Glad that is solved! I was pretty sure it was okay, but hadn’t realized how long Faye and Henry were married before they had Samuel. Interesting.
So Faye returns home, marries Henry, has Samuel and then leaves TWENTY years later to live with Sebastian. I’m sorry, ya’ll, the center doesn’t hold. However does Faye reconnect with Sebastian? Is he Sebastian or Periwinkle twenty years later? Did Faye even know Sebastian’s real name? Then six or so years after leaving Periwinkle Faye convinces him not only to publish Samuel’s short story but to advance a substantial amount of money to the boy. And approximately TWENTY-ONE years after leaving Periwinkle (according to the timeline) Faye throws rocks at him in the park. Whatever for? Come on.
Usually one of our discussions makes me like or at least appreciate a book even more. There have been exceptions (Reading Lolita in Tehran). The Nix is going to be another one. I’m annoyed.
Ha! Good thing I didn’t try to sort out the timeline while I was reading the book. When I finished I considered myself a “semi-fan” of “The Nix.” Now, actually knowing the timeline, I tend to agree with @ignatius – I’m more annoyed. What’s the purpose of having Faye leave so many years later? I guess after Samuel was born she felt an obligation to him while he was very young, but she had the 9 years before he was born to take off in search of her first love.
Re: Sebastian/Periwinkle – when did he “turn?”
@ignatius, I agree with all you wrote about the utter improbability of the timeline. But to answer your question of why Faye threw the rocks at Periwinkle: She asked to meet privately with him to discuss the lawsuit he was bringing against Samuel for the failed book contract