I'm in the middle of Again to Carthage and author John L Parker hasnt lost his excellent grasp of terribly vivid imagery. Also similar to Once A Runner are the references to actual places even though the book is fiction. While most of these places in OAR were towns and spots surrounding Gainesville, Again to Carthage includes quite a few Orlando area references which is really cool for me since that is where I'm from. In one part of the story, Cassidy goes back home, drives down Bumby Ave, sees the TG Lee plant, remembers the cows that used to roam around it, and finally arrives at Glenridge Middle School. All of this is still in existence except that while there is still a TG Lee plant on Bumby Ave, there are no cows anywhere in sight. Whats cool though is that Glenridge Middle School is only about a half a mile from my house, and that, we find out, was the first track Cassidy ran on!
Another funny part was when Cassidy and one of his coworkers, Roland, have lunch at the Ocean Grille in Palm Beach and Parker is describing the typical clientele. They were described as from "families who had so much money for so long that the last several generations didnt know what anything cost and didnt really understand the difference between a hundred-dollar bill and a quarter." The funny part though is later in the narative when he says, "The ones with some brain or spunk might have gotten into an Ivy League school and done politics or philantropy. The others knew that even as legacies they couldnt compete with the turbocharged and outrageously ambitious scions of of the professional classes and so were caught in a soul-draining no-man's-land. They went to Rollins or College of the Atlantic where they dressed like Copenhagen drug dealers..." Love it. Rollins College is only about 1.5 miles from my home in Orlando and I'm glad to see the stereotype put in print.
So yeah... so far, so good. Now I just need to finish it...
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