The Men of L'Engle #9: Adam Eddington

Let's just let Ms. L. introduce Adam, shall we?

"Adam Eddington, sixteen, going on seventeen, out of high school and set for Berkeley in the winter.... He had always, with a degree of arrogance, considered himself sophisticated because he had grown up in New York, because his friendships cut across racial and economic barriers, because he could cope with the subway and shuttle at rush hours, because the island of Manhattan (he thought) held no surprises for him."

This is the Adam we first meet in The Arm of the Starfish, heading off to get himself involved in far more international intrigue than usually accompanies a summer internship.

Which is actually the first of two times he ends up in the midst of completely unrelated international intrigues. By accident. The kid has a talent for it, even if he doesn't seem to have learned much from the first go-round.

But we're willing to overlook that, generally, because he's pretty awesome otherwise. Also he loves Vicky, and who reads the Austin books without identifying at least a little with her?

As far as I'm concerned, though, the single most endearing thing about Adam is one very subtle line in A Ring of Endless Light: "his trunks were zebra-striped." L'Engle just lets it fall, in the midst of Vicky's thoughts about the rest of his appearance (conclusion: not bad), and she expects the reader to know that the only reason zebra-striped swimming trunks matter is because they are the ones Joshua used.

Leading characteristics:

• Chauvinist. Despite the fact that he's the awesome love interest (and he speaks Spanish), I'm not going to give him a pass on this one. It's particularly egregious in The Arm of the Starfish, where he lets himself get into all sorts of trouble with Kali because "what she was saying was only a soprano twittering in his ears. Most girls' conversation was, in his opinion."
• Scientific. A point he makes over and over. See pull quotes.
• Trustworthy. The first adjective Vicky applies to him, and we're never given any reason to doubt it.
• Easygoing. Maybe that's not the word I'm looking for -- how would you describe someone who's totally comfortable joining in family singalongs with people he's only just met?

Pull quotes:

• "I'm a scientist, not a poet. Even when I was a kid I read Scientific American, not fairy tales."
• "You can't hindsight that way. When something happens, it happens, and you have to accept it and go on from there."
• "I think that places hold atmospheres, too."

The Men of L'Engle #8: Zachary Gray

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that you have to have a much stronger belief than I do in the possibility of Zachary's reform to find him a likable character. Maybe I'm too black-and-white, but I don't see him as a complex character, just a slimy one.

But I do have a lot to say about him. So that's something.¹

I'm almost surprised that L'Engle never made an explicit Holden Caulfield reference in her descriptions of Zachary, because there's a clear resemblance. "Phony" and "crumby" make frequent appearances in Zachary's conversation; he's a rich kid largely ignored by his parents; none of what happens is his fault.

Zachary makes his first appearance in The Moon by Night, just after one of his prep school expulsions. Choate once, Hotchkiss another time -- at least the guy gets thrown out of classy places.² He pursues Vicky as the Austin family travels across the country, then turns up two years later to pursue her again.

After he (not much of a spoiler) makes a complete ass of himself, repeatedly puts Vicky in danger, and abandons her. Then he appears in A House Like a Lotus, where he pursues Polly, makes a complete ass of himself, puts Polly in danger, and abandons her. Anyone want to guess what happens in An Acceptable Time?

And then at the end, he's allegedly hit bottom, seen the error of his ways, and redeemed himself. Which I do not find one bit convincing. Because after abandoning Vicky, he appeared to have seen the error of his ways.

So I don't see Zachary as a flawed but ultimately decent character. He's a bundle of abuser warning signs. Perhaps he'll give someone else a chance to learn the lesson Polly didn't: If a boy thinks that "non-virgin status" = "reason to let him have his way" -- that's when you get up and walk out.

Leading characteristics:

• Spoiled. And knows it. He's well aware of his ability to get anything he wants out of his parents. Or as he puts it: "When I don't get what I want I have hysterics. They're very effective."
• Gorgeous. This is one point Vicky and Polly are both very clear on. The "Hamlet look," as Vicky calls it, works for him.
• Manipulative. And utterly sleazy. (Sorry. Personal sentiment intruding there.) But just look at how he plays with Vicky and Polly's emotions. There is just no reason for a line like "If I had somebody like you around maybe I wouldn't go getting kicked out of schools all the time."

