It had been so long since I read Anne Tyler, I began to miss her. So I decided to reread Morgan’s Passing because it’s one of the books I least remember, likely because this book isn’t so much a well-plotted story as it is a great character study of protagonist, Morgan Gower. But this is typical of Anne Tyler’s work, as she has been known to admit, though she does not do many interviews.Morgan’s Passing is similar to The Accidental Tourist (the better of the two books) in that both main characters are eccentric men, although in different ways. Evidently, the inspiration for Morgan’s Passing, which is set in Baltimore, came from an article in the Baltimore newspaper about a local man who was discovered to be impersonating a doctor and who had previously passed himself off as a clergyman. (Croft 1995) In an interview, Tyler has been quoted as saying that she was “very taken with Morgan, as she has always been fascinated by imposters and their deceptions.” And Morgan is a master imposter, with a costume at the ready whenever required: doctor, river-boat-gambler, jockey, foreign art dealer, Greek shipping magnate, sailor, Daniel Boone, inventor; the list goes on. The novel opens with Morgan assuming the identity of a doctor when Emily Meredith, in the midst of performing a puppet show with husband Leon, goes into labour. Morgan delivers the baby in a car, and afterwards they go their separate ways. But Morgan feels awed by the Merediths – by their austerity, their certitude, their mapped and charted lives – a sharp contrast to his own home life which is too overwhelming with (easy-going) wife Bonny, their seven daughters, Morgan’s mother, Louisa, who seems to be suffering from Alzheimer’s, and sister Brindle. He begins to stalk the young family, hiding behind various costumes. It is when his oldest daughter marries, that Morgan, obviously already lacking a sense of identity, falls into a full-fledged midlife crisis. Not only are his daughters no longer children, they find him embarrassing. He slips away from the marriage reception and makes his way to the Merediths’ apartment, located above Crafts Unlimited, where some of Emily’s puppets are sold. He forgets he’s wearing his wedding top hat until the shopkeeper, Mrs. Apple, is taken aback by his attire. But then Morgan sees the puppets. “Ah, so!” he says. “Ze poppets!” Morgan is surprised that he seems to have developed an accent – although from what country, he can’t say. “Zese poppets are for buying?” After being told yes, and that they are sewn by Emily, who lives upstairs, Morgan suggests he see zis Emily’s workroom.Meanwhile, he sees his reflection in cabinet doors made of wavery glass…and they reflected a shortened and distorted view of Morgan – a squat, bearded man in a top hat. Toulouse-Lautrec. Of course! He adjusted the hat, smiling. Everything black turned transparent in the glass. He wore a column of rainbow-coloured weaving on his head and a spade of weaving on his chin. “You see, I also am artiste,” he told the woman. Definitely, his accent was a French one.” And because he is an artist, and it would mean a great deal to him, he convinces Mrs. Apple to lead him up the staircase to the apartment. Leon answers the door and when he sees Morgan, he says, “Dr. Morgan!” Leon is not pleased, Morgan is ashamed, Mrs. Apple ends up laughing about the whole charade, saying, “Oh, you poor man… You and your ‘zis and zat.’ Your ‘zese and zose’” She’s still laughing after convincing Leon to show Morgan the puppets. Emily reacts in much the same way as Leon, but she clarifies: “I don’t understand you,”…. (He should have known. She would not veil anything; she was as uncurtained as her windows.) “What do you want of us? What are you after? Why did you trail us all those months and lurk in doorways and peer around corners?” Morgan is staggered by the fact that she’d noticed. And when Emily asks why couldn’t he have come straight up and say hello, like an ordinary person would, he says it’s because he’d “built up this idea of you. I almost preferred watching, don’t you see. My own household is impossible. Very confusing, very tedious,” he says. Then he makes up a series of detailed, fictional stories about life as a doctor. After all that, when Emily says no, she really doesn’t want to be friends with him, he confesses: “I’m not a doctor. I work in a hardware store… I manage Cullen Hardware.” But he delivered their baby! Ah well, he hadn’t witnessed three of his daughters’ births for nothing. “I presented myself untruthfully. I do that often, in fact… It’s not something I intend, you understand. It almost seems that other people push me into it. That day you called for a doctor in the house: no one else came forward… I had no inkling I’d actually have to deliver a baby. Events just… rolled me forward, so to speak.” He continues with “Please. It’s not entirely my fault… Why are people so willing to believe me? And what is more depressing is that they’ll believe me all the quicker if I tell them something disillusioning. I might say, for instance, that being a movie star is not what it’s cracked up to be. I’ll say the lights are so hot that my make-up runs, and there’s forever this pinkish-gray stain around the inside of my collar that my wife despairs of. Clorox has no effect on it; not even Wisk does, though she’s partially solved the problem by prevention. What she does, see, is rub my collar with a bar of white bath soap before I put a shirt on. Yes, that seems to work out fairly well, I’ll say.” Leon thinks that’s crazy and Morgan agrees. But Emily sort of knows what he means: “He just… has to get out of his life, sometimes,” she says. At this point in the story, it is 1971, but the novel covers twelve years – from 1967-1979. The main narrative follows the lives of the Merediths, and the Gowers and how Emily and Leon become involved with Morgan and Bonny and their family, and the eventual breakup of both marriages. For about two-thirds of the story, Anne Tyler had me laughing out loud at Morgan and the audacity of his actions. But then I began to find him irritating, and then downright selfish. By the time Morgan leaves Bonny for Emily, just as Macon in The Accidental Tourist left his wife for a much younger woman, I didn’t blame Bonny for throwing all Morgan’s belongings out, and then her coup: she writes a fictional obituary about him in the local paper, knowing he always reads the obits. And yet, I think Anne Tyler wanted the reader to empathize with Morgan despite his flaws and his self-indulgence. Perhaps that’s why the secondary narrative focuses on Morgan’s equally eccentric sister, Brindle. We first meet her as a widow, always in a bathrobe, moping. ‘How was your day?’ … and she says, ‘Day?’ She acts surprised to hear there’s been one. Brindle pines for her high school sweetheart, Robert Roberts, until he reappears in her life. They marry; the marriage fails, much to the consternation of Robert. After Robert is gone, Brindle pines for her first husband. Compared to Brindle, Morgan is a much more sympathetic character. At one point, before the actual demise of the marriages, Emily wonders why she puts up with Morgan’s presence: But it was funny how he grew on a person. He added something; she couldn’t say just what. He made things look more interesting than they really were. And when Morgan first brings the Merediths home, he surprises Bonny with the news that he’s told the Merediths who he really is. And this is the gist of it, really: Morgan’s biggest challenge in life is to be himself, and for some reason he can do that with Emily. Perhaps it’s because Bonny, although aware of Morgan’s fantasy life, never seems very concerned about it, and so Morgan had no real motive to be himself. And this is why I missed Anne Tyler: I enjoy her abundant use of trivial detail to show the extraordinary in the lives of seemingly ordinary people (which is why I quoted so much of the text). The reader can identify with her characters because they are so well-developed that there is bound to be something we recognize – people are true to life with their emotions and misunderstandings and views of love and marriage. Often, her themes are depressing: flawed relationships; the loneliness, or aloneness, that exists in all of us; or the sense of our own mortality that is always there. But comic relief runs rampant, which is how I was able to pass through my period of emotional angst regarding Morgan Gower. And in the end, like all the main characters, I was left feeling quite satisfied with the way things turned out.
"Morgan's Passing", by Anne Tyler is about a middle aged man, named Morgan. Morgan gets overwhelmed with his home life, and likes to pretend that he is other people. Morgan works at the family hardware store, but he misses work a lot to roam around town. One day, Morgan is at a puppet show, when one of the actors asks for a doctor. Morgan steps up and claims to be a doctor. The young puppeteer, Leon, and his wife, Emily, are expecting a baby, and it is coming early. Morgan attempts to drive them to the hospital, but winds up delivering their baby on the side of the road. From that day on, Morgan becomes obsessed with the young couple. He imagines their life, with few belongings and not much to tie them down, as the ideal life. Morgan starts following them in an attempt to live vicariously through their life. As Morgan's seven daughters grow up, marry, and have children, he becomes stifled in his life and starts spending more and more time with Leon and Emily. The choices we make don't always send our life on the path we would expect. This was a fairly interesting story.
What do You think about Morgan's Passing (1996)?
Okay I started this book about a month ago and then put it down a few times until I put it down for what I thought was forever. I thought it started off interesting. I liked the Meredeth's story and I was wondering when Morgan came into the story. Then he did. As an imposter....or a chameleon or something. It was unhinged, i thought. I think he was the one who mentioned something about things not making sense or being unsettled and that's exactly how I felt about the story. But then like books sometimes do it stuck in my head, this very strange character and how I could actually relate to him, by wanting to try out different personas and looks depending on who I met or what I was doing at the time. Morgan is a married man to 7 kids and he's sort of floating along in life. His wife, Bonny is a woman who just keeps things going by dealing with each situation as it comes up. She knows her husband's lifestyle and loves him anyway.But what happens is that Morgan comes across a young couple and inserts himself into their lives, mostly the girl's life, Emily. He tells her how he feels about what he does, how easy it is to lie to people (he met her by pretending to be a doctor and in fact delivers her baby) and she understands. Maybe, too much. So in Tyler's typical fashion she grabs you with a truly interesting spin on domestic life and makes you see things differently. I'm so glad I picked up the book and didn't dismiss it like I thought I would (albeit hesitantly). Tyler has yet to disappoint...although the accidental tourist has been sitting on my desk only about 40 pages in because i'm trying to grasp the protagonist and am having a hard time doing it...but I will go back to it.
—Sarah
I picked up a copy of Morgan's Passing on the mistaken impression that I had read another of Anne Tyler's books and enjoyed it. Having gone through my records I realize that I must have been mistaken. Nonetheless, I'm glad that I took a chance and read the book.Morgan's Passing refers to Morgan's passing into old age and of his obituary that he reads in the paper, put there by his ex wife. The story covers the highlights of 12 years from 1967 to 1979. The events are book ended by birth and death: the births of Emily's daughter and son; and Morgan's reading of obituaries (first other's and then his own).Morgan Gower is the sort of person who plays along with people's misconceptions. This quirk of his seems to be the driving force in his life; that and his fascination with Emily and her simple life. Morgan's life is one of chaos and clutter. His home is full of relatives (seven daughters, a sister and a mother and his wife) and clutter (because he's a packrat). Emily's life is just the opposite and he envies her. Through his envy he falls into a weird sort of love with her.While I didn't find myself especially liking any of the characters, I enjoyed reading the book. It is bittersweet. No one really seems happy, yet everyone seems to be trying to find happiness.
—Sarah Sammis
1980 [not 1960 as goodreads lists it], Baltimore.Entertaining, people that do such weird things I don't feel I need to think deeply about any of it...is Tyler always so visual in her writing? This story would do much better in film -- seeing the puppets and the puppet shows would be more pleasant than reading the descriptions of them, same with all the strange outfits that Morgan wears, a different one every day.Perhaps I am missing some deeper meaning, or perhaps these personality types just don't resonate with me... Still, it's nice to read.
—Rita
