Thursday, April 23, 2009

Billy

Did you like Billy? Did you find him more heroic or pathetic?
Posted by at

9 comments:

Erin said...

Good question. I did like him, but I'm not sure the book gave enough examples of Billy's "charm." There was a lot of second-hand talk about how everybody loved him, but we kind of had to take their word for it. And maybe, as McDermott suggests in that interview, they were sort of building a mythology about him, convincing themselves that he was wonderful.

I did find him slightly pathetic. And he made me sort of angry, too, because of the life he gave his wife. Being devastated in love when you're 20 isn't an excuse for making your wife suffer for the rest of your life. It's like he did her the big favor of marrying her, so she shouldn't complain when he becomes a burden.

4:07 PM, April 23, 2009
kc said...

I liked Billy a lot. I thought he was a blue-collar Gatsby, you know — someone who had dreamt this huge dream that simply saturated the rest of his life and all his notions of happiness. When Gatsby realized that Daisy wasn't going to leave Tom for him, he kind of HAD to die, figuratively if not literally, because he had built his entire identity around the dream of her. If he hadn't been shot to death, he would have had to totally reinvent himself.

And Billy did the same thing, really. He staked it ALL on the one girl and the one dream. And when he was brought face to face with the fact that she wasn't the person he thought she was, like Daisy wasn't the person Gatsby thought she was — it had all been some silly teenage dalliance to her — he couldn't just drop the dream, because it had permeated his whole adult life, his whole being. It would have been like amputating part of his soul. But there was no one to come along and conveniently shoot Billy to death in his fancy swimming pool. He had to slowly drink himself to death instead.

8:19 PM, April 23, 2009
Erin said...

Aagh! Fantastic! I didn't even make the Gatsby connection, but it's perfect.

I always had sort of short patience with Gatsby, and I did with Billy, too. They're just too romantic for me. I want to say, get over it, that's not how life really is. Which brings me back to what you had said on your blog about how the message seems to be that the world is no place for true romantics.

9:47 PM, April 23, 2009
kc said...

It's tempting to think of Billy as self-involved, lost in his own pain, but he's also portrayed as generous and thoughtful, and Dan Lynch notes that Billy never mentioned Eva to Maeve. He even made a point of writing notes to people constantly, which I found very endearing. It's like he was always reaching out to people, in a way, trying to connect, when it might have been easier to just retreat into himself.

1:41 PM, April 30, 2009
Erin said...

Yes, that's true. I found the note-writing really touching, too. And I love that he never told Maeve about Eva or talked about her at all. But I hated that he continued to write clandestine notes to Eva's family and carry a torch for her while he was married to Maeve. I feel like Maeve was cheated a bit, if you couldn't tell.

3:41 PM, April 30, 2009
kc said...

Yeah, I get that.

Do you think Maeve would have preferred that Billy divorce her because he carried a torch for someone else?

3:57 PM, April 30, 2009
Erin said...

No, I don't. Most likely Maeve would've said it was fine, she was happy. I think she felt lucky to have him, even if she didn't have his heart.

4:04 PM, April 30, 2009
kc said...

I liked Maeve, but she's kind of a classic enabler — first with her dad, then with Billy (before terms like "enabler" were used). Her "love" and "caring," laudable as they were, made it possible for these men to continue their paths of self-destruction because they KNEW that she'd always be there to pick up the pieces and cook and clean and care for them. I don't blame Maeve, but wonders how things may have gone differently if she just woke up and said, "This is no kind of life, taking care of grown men like they're babies! Get your act together or get the $%#* out of my life!" What would Billy have done?

4:12 PM, April 30, 2009
Erin said...

Oh, she definitely enabled. But I don't see Billy cleaning up his act even if she did throw him out. I'm guessing he would've drunk himself to death a little quicker.

5:17 PM, April 30, 2009

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)