Word: motel
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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About the only thing a driver can't get at Transport City is a bottle of beer or a shot of bourbon. No alcohol is available because, says Ralph Hutchinson, one of Transport City's developers, "drinking and driving don't mix." In the 99-unit motel, drivers can rent functional, two-bed rooms for $13.50 a night. They rarely stay that long. The occupancy rate usually runs from 100% to 130%, as truckers slam in, grab a shave, a nap, fill up and head out again...
...style cottages and rambling homes in the Old Town section. Prices there tripled in three years. The shops along drowsy and all-but-derelict Duval Street were renovated and transformed; the old Kress dime store became Fast Buck Freddie's, a trendy shoppe. Five hundred new hotel and motel units were built, with 450 more plus a convention center on the drawing board...
...characters except Gortner's are themselves cliches; the unsatisfied wife, the frustrated greaser, the fat waitress, the nice-guy motel-keeper. The characters line up almost exactly like those in The Petrified Forest, but in that film they were three-dimensional. In Red Ryder the characters are all foils for Teddy's contempt. None of them are allowed to do anything but whimper or get hysterical. When Red Ryder finally goes after Teddy and shoots him down, the film has already lost us. The final act of bravery, unlike Leslie Howard's in Petrified Forest, makes little impact, because...
...people are al ready stranded here from all over the U.S. and Canada. The Emmanuel Baptist Church has opened its doors to offer shelter, and this morning the church ladies are dishing up a free hot meal in the auditorium. "When we realized there were no rooms at the motel and bad weather in all directions,"recalls Church Mem ber Russell Thrift, "we told the boy down at the gas station to let folks know they could stay at the church. We did the same thing last year. Every time this happens, when folks are gone we find checks here...
That is, in fact, the best thing that can be said of this book--it satisfies in a way that few of Updike's recent works, though so precisely tooled, can manage. By taking on the wide spaces, forgetting the parking lots and PTAs and roadside motel rooms, he opens up new canyons where his imagination can wander, and reflect...