Let the Great World Spin

McCann makes a special point to note how no one ever saw Corrigan’s religious training, vows, and mission on the outside. He dressed in ordinary clothing and didn’t carry around a Bible. His commitment to God and his struggles with faith and with his vows happen internally. 

Tillie is a totally different kind of character, yet she too has a strong inner life that defies appearances. On the outside, she is all bravado and aggression. She makes demands on her customers and on the world. On the inside, she is wracked with guilt and regret. McCann reveals the true depths of her despair and suffering in Chapter 6 before she commits suicide.

From her outward appearance, Gloria appears to be a relatively weak, middle-aged woman. Indeed, she is often the victim of muggings because of her dress and demeanor.  Yet, she is one of the strongest characters in the novel, a survivor who loses one family and starts over to create a new one.

These examples demonstrate McCann’s adherence to the truism “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” Real human beings in real life situations are seldom what they seem.  

The novel begins with the tightrope walker high above the city. McCann uses this image to illustrate human daring and human fear. Some of the spectators expect the aerialist to fall; they expect a tragic outcome. Others see the performer’s extraordinary confidence and bravery; he is willing to risk his life betting on his skill and practice to do the impossible.

The novel presents both kinds of stories and characters. Jazzlyn is young and beautiful and energetic. Yet, she dies in a tragic accident. 

Corrigan dares to confront the pimps in his neighborhood. He takes their beatings and continues his service to the prostitutes. He is a character who dares greatly. He too dies a tragic death.

Gloria takes a great risk in adopting Jazzlyn’s children, and she succeeds beyond all expectations. Jaslyn does not become a third-generation prostitute. She is a successful woman with a good life in large part because Gloria took a chance on her and her sister.  

McCann literally gives the reader something to look at on page 237. It is a real photograph taken of the tightrope walker on the wire above the city. 

McCann also presents several characters in the novel, the painters Lara and Blaine and the photographer Fernando, who experience the world in visual ways. Fernando says, “There was a guy he saw once on television who made his money knocking bricks out of buildings. It was funny, but he understood it in a way. The way the buildings looked different afterward. The way the light came through. Making people see differently. Making them think twice. You have to look on the world with a shine that no one else has.’ (172-73).

This image is an accurate and insightful description of McCann’s artistic approach to writing. In his creation of characters and their stories, he sheds light on the human condition. McCann’s object may be the big picture of crime or poverty or racism or it may be the pain in a single person’s heart. He shines the light of his artistic sensibility everywhere and records what he observes. The result is a rich depiction full of complexity and depth.  

McCann’s novel is set at a time when the Internet (then called the ARPANET) was just beginning. The author explores his sense of reality vs. virtual reality in his chapter on the computer hackers in California. They can only experience the tightrope walker’s performance indirectly by hearing a first-person account over a phone line. In McCann’s interpretation, computerized audio technology both enhances our ability to communicate in “real time” while separating us from reality and each other.

Joshua, Claire’s son killed in Vietnam, was one of the young men developing new computer technology before he was recruited into the armed forces. His job in Vietnam was to use computer programming to track casualties. 

In the novel, the reader meets the mothers left behind to grieve their dead sons. There is no way that their sadness can be captured by a computer program. They are casualties of the war too, but they can never be counted.

In this book two of the main characters, Tillie and Jazzlyn, are prostitutes who are paid for having sex with strangers. Corrigan, another major figure, is a monk who has taken a vow of chastity. When he falls in love, he struggles mightily with whether or not to keep his vow. Ultimately, he does sleep with his beloved. 

McCann depicts sexuality and sexual issues as essential parts of being human. McCann does not share Corrigan’s dilemma. Sex is part of life. Denying it is futile. 

It also manifests in unexpected ways. In one of the most intense and bizarre scenes in the book, an elderly man has a sexual encounter with the prostitutes in which no one actually has sex. The women dance naked for Albee, and he gets turned on by his memories of sexual experiences with his dead wife. “We offer him whatever he wants, but he just keeps his eyes closed, like he’s remembering something, and he’s got that grin on his mug the whole time, and he’s in heaven. Eyes closed and nostrils flaring. He’s like one of those guys who likes just to smell everything. He says to us something about being hungry and how he met his wife when he was hungry and then they crossed some border together into Austria and then she died” (227).