Pull quote(s):

• "money and connections can do wonders"
• "I've been in a filthy mood. Get me out of my mood."
• "I'm a self-protective bastard."
• "Polly, don't you understand? I needed you. I needed you terribly."
• "I don't want to be a lawyer, as you so naively put it, but I intend to be one."

Where's Zachary now? Somewhere expensive, probably. Not a lawyer. And still not worth it.

¹ Also, he's the excuse for Suzy to taunt Vicky with "Love is a little thing shaped like a lizard; it runs up and down and tickles your gizzard." Which is just lovely.^2
2 Basically, he flunks out by choice. Or as Polly puts it, "He didn't do well in school because if he's not interested, he doesn't bother."
³ I mean that in a totally non-sarcastic way. (I know; it's not always easy to tell.)

The Men of L'Engle #7: Alex Murry

We don't find out Alex Murry's name when he first appears -- to Meg, he's just "Father." The first name becomes necessary by the time An Acceptable Time rolls around, though, since we're now talking multiple generations.

Alex is a brilliant scientist who manages to get himself trapped on Camazotz the first time he tessers. (Yeah, spoiler. On the off-chance you need a refresher, watch.) Before and after that, he's off doing high-powered research at various government facilities -- and, when he's so inclined, in the lab he and his wife share in their Connecticut farmhouse.

Leading characteristics:

• Absent-minded professor. When Meg is first explaining Alex to Calvin, she explains why his hair is long in the picture they're looking at: "he keeps forgetting to have it cut. Mother usually ends up doing it for him -- she bought clippers and stuff -- because he won't take the time to go to the barber"
• Family man. Even though he's off-screen for most of A Wrinkle in Time, having allegedly abandoned his family (though of course we know better), all evidence still points to his loyalty to hearth and home. We hear how he taught Meg to do math with "far too many shortcuts." And then we see him step in to take care of Polly (oh, look, another tesser).
  

Pull quotes:

• "So Murray Gell-Mann, who named [quarks], obviously read Joyce. I find that rather comforting."
• "Tessering is even more complicated than we had suspected."
• "Mr. President, hello!"

What's Alex up to these days? I can't imagine him actually retired, can you? I think he's still hanging out in the farmhouse, working on experiments and absolutely trying not to open another tesser if he can &#$*% help it.

The Men of L'Engle #6: Calvin O'Keefe

Ah, Calvin. No doubt part of your popularity is the number of Meg-like girls who wanted to imagine they could end up happily married to the first boy they ever talked to.

We first meet Calvin when he's a gawky 14-year-old, two years ahead in school and far more than two inches too tall for his clothes. He's an outsider in his own (huge) family, but the minute he walks into the Murry house, he knows he's found a home.

And while I'd normally be all up in arms about controlling tendencies at a passage like this:

"Well, you know what, you've got dreamboat eyes," Calvin said. "Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have."

-- the fact that it's Calvin (okay, and the fact that I totally understand how Meg felt, having done the glasses-and-braces thing myself) makes it acceptable.

Leading characteristics:

• Family man. He cares about his family when they don't care about him, and once he and Meg marry, they end up with a family big enough for a baseball team. And when we see him from Polly's perspective, in A House Like a Lotus and An Acceptable Time, he appears to be a pretty awesome father.
• Brilliant. To put it mildly. A Wrinkle in Time suggests that there's some sort of biological difference, although this never comes up again. But we do get to see him as a researcher widely acknowledged as top in his field, getting special government assent to his work. And this despite the fact that his future wife had to help him with his math homework.
• Fond of islands. As an adult, Calvin chooses to make his home on various marginally populated coastal islands where he can work out of a home laboratory. (Don't you wish you had one?)
• Rather normal. I mean, despite the fact that he's been inside his brother-in-law's mitochondria, not to mention several other planets.

Pull quotes:

• "There hasn't been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, I can hold myself down, but it isn't me."
• "We came to the island... because it was, at the time, one of the few places left in the world where I could bring up my family and work undisturbed."
• "I've stumbled onto something. Something that is unusual, desirable to many people, and important."

And where's Calvin now? Based on my acquaintance with Georgia's coastal islands, I'm pretty sure Benne Seed has gotten far too built up for the Murry-O'Keefe comfort level. And the senior Murrys are getting on in years, so I wouldn't be surprised to find Meg and Calvin heading back to New England. But beyond that? He's researching, as ever.

The Men of L'Engle #5: Josiah Davidson

Better known, of course, as Dave. He shows up in The Young Unicorns, L'Engle's departure from the usual structure of her Austin family books. (Which is directly related to the fact that I'm not a big fan of it, and therefore don't have much to say about Dave.)

