"The Journey of Simon McKeever" by Albert Maltz

A celebration of the resilience of an ordinary man.

Set in 1947, in the USA. Simon McKeever has worked hard all his life but now, aged 73, he is crippled by arthritis and unable to work and his pension is handed over to the proprietor of his Care Home. A chance encounter makes him believe that his arthritis can be cured by a doctor in LA. So, penniless, he decides to hitch-hike there.

It is a modern version of a pilgrimage to a religious site with a cure-all saint. In some ways it is a secular Pilgrim's Progress. The hero must overcome challenges and obstacles. Some of the people he meets on the journey will help him, some will cause him problems. He will be daunted. Perhaps his journey is no more than a fool's errand. But in the end, this book is a celebration of indomitability and the fact that most people are prepared to help their neighbour. 

On the journey, as you would expect in a story of this kind, McKeever remembers his past. He is an Everyman figure for that American generation, remembering the hardships of the depression, the fight for the working man to get fair treatment, the joys of a beer, and a dance, and a woman. There are sadnesses: how else did he end up alone and impoverished? But, in the end, he reminds himself of the pipelines and bridges he has built "to move the world one inch forward". (Ch 18)

It is written in a straightforward style. It's an utterly simple plot. The characters and the settings feel as real as the seat I'm sitting on. There is no great drama but that's the point: this is the story of little people. It gains its power and its beauty from that.

Albert Maltz was a novelist and screenwriter. His novel about the Germna resistance, The Cross and the Arrow, was distributed to US soldiers fighting in the Second World War, like The Great Gatsby. He worked on Hollywood screenplays until he was blacklisted (with Donald Trumbo) for refusing to testify before the Committee for Un-American Activities; he was sentenced to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

In this novel, Maltz praises the work of other left-wing writers such as Upton Sinclair who wrote The Jungle about the horrors faced by the working man in the Chicago Meat-Packing Industry. 

Structurally, it reminded me of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce but Simon McKeever is so much more down to earth.

Selected quotes:

• “They were granted tobacco at the Home - a weekly ration of horse manure or mattress sweepings or whatever else the poetry of old men's bitterness might choose to call it.” (Ch 1)
• “Most people are half scared - did you ever think of that? Scared of what other people will say, scared of their boss, scared of their own hearts even.” (Ch 1)
• “As for himself, he knew beyond argument that each stage of life brought its own adventure when a man wasn't dead in his heart. There was a profound satisfaction in observing life in a sixty- or a seventy-year-old way; it was quite different from any other way, or so he had found.” (Ch 3)
• “There was only one thing important to a man: the road he had decided to travel. Any problems that arose were no more than hills to climb.” (Ch 3)
• “All tasks worried him dreadfully until they were completed.” (Ch 3)
• “From thirteen on I wiggled my rump like a dog with fleas.” (Ch 3)
• “Ain't you had the lesson yet that your worst enemy is the man who's done you a bad turn?” (Ch 5)
• “For an old man every year is the time of the locust.” (Ch 9)
• “He yearned and needed to believe that there was meaning to his life, and that there was a joy in being a Man - even a common, anonymous man - and that Men together were more than beasts in the field.” (Ch 13)
• “Some get tired and some lose their way. Some are ground down by others and some get turned mad. But the Earth still turns, and only a man has the power to dream. Up from the apes by his own doing, and that's the bright glory of it.” (Ch 14)
• “A life without happiness wouldn't be a good life at all, would it? but I guess a life without disappointment wouldn't be real.” (Ch 17)

October 2024; 234 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God