Michael Thomas - Man Gone Down

We will sail someday John Manderson.

“Fare Forward” Jyanto.

Anne Grazino: Great poet — elegant and bright: Go raibh maith agat.

Sally Wylde: You are not Edith. It’s good to see you painting again. Thank you for everything.

Caitlin Wylde: I know you understand.

David, my brother — Peace.

Thank you to my sister, Tracey, who has a knack for producing laptops when needed; who taught me how to tie my shoes.

Mauro Premutico: Molto Grazie al mio amico profondo.

Padraic Michael O’Reilly and Dominic A. Taylor: I could not have done this, nor much of anything else, without you.

Elise Cannon: I’m so glad I went for coffee. You are rare and beautiful. I love you, friend.

Thelma Louise Allen Thomas: I’m sorry for taking the long way “all ‘round Robin Hood’s Barn.” I hope you know I’m proud to be your son.

Cecil Alexander, Miles Fowlkes, and Ella Sweet, I know I don’t say it enough: your father loves you and always will.

We hope that these discussion questions will enhance your reading group’s exploration of Michael Thomas’s Man Gone Down. They are meant to stimulate discussion, offer new viewpoints, and enrich your enjoyment of the book.

More reading group guides and additional information, including summaries, author tours, and author sites, for other fine Black Cat titles, may be found on our Web site, www.groveatlantic.com.

1. Why do we read coming-of-age stories? Think of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Dickens’s Great Expectations, and Fielding’s Tom Jones. All have flawed heroes if not rogues who go on journeys or quests to find themselves and end up forging stronger, wiser selves. How does Man Gone Down reflect these traditions? Do you see similar traits in the protagonists? Energy? Imagination? Big hearts? Raw intelligence? Canniness? Self-delusion? Wry bedrock honesty? What else? Is there even some of Byron’s Don Juan in this narrator?

2. What happens to the American Dream in the novel? What about the Sox and the Cubs (see page 230). How does Daisy Buchanan still tug on the main character? As the narrator remembers years of white, rich girls (his own American dream?), he says, “Keep dreaming, blondie. And it occurs to me not to ask about the dream deferred, because almost everyone knows what it is, on some level, to fail. But what happens to a dream, and yes, a dream, not a desire or hankering or an impulse or a want, but a dream, realized? And yes, I say it again: It is a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment — to learn Latin and Greek and the assassination dates of the martyrs; to toggle between Christ and Keynes, King and Turner, Robinson, Robeson, Ali, Frazier, Foreman; to have a rumbling in the jungle of your black folk soul while a rough coon, its number come up at last, shuffles up from New Orleans to be free. ‘And all shall be well’ when champagne sprays around the home clubhouse in the Olde Towne, character the only currency. Love won. Kingdom Come” (p. 231). How is this passage central to the novel? What is going on between expectations and reality?

3. Can you distinguish between the author and his first-person narrator? Do you find the portrayal completely sympathetic? Are there times when the author seems ironic, wary, or judgmental about his created character? Does Michael Thomas ever allow us to feel contemptuous of him? How are we kept aware of his humanity. . and our own? Give examples. As a reader, did you sometimes feel chagrined or even appalled by his behavior or reactions? How does the narrator’s own honesty and self-knowledge propel the book to the level of revelation? How is he his own worst and best critic as he ricochets through his four-day journey through New York and memory? Does he ever devolve into self-pity? Do you think he is saved by his sense of humor?

For instance: “When I realize that I’ve left the lucky jeans behind, I have to stop and laugh. I take out the money she paid me and count it: one-fifty — a wash. The cosmos has no sense of humor, so it shouldn’t play jokes on a soul, but I have to laugh again. I start to trot. When I hit the down slope, I break into a run. . ‘You’re so good in a crisis,’ Claire used to say. I have to laugh again. The crisis is over. I come off the heaving bridge, turn back once to the electric lights, then into Brooklyn, contemplating the life of an imploded star” (pp. 332–333). Have you noticed in your reading or in your life that laughter can be a corrective as well as a balm?

4. How do his physical symptoms often reflect the narrator’s psychic state? Think of his dyspepsia, gagging, and bile. Are you reminded of Sartre’s Nausea? Is it always a personal disgust or is it sometimes a more general reaction to the state of the world — for African-Americans, for a confused America, for a world in peril?

5. Thomas has written a moral history not only of his narrator without a name — an Everyman — but also a rich tale of America and of people in general. How does the narrator’s own diverse heritage (black, Irish, Native-American) enlarge the meaning of the book?

6. How is the narrator’s extreme energy actually his salvation? “Whatever the disaster of my past life, or the low-calorie days and sleepless nights, I can still run, which is something that Claire and many other people, being neither ex-junkies nor ex-athletes, cannot understand. She would say, when she thought I was angry, ‘ You should run, ’ as though it would be some cathartic event. Her suggestion would make me angry” (p. 101). What other kinds of physical or intellectual energy sustain him?

7. Do you find that one of the riches of Man Gone Down is that the narrator lives on so many levels, interior as well as “real”? Do we, too, feel we are living multiple lives? At times the heightened senses, physicality, and joy of acuity make us understand what it might be like to be on speed. Discuss the many-faceted main character — his skills and passions, from his world of books to the music that runs in his blood to his Tiger Woods moments. What about his deep fatherhood? His own pure love?

8. What motivates the narrator as writer? In his youth he practiced poetry and thought deep thoughts. . “and missed out on all the subtleties one could mine a work of art for — to get laid, to get paid. That if you quoted someone, or turned on the right song, with the lights just so, money could change hands or clothes could come off” (p. 99). Then, in Chapter 12, he says, “I am desperate for all the wrong reasons”—the contract providing fame and a silver minivan (p. 277). He slides into paranoia about agents, editors, reviewers, and buyers. Does all this ring true from what you know about writers and the publishing business? At bottom, writing “names things, locates them. . at least when I’m writing, I can pretend to be involved in some kind of management of my netherworlds” (p. 277). Is that a fair description of creativity in other forms as well? Painting? Composing?

9. What are some of the memorable vignettes? How does Thomas capture people with a fast, deft sketch? Think of the Brooklyn headmistress: “Your mother would’ve been proud” (p. 392), as she pockets the late check. Others?

10. Describe the music that permeates the novel. Some readers have rushed out to find the sixteen or so blues and soul singers that are deep in the narrator’s heart. Are they all black? Does it matter? Remember Miles Davis who “bleeds through his horn” (p. 229)?

11. What makes the book so funny? Often laugh-out-loud funny? Again, thinking of Dickens, Twain, and also Joyce and Cervantes and indeed Shakespeare, is it humanity on the edge of tragedy that sets off the humor? Sometimes slapstick, sometimes gallows, often absurd? “I wonder where Lila and Thomas Strawberry are, and I shiver because I realize I left her urn by the river” (p. 423). A Charlie Chaplin moment?