Dave, now that he's no longer in a gang, spends his days in and around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and also becomes a part of the Austins' extended New York family, because he has the responsibility of reading homework assignments aloud to their blind neighbor. (Okay, my dislike of The Young Unicorns also has something to do with its sheer preposterousness. Moving on.)

He also turns up in A Severed Wasp, one of L'Engle's adult novels, married to Suzy Austin.

Leading characteristics:

• Taciturn. Dave always makes me think of Dan Mangan from the Trixie Belden books. He's got the same slightly hostile, trust-no-one thing going on.
• Decent. At the same time, he's made the choice to step away from gang life, and he's got a real sense of responsibility toward Emily -- and, after a fashion, toward everyone else.

Pull quote(s):

• "I'm an ex-hood."

Where is he now? Dave's always been associated with St. John the Divine, so he's one of those people who become as much a part of the building as the stones that make it.

The Men of L'Engle #4: Sandy and Dennys

Sandy and Dennys Murry (side note: am I the only one who grew up wanting to pronounce that like Denny's?) are twins, and that's one of their defining traits. They didn't grow up dressing alike or making up their own language or anything like that, but they've got a bond. And besides that, they're the normal ones in the family. No outcast status, no special powers, no Nobel Prizes -- well, there was the one time they ended up helping Noah build the ark, but that was an accident. Most of the time the twins are secondary characters, but in Many Waters they get the stage to themselves.

Leading characteristics:

• Sensible. Sandy and Dennys are the more-or-less normal members of the Murry family. They put a premium on conforming, and it's what makes them happy.
• Green-thumbed. Someone should count the mentions of the twins' vegetable garden in the L'Engle oeuvre.
• Socially conscious: Particularly in A House Like a Lotus. They may not be tessering in their adult lives, but they're still totally going to change the world. In a good way.

Pull quote(s):

• Sandy: "If Dad were a plumber or an electrician, and if Mother were somebody's secretary, it would be a lot easier for us."
• Dennys: "We've never had willing suspensions of disbelief. We're the pragmatists of the family."
• Sandy: "We were stupid, mucking around with an experiment-in-progress."

We get to see the twins grow up in L'Engle's books, so we know that Sandy becomes a lawyer and Dennys is a doctor. And where are they now? I could imagine either one as an Obama appointee, or affiliated with a university. No doubt they're on their Android phones at all hours, since we know that saving the world is not a 9-to-5 job.

The Men of L'Engle #3: Wally Austin

Yup, the L'Engle dads get their turn in this series. (In other words, Alex Murry is next.)

Wally Austin is a mild-mannered country doctor with a large, active family -- and just a touch of a Clark Kent-mystique vibe, thanks to this line that gets thrown out in The Moon by Night and then never developed:

"Daddy was a black belt in Judo before any of us was ever born."

There's also the bit where he trades in GP-ing for a year in New York, doing research that turns out to have huge organized crime/international/moral/biological implications, but that doesn't actually get much attention outside The Young Unicorns.

Leading characteristics:

• Bears a passing resemblance to Ward Cleaver. To be fair, the Austin books were written over a period of 30 or 40 years, and his more objectionable attitudes aren't around in the later books. That said, he still doesn't get a pass for objecting to women who wear pants.
• Excellent sense of humor. Because how can you not admire a guy who'll dress up as his own (nonexistent) butler just for the purpose of messing with his brother's girlfriend?
• Serious family values. This is a guy who will relocate the whole family for the summer to be with his ailing father-in-law. It's not just the nuclear family that matters here.

Pull quote(s):

• "He was old-fashioned enough to have given his seat to an elderly woman and modern enough to make sure that it was she and not somebody else who got it."
• "... could always concentrate better with a pencil or pen in his fingers"

The Men of L'Engle #2: John Austin

Today's L'Engle male is one who was never presented as a romantic lead in the books he appeared in -- because his little sister was doing the narration.

But there's still enough information about John Austin for an outsider to get a sense of what Izzy Jenkins sees in him.

John makes at least a passing appearance in all the Austin books. He's the reason Adam Eddington practically joins the family (don't get your hopes up; Adam doesn't get his turn for a while), and basically he serves as a solid, down-to-earth foil to Vicky (kind of like Suzy, only John's loads less annoying).

