I’ve been enjoying the tv show Lodge 49. It’s a very low-stakes but entertaining show about a guy at a dead end in his life who joins a secret society and gets entangled in some things while learning about life. It’s more character-driven than I thought it would be and I think that’s why I’m connecting with it.
At any rate, when looking up books to read for fans of the show, this was the top recommendation by far. I can see why. It can accurately be billed as a prequel to Lodge 49 in a sense that the origins of the Lodge are not yet clear (I’m halfway through season 1 so don’t spoil if you’ve seen it) and the origins of the movement here are kind of murky.
Portis is a legendary writer whose small but memorable output has inspired many. In addition to the aforementioned show, Michael Schur based a lot of humor from The Office on this one, Conan O’Brien blurbed my copy and a few other entertainment writers have given it high praise. Not to mention the fact that Portis’ True Grit inspired the Coen brothers movie.
I realize I’m making this sound more like a book report than a review but this is less a book about plot and more about people in a time and place. There’s not much else to talk about aside from the experience of reading it. Like Lodge 49, it’s low-stakes but says a lot about pre- and post-war America and the way we glom into mass movements in order to believe something, even if their foundations are creaky. I enjoyed it and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.