The contemporary novel, Harold Hardscrabble, is an American tragedy that embodies in its protagonist Harold the feelings of frustration and helplessness many Americans today feel in their daily lives. The story unfolds like Ravel’s Bolero, slowly building to an explosive climax.
Harold is a solid citizen, a contemplative, creative man who, like Walter Mitty, lives largely in his own world of thoughts and dreams. He marries his college sweetheart, Carol, who turns out to be more his opposite than a supporting partner. While Carol climbs the corporate ladder as quickly as she can, Harold seeks to discover how to live a personally fulfilling life. Pressured by Carol, he begrudgingly takes a marketing job instead. Every day thereafter he is tormented by his conscience, feeling as though he’s sold out.
Convinced he is not leading a good life, Harold becomes deeply discontent, but Carol remains indifferent to his plight, causing him even more unhappiness. After their kids leave for college, the couple drift apart. Harold survives cancer, losing his job, and Carol leaving him for another man. He moves on with his life and eventually finds a position teaching at a junior college where he meets and falls in love with K—a free-spirited woman who revives Harold’s long-suppressed creative talent and brings joy and meaning to his life.
But Harold’s life-struggles continue. Through no fault of his own, he becomes embroiled in a fight with the IRS, and a collection agency that says he owes money for an unpaid hospital bill dating back to his cancer. Both unjustly demand payment. Harold battles them, but he is confronted at every turn by bureaucratic indifference. He becomes depressed and highly agitated. He longs to start a new life with K, but is first determined to achieve justice for the wrongs committed against him—even if he has to attain it his own way.
Assessment:
Contemporary and hilariously entertaining, Dess's character Harold is a modern placid and peaceful wonder a lot of readers will be able to relate to. He met his wife, Carol, while a college junior and their burgeoning romance opens the novel as Carol emerges as his opposite: a needy, controlling, often-times callously motivating force in Harold's life. Crisply literary and reminiscent of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in tone and circumstance, the happenstance and sweet resilience of this character are what anchors Dess's winning fable and make it every bit as entrancing, quirky, sad, and darkly humorous from start to finish.
Date Submitted: September 28, 2016
G.D. Dess’s novel, which takes its name from its protagonist, follows Harold Hardscrabble’s downward trajectory from his early college years through the decades that follow.
The story begins as Harold meets and becomes involved with fellow student Carol. He describes her as “controlling” and the opposite of his placid, peaceful character: “brash, energetic and volatile.” Nonetheless, Harold finds ways to overlook these traits and the two have soon “forged that vast entanglement of habits and shared emotional experiences that comprises a loving relationship.”
They marry and continue their pursuit of advanced degrees. But where Harold fancies himself an artist, disinclined to living a life that involves chasing money, Carol can’t climb the corporate ladder fast enough. Despite all, the two find themselves living successful lives. There are promotions, children, a move to the ‘burbs—but one problem: Harold isn’t happy. His dissatisfaction with life reveals itself early and forebodes a darkening future that plays out as the novel unwinds.
Harold Hardscrabble is smartly written, informed by the philosophies and ideas of various documents and writers, including Karl Marx, David Foster Wallace and Noam Chomsky. Harold’s plight of feeling “compromised as a person” is well articulated and makes him a sympathetic character, albeit one who doesn’t seem to truly seek happiness. Meanwhile, Carol comes across as smug and selfish, but unapologetically so.
The plot is well-drawn, if somewhat sluggish, particularly early on, and requires patience to allow Dess to build the case for Harold’s growing disenchantment. As Harold ages, he faces many unpleasant events. But while most people would confront such darker moments, regroup and move on, for Harold they tend to serve as one more bit of fuel awaiting only the final spark. When it comes, it’s hardly surprising.
Ultimately, while Harold Hardscrabble can be an uneven read, it is ultimately compelling. It’s most likely to appeal to readers who came of age in the 1970s, as well as those who share a certain disenchantment with the contemporary world.
Harold Hardscrabble is a sympathetic novel filled with philosophical musings on the state of society and our place within it.
G. D. Dess’s Harold Hardscrabble has the feel of a postmodern bildungsroman, though it gradually evolves into something far more Kafkaesque. Harold’s attempts to find his place in society open a world of intellectual and metaphysical thought.
The story follows Harold from his time as an undergraduate into his fifties. He begins as an introverted college student who enjoys reading and formulating complex, unanswerable questions. He falls in love with Carol, who is more extroverted and structured. They begin a life together as expected—getting married and pursuing grad school with an eye toward lucrative careers.
But those pursuits lead to Harold’s existential crisis, which is the focus of the rest of the book. Living life according to societal expectations brings about more and more internal struggle for Harold, who takes moral umbrage with his career, especially when he comes to realize that Carol thrives where he seems to flounder. His inner dramas begin to seep into his outer world, where Harold must deal with them rather than musing over them at length.
The overlapping of Harold’s inner and outer struggles introduces the Kafkaesque tinge to the novel, especially with his repeated dilemmas with unrepentant and unresponsive corporate and government powers. Here, the idea that modern life stymies and damages the soul hits its fever pitch.
The novel is filled with interesting and thought-provoking concepts and critiques on modern life, though it sometimes reads less like a story than a treatise on the value of an intellectual, counterculture lifestyle. There is much discussion on the mental degradation of contemporary youth, but Harold’s complaints against video games and the Internet feel underdeveloped and moderately out of place against the bigger picture of the story—especially since the main people he critiques in this regard are his own children who, despite being avid gamers and social media users, grow into successful and well-adjusted people.
Harold is critical of other characters in book. Side characters seem to exist in Harold’s perspective as overemphasized, personified flaws. There is little change or development to those in such peripheral roles. Harold himself is better realized; if he does not evolve per se, his stagnation is realistically rendered.
Harold Hardscrabble is a sympathetic novel filled with philosophical musings on the state of society and our place within it, on balancing intellectualism with everyday success, and on overcoming the sense of simply being a cog in the machine.
