Rich Man, Poor Man (novel)
OCLC 94537 | | |
Followed by | Beggarman, Thief |
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Rich Man, Poor Man is a 1969 novel by Irwin Shaw. It is the last of the novels of Shaw's middle period before he began to concentrate, in his last works such as Evening In Byzantium, Nightwork, Bread Upon The Waters and Acceptable Losses on the inevitability of impending death. The title is taken from the nursery rhyme "Tinker, Tailor". The novel was adapted into a 1976 miniseries.
Background
The novel is a sprawling work, with over 600 pages, and covers many of the themes Shaw returns to again and again in all of his fiction – Americans living as expatriates in Europe, the McCarthy era, children trying to break away from the kind of life lived by their parents, social and political issues of capitalism, and the pain of relationships. On the very first page Shaw subtly telegraphs the sad ending of the story, in the same way that the first scene of a film will often quote the last scene.
Originally published as a short story in
Plot summary
In the early parts of the novel Shaw goes to great lengths to make the point about "Jordache blood" – violent, bitter, resentful. One of the ways he does this is by meticulously describing the hate-filled marriage of the parents, Mary and Axel. The novel is told in the third person omniscient point of view but never wholly objectively, often through the lens of the consciousness of one of the five family members. When told through the POV of either Mary or Axel the view of humanity, and of the Jordache family, is relentlessly bleak and pessimistic.
The tripwire that sets all of the ensuing plot action in motion occurs when Gretchen Jordache begins an affair with the president of the company she works for, Teddy Boylan, a man much older than herself. Eventually her brothers Rudolph and Thomas also become involved with Boylan, in different ways, and it is his influence upon all three that first springs each of them into the world beyond the small upstate New York town where their parents scrape by with their bakery. Boylan constitutes their first true encounters with an adult beyond their parents.
Many people, mainly because of their familiarity with the
Boylan serves as the MacGuffin that drives the plot for all three of the Jordache siblings. For Gretchen he is an introduction to the world of men and relationships. He awakens in her the realization that she is the kind of woman who reduces men to cowering wimps but who cannot, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, put together a sound, completely fulfilling relationship. Her marriage to Willie Abbott collapses under the weight of his alcoholism and her marriage to Colin Burke ends in tragedy when Burke dies in a car accident. Similarly none of her numerous affairs bear any genuine emotional fruit.
It is because of Boylan that Thomas embarks on a savage act of vandalism (with his friend Claude, who eventually turns him in). When caught, the men of the town present Axel Jordache with a choice – send Thomas away or let him and the family face the consequences with the law. Jordache sends him away to live with his brother in Ohio, thus beginning a pattern that is repeated over and over and over in the novel: Thomas settles somewhere for a while, does OK for a time, then gets into trouble and has to flee.
Finally Boylan offers to pay for Rudolph to go to college. Although on one level Rudolph despises Boylan as a petty vindictive rich pervert of an old man, he sees another side of him as well - the financially independent man of the world who wants for nothing. Shaw uses Rudolph's even, balanced judgment of Boylan as a counterpoint to the wholly negative, wholly one-sided opinion of him both Gretchen and Thomas, in their own separate ways, cling to.
Adaptations
A 1976 miniseries adaptation of the novel premiered on ABC and starred Peter Strauss as Rudy, Susan Blakely as Julie and Nick Nolte as Tom.[1]
In 1982, an adaptation of Shaw's novel was realised by Lithuanian Film Studios of the Soviet TV.
In 2011, a Turkish drama was also an adaptation of Rich Man, Poor Man with a different twist: in Kuzey Güney miniseries, starring Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ, Buğra Gülsoy and Öykü Karayel, Kuzey was shown as the tough, wild and rebellious son (but inside he was noble and child hearten person) and Güney was shown as an responsible, calm and clean son of a hate-filled couple Sami and Handan Tekinoglu of Istanbul.
Sequel
Shaw released a sequel to the novel titled, Beggarman, Thief in 1977.[2]
References
- ^ "RICH MAN, POOR MAN - The Museum of Broadcast Communications". Archived from the original on 2010-12-04.
- ISBN 0440107016.