Leading characteristics:

• Nerd. In the most adorable way, though -- when we first meet him, he's a high school kid who's built a spacesuit in the barn. And then he goes off to MIT to study astrophysics -- plus pre-med, just because.
• Protective big brother. He lets Vicky and Suzy do their own thing, and they squabble a bit, but he's got everyone's back.
• Not a fan of Zachary Gray. And probably not just because of the she's-my-little-sister thing. (Ah, Zachary, we'll get to you later. Stop trying to take over all the other entries.)

Pull quote(s):

• "Okay, so maybe I am old-fashioned, but I don't want just a relationship. Relationships aren't real unless they end in bed, and they don't have to go any further than that. What I want is the real thing, and I'm not ready for it yet."
• "Don't let him be too important to you, Vic. You're too young."
• "Hold it while I get my glasses. I was so scared I forgot them."

So where's John now? Being a Boston resident, I'd like to think he stuck around Cambridge, and is currently working on a post-doc at the CFA. He stays in touch with his family, but doesn't plan on going back to Thornhill. He's still not ready for "the real thing," as he puts it, but once he gets a few more papers published, he might have time for romance. I still haven't decided whether he went with Lasik, for convenience, or whether he's rocking a pair of black hipster glasses. (I was trying to find a picture of the Apollo 13 character I think he resembles, but apparently no one else found him as adorable as I did.)

Tell you one thing, though: he's welcome to borrow a book any time.

The Men of L'Engle #1: Paul Laurens

We're starting out easy here in the Men of L'Engle Project*. Paul Laurens appears in just one book, And Both Were Young. No multi-book character arcs to discuss here, just one of L'Engle's early creations.

Fair warning: Expect spoilers in these posts. It's kind of hard to analyze characters without giving away plot. If you're lagging behind on your L'Engle reading, get caught up, then come back here.

And Both Were Young is mostly set in an all-girl Swiss boarding school, but Paul manages to score plenty of page time, starting when main character Flip runs into him (literally) at a chateau they're both visiting.

Leading characteristics:

• Doesn't like "institutions." At first, this gives him a good excuse to be hanging out with his free-range father when Flip goes wandering off campus. Later revealed to be the result of concentration camp-induced PTSD.
• Good at skiing. And teaching skiing. To Flip.
• Interested in medicine. Shows promise (has treated many animals), but interest conflicts with his disinclination to go to school.
• The strong, silent, moody type. "There was always grief in his eyes."

Pull quote(s):

• "I knew right away that I liked you, so I never bothered to think why."

And Both Were Young is a fairly straightforward and sweet coming-of-age story, and both those adjectives also apply to Paul. It's hard to imagine him doing anything to hurt Flip (oh, Zachary, we will get to you later) or upset the space-time continuum.

We know from the appearance of one of her portraits in a later book that Flip does realize her dream of becoming an artist, but since she herself isn't present, we don't know anything about her personal life. It could go either way, I think. Either she and Paul are about to celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary, after a lifetime of dividing themselves between New York and Paris, or else Flip still pulls out a silver necklace once in a while, and smiles when she thinks back on her first love.

*And if you've got a better name, seriously, send it along.

Madeleine L'Engle's Y Chromosomes

"Come on, L'Engle, you owe me. After all, it's your fault I compare every man I date to Adam Eddington."

It's inevitable - when people start sharing their literary crushes, sooner or later, someone's going to bring up Adam Eddington.

The lit-crush conversation today was inspired by Valentine's Day, of course, and Gina, Anindita, and I all agreed on Adam. Then we started discussing Madeleine L'Engle's other alpha males:

And as if I weren't slogging my way through the Jane Eyre-athon, I made an announcement:

So. There will be a "guys of L'Engle" series beginning soon. (Got a better name for it? Please?)

Here's who I'm thinking we need to cover:

• Adam Eddington, of course (The Arm of the Starfish, A Ring of Endless Light, Troubling a Star)
• Zachary Grey (The Moon by Night, A Ring of Endless Light, A House Like a Lotus, An Acceptable Time)
• John Austin (Meet the Austins, The Moon by Night, A Ring of Endless Light, Troubling a Star)
• Paul Laurens (And Both Were Young)
• Calvin O'Keeffe (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, The Arm of the Starfish, A House Like a Lotus)

Who else? Is there enough to say about the Murry twins in Many Waters? Should I buckle down and finally read Camilla? Should Vicky's grandfather get a turn? Anybody got a better name for this project?