| MADE IN AMERICA? William H. Watson Cat on the Bed Productions, 2011 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-1-46367441-0 | ||||
| ISBN 1-46367441-4 | 186pp. | SC | $11.00? | |
Young Cole Edwards has a problem. He wants to be an engineer, like his father and grandfather. His father Joe, however, had lost his engineering job (or never found one) and is now a foreman in a Pittsburgh auto factory owned and run by the Chinese. Like too many of the jobs in this former steel town,1 it is low-paying, stultifying work and Joe bitterly resents his failure. A share of this animus falls on the foreign parvenus who form the community's new upper crust. Cole's mother Sally urges Cole to apply to Carnegie Mellon, where she works as an administrative assistant. His father is against this, thinking Cole would be better off to settle for a job at the plant as he has. It means a steady income, and the family struggles financially.
William Watson explores these intrafamilial and international conflicts in his first novel. Contrary to my initial impression, he does not make it a confrontation between deserving Americans and rent-seeking orientals. This is all to the good, for misfortune strikes on both sides of the globe — as Qiang Li, the daughter of the auto plant manager, explains to Cole.
"There's so much to tell. I mean it's almost more than I could tell you in one evening. Americans know so little about China. This is not a criticism of you Cole; it's just how it is. Until we became a super power, no one cared about China. And frankly, China wasn't open to the west for a long time. Remember when China hosted the summer Olympics and there were all the economic problems in the US? I think that was the turning point. Suddenly everyone started talking about the rise of China and the relative decline of America. Everything seems to be getting better and better in China and most Americans think it's at their expense. Many people here have lost their jobs and their hope. All the experts say it will continue. Americans see China's 1.3 billion people—people they know little about—rapidly taking away the quality of their lives. I can't say it's our turn, but I can say for many decades the people of China suffered horribly and in unimaginable ways. Like everyone else in China, my relatives were victims of those bad times. Maybe you could say there're survivors of those times. Just like Americans, we want to have prosperity and success. It's overdue." – Pages 132-33 |
The novel does have some problems. First, it contains an annoying number of grammatical errors; it would have benefitted from another editing pass. Also, much of the exposition seems obtrusive,2 and characters are less fully developed than they might be; confrontations seem contrived and friendships form too easily. Cole and Qiang Li are the prime example. On their first meeting, at a tour of the plant, Cole unwittingly insults the girl, and she is still angry at a chance encounter at CMU soon after, where he compounds the error by telling her he'll be starting there in the fall. (It raises the question of why he applied for a full-time job at the auto plant.) Yet when Cole, now employed at the plant, is assigned to show her around Shipping & Receiving, she's friendly and before long they are talking as if they're engaged.
However, ignore these faults and you will find it an enjoyable read. I rate it a creditable first novel, although not a keeper.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.