive father, leaving for World War I as a teenager to escape his father’s wrath. While in France, he becomes a celebrated yet weirdly homophobic sniper. After the war, he has no plans to move back home, so he moves to Chicago, finds a room for rent from a WWI widow, and starts his newspaper career, making an ally out of Al Capone, a plot point that goes nowhere. After WWII creates, Butler delivers his emotional peak, but afterward, everything is a missing note in his life of Cunningham. Not even a JFK assassination chapter. Cunningham himself could have been an interesting fellow, and I think of how John Irving would have handled him because the potential for drama and pathos is there, but Butler seems stuck on his hokey God story rails.
March 1, 2024
I thought this was excellent. I laughed, I cried, I was totally engaged from beginning to end.
Sam, the narrator is 116 years old and his life is ending. He takes us through his life including the current events, celebrations and tragedies and I found it really well done. I thought it was very clever.
Sam, the narrator is 116 years old and his life is ending. He takes us through his life including the current events, celebrations and tragedies and I found it really well done. I thought it was very clever.
December 28, 2024
Very disappointing for a Pulitzer Prize winner but that was 30 years ago and for short stories. This book tries to cover a century in less than 300 pages with surface level references to major historical events, insulting and stereotypical analysis as well as overly predictable plot twists. No wonder it was so heavily discounted at the book store
December 17, 2021
What a powerful novel. It should wind some awards.
July 16, 2024
Crappy literature
November 8, 2021
Wow, this was a little unexpected. I knew of Robert Olen Butler from the novel Hell and the short stories in Tabloid Dreams. Both were deeply surreal and maintained a light touch. This one runs much lighter on the surreal but much, much deeper on the intensity.
Sam Cunningham is 115 years old, living his last day, and he is talking with God. Telling God the story of his life, reliving particular moments, not so much of his own choosing.
What does God want to know from Sam? What matters?
I don’t remember seeing the word “conscience” once in Late City, but my reading put the word at its center.
God doesn’t want to know if Sam has lived a successful life, if he has created a business, climbed the ladder, amassed wealth, lived the “American Dream,” built “shareholder value”. . . None of that. He’s God after all. He wants to know the life of Sam’s conscience.
He particularly wants Sam to recount and relive poignant experiences and tensions in his life, what those experiences and tensions mean to him, and how he resolves or fails to resolve them.
Sam was born in 1901, and he is dying in 2016, as Donald Trump is elected president. He has grown up in the Jim Crow south, with a rigid and dominating father. He has lived through World War I, as a (technically too) young solider, a sharp-shooter who by his own telling has killed more than a hundred men. He has been a newspaperman, covering and at least to some extent doing the bidding of Al Capone. He has been a husband and a father. He has seen his own son go off to fight in World War II. He has outlived his wife and his son, and now he lies in a nursing home with 115 years behind him.
A heavy theme throughout is manhood and true masculinity. As a boy growing into a man, Sam is under his father’s thumb. The lesson his father teaches him is the circle his father draws in the dirt around the two of them. The circle contains who matters, who he can rely on, in some strong sense, his ethical boundary. Those outside the boundary are the others, who matter less and who can be relied on for less. The ones who are not us.
Even when Sam announces to his father that he’s going to join the army to fight in the war, his father claims ownership. It’s Sam’s decision, through and through, but his father takes him to the recruitment center and orchestrates and owns his signing up. In an important sense this is to be Sam’s moment, taking on moral importance and identity in the world, but his father tries to own that moment.
During the war, Sam faces more than just the test of battle — he faces the test of caring for his fellow soldiers in ways that conflict with the version of manhood his father has given him. It’s a test that Sam will re-take again and again, right to his last days.
That test is a test of caring, of being enough of a man to care beyond the circle his father drew in the dirt around the two of them.
That is what matters when Sam talks with God. How Sam has resolved the problem of the circle his father drew.
If you don’t believe in the God that Sam talks with, I don’t think it matters. And it doesn’t matter whether your test has to do with masculinity, femininity, or anything else that defines the quality and boundaries of your life and how you’ve cared about the others in it. The question is about the quality of your life, your conduct as a person of conscience, or not.
Sam refers to one instance of this test as a “moment I am meant to reckon with.” A moment that lasts, as the moment in which you will have to make a choice that determines the quality of the life you live. And you may, as Sam sometimes does, make a choice that you will need to “reckon with” sooner or later. That’s what God is interested in here — it’s not the choices, but the reckoning with them that Sam now must do.
So . . . heavy book. Like I said, not exactly what I was expecting, given the other things I’ve read by Butler, but all the better for it - a different direction and a very different experience.
Sam Cunningham is 115 years old, living his last day, and he is talking with God. Telling God the story of his life, reliving particular moments, not so much of his own choosing.
What does God want to know from Sam? What matters?
I don’t remember seeing the word “conscience” once in Late City, but my reading put the word at its center.
God doesn’t want to know if Sam has lived a successful life, if he has created a business, climbed the ladder, amassed wealth, lived the “American Dream,” built “shareholder value”. . . None of that. He’s God after all. He wants to know the life of Sam’s conscience.
He particularly wants Sam to recount and relive poignant experiences and tensions in his life, what those experiences and tensions mean to him, and how he resolves or fails to resolve them.
Sam was born in 1901, and he is dying in 2016, as Donald Trump is elected president. He has grown up in the Jim Crow south, with a rigid and dominating father. He has lived through World War I, as a (technically too) young solider, a sharp-shooter who by his own telling has killed more than a hundred men. He has been a newspaperman, covering and at least to some extent doing the bidding of Al Capone. He has been a husband and a father. He has seen his own son go off to fight in World War II. He has outlived his wife and his son, and now he lies in a nursing home with 115 years behind him.
A heavy theme throughout is manhood and true masculinity. As a boy growing into a man, Sam is under his father’s thumb. The lesson his father teaches him is the circle his father draws in the dirt around the two of them. The circle contains who matters, who he can rely on, in some strong sense, his ethical boundary. Those outside the boundary are the others, who matter less and who can be relied on for less. The ones who are not us.
Even when Sam announces to his father that he’s going to join the army to fight in the war, his father claims ownership. It’s Sam’s decision, through and through, but his father takes him to the recruitment center and orchestrates and owns his signing up. In an important sense this is to be Sam’s moment, taking on moral importance and identity in the world, but his father tries to own that moment.
During the war, Sam faces more than just the test of battle — he faces the test of caring for his fellow soldiers in ways that conflict with the version of manhood his father has given him. It’s a test that Sam will re-take again and again, right to his last days.
That test is a test of caring, of being enough of a man to care beyond the circle his father drew in the dirt around the two of them.
That is what matters when Sam talks with God. How Sam has resolved the problem of the circle his father drew.
If you don’t believe in the God that Sam talks with, I don’t think it matters. And it doesn’t matter whether your test has to do with masculinity, femininity, or anything else that defines the quality and boundaries of your life and how you’ve cared about the others in it. The question is about the quality of your life, your conduct as a person of conscience, or not.
Sam refers to one instance of this test as a “moment I am meant to reckon with.” A moment that lasts, as the moment in which you will have to make a choice that determines the quality of the life you live. And you may, as Sam sometimes does, make a choice that you will need to “reckon with” sooner or later. That’s what God is interested in here — it’s not the choices, but the reckoning with them that Sam now must do.
So . . . heavy book. Like I said, not exactly what I was expecting, given the other things I’ve read by Butler, but all the better for it - a different direction and a very different experience.
September 6, 2021
Late City by Robert Olen Butler is about a 115-year old Sam Cunningham in 2016 following the presidential election. While approaching death, he converses with God, who allows him to revisit scenes throughout his life in stream of consciousness. Sam is a newspaper writer by trade and tells the stories of his life in the rapidly changing 20th and 21st centuries. These scenes illustrate the breadth of his life and provide insight into formative experiences and relationships.
The beginning was a little slow for me, but picked up about 1/3 in and I became more interested in the events that shaped his life and way of thinking. I really liked how his life as a progressive newsman intersected with social and civil progress. The most affecting and poignant experiences were about his family and war. I loved the thoughtfulness of Sam and pondering how we perceive our actions and what happens to us. I listened to the audiobook which was well narrated by Danny Campbell and seemed like an excellent fit for Sam Cunningham.
Thank you Grove Atlantic / Highbridge Audio and NetGalley for providing this ebook and audiobook ARC.
The beginning was a little slow for me, but picked up about 1/3 in and I became more interested in the events that shaped his life and way of thinking. I really liked how his life as a progressive newsman intersected with social and civil progress. The most affecting and poignant experiences were about his family and war. I loved the thoughtfulness of Sam and pondering how we perceive our actions and what happens to us. I listened to the audiobook which was well narrated by Danny Campbell and seemed like an excellent fit for Sam Cunningham.
Thank you Grove Atlantic / Highbridge Audio and NetGalley for providing this ebook and audiobook ARC.
April 12, 2022
Each reader's response to this book is likely to depend primarily upon that reader's expectations, mindset, perceptions and state of mind. Many have praised it; with justification. If one is inclined to ponder the deep issues that face us as a society and as individuals, contemplate the meaning behind one's existence, or whether the life of an individual has any meaning at all, then this book is likely to resonate and leave a lasting impression. I found it vaguely Proustian.
And, I suppose, there's the rub. This sort of long drawn out monologue, a conversation with one's self (especially if it happens to be, as in this case, presented as a conversation with God) simply leaves me impatient, yearning for action, an experience of the here and now, a lurch toward a possible future. This is not a long book but it felt long to me because it wasn't taking me anywhere I wished to go.
I found it almost impossible to assign it to any particular shelf; it seemed nebulous. Having no more appropriate idea, I called it whimsy, inasmuch as old Sam is having a self-contrived chat with God and that struck me as a bit sad and whimsical.
And, I suppose, there's the rub. This sort of long drawn out monologue, a conversation with one's self (especially if it happens to be, as in this case, presented as a conversation with God) simply leaves me impatient, yearning for action, an experience of the here and now, a lurch toward a possible future. This is not a long book but it felt long to me because it wasn't taking me anywhere I wished to go.
I found it almost impossible to assign it to any particular shelf; it seemed nebulous. Having no more appropriate idea, I called it whimsy, inasmuch as old Sam is having a self-contrived chat with God and that struck me as a bit sad and whimsical.
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