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But God insists. He encourages Sam to “live your past as you lived it, without knowing the future that will come from it.” Raised in Louisiana by an abusive father and a loving but fearful mother, Sam is 16 years old in France I.
After the war, he leaves Louisiana to distance himself from his father. He travels to Chicago, where he rents a room from a young war widow named Colleen. Before long, the landlord and tenant fall in love. They have a son, Ryan, who becomes an important third character in the plot.
Sam rises from juvenile reporter to editor-in-chief at a major progressive newspaper. Although he describes himself as a profound “messenger,” the work we see by him has an overly flamboyant variety of human interest. Toward the end of the novel, Sam gently mocks the feature-length story, which he calls “The Sunday attachment feels good.” His own writing and the tone of “Late City” belong to a brand about a sad patina that shrouds the heartwarming elements.
God’s prominent role in “Late City” contrasts with Satan’s role in “Hell”. Butler’s 2009 novel It’s about a TV newscaster who finds himself in a fiery afterlife full of celebrities. But it was a satire – excessive and corny, but deliberately so. “Late City” is more of a Hallmark production. It shows very brief flashes of Butler’s humor and irony found in the toolkit, but it’s almost entirely, tragically naive. There are moments when it’s hard enough to bend your knees. The final scene will surely bring some readers to tears, but those that leave dry eyes may be slack-jawed at the odd payoff of an already emotional plot early in the novel.
A small pity is that despite the appearances of Al Capone and Huey Long, the novel never blooms. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” ritual or “Forrest Gump” cameo festival. Butler is really interested in Sam, Colleen and Ryan – in a human scale story rather than a full dress historical stage production. And while more than a century of life may have bloated itself, the book is a quick 290-page book and more or less completes its timeline with WWII.
The presence of Long, Capone, Trump, and Sam’s abusive father hints at larger ideas about American masculinity, but the book’s political and psychological ideas aren’t much more complex than its vision of God.
Finally, there are revelations for Sam about the people he is closest to in life. These are interesting enough and, like other elements of the book, question how shrewd a reporter he is.
If there’s a silver lining, at least Butler is still taking audacious risks at this stage of his career. And God knows there is an audience for historic predators.
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