Joe the Engineer by Chuck WachtelJoe the Engineer is a 27-year-old Vietnam vet meter reader in Queens who, for the first time in his life, is making some decisions. Unfortunately, his marriage is disintegrating at the same time. There's no murder, nothing sensational in the book, just a series of scenes in the life of a young unsatisfied man renting the third floor of a building in the neighborhood his grandfather came over to from Italy. The life isn't sensational but the writing describing it is. This book is so far away from most current popular writing yet it describes so carefully and with such regard the characters and supermarket normalcy of the popular culture. And it seems peculiar and is so precious in doing that. Precious as a can of Budweiser. It's the kind of book you wish could be available at the check out. That you hope can compete with the books of gossip and voyeurism and exploitation. It's ridiculous to have to say but it's practically noble for choosing as its subject a normal couple, practically a random choice of a couple, whose struggles and days we witness. It's such a relief that the book doesn't resort to any extraordinary events to take it out of its loving narrative. Through the course of the book we're with Joe the Engineer ("the Engineer" to distinguish him from all the other Joes in the neighborhood) in front of the Sunday morning TV watching Hold That Ghost with Abbott & Costello; on the job with his partner, Joe Flushing Avenue; in his local bar, Mary's, where a welcome home celebration was given him with the doors locked five years ago back from Nam; out with his wife and another couple to the east village of NYC to see a movie he doesn't understand and doesn't care to; through a couple of quick fucks that last as long for him as the pages which describe them, and on. It is in these scenes that Chuck distinguishes himself as an extraordinary writer. Events and landscapes are described plain enough for The Daily News but with the added layers of texture and often surprising detail that create a subjective vitality and make these characters, local as any province, matter to the reader. "The sun is setting behind the Greek Orthodox Church behind Atlantic Avenue . . ."; ". . . he noticed that the Sell By date on the milk container was the day they'd be coming home."; "She leans forward, throws her arms around Joe's neck and kisses him. He resists for a moment in surprise, but when she opens his mouth with her tongue, he immediately comes to terms with the situation. They kiss for a long time. While they're kissing, the basketball players go home and the sun sets without them." In this last scene, Joe and a cashier from the A&P ("ever since that night at the A&P") are about to make love on an isolated handball court ("in the middle of the public night") through the big NYC blackout of 1977. It's a great pleasure to be given so much from the ordinary and the desires of the daily. The kind of stuff you might think about when you're standing on a corner waiting for the light to change. What's remarkable for Joe the Engineer is a trip to a basement, whose meter he's to read, and finding a model railroad that takes up the entire basement and the gentle encounter with its builder, a retired man who had driven the NYC subway system and knew every inch of track on all current and former lines. Lemonade and a demonstration. I've always liked Chuck Wachtel's writing, two books of poems before this, because he writes as a pedestrian with eyes wide open on a lunch hour. There's always this sense of fascination and curiosity which lose nothing in his interpretation, whether it's a doorknob shadow or thoughts of the looters during a blackout. I recommend it as not only honest, unadulterated, true and searching, but because it was so enjoyable to read. Poetry Project Newsletter, February 1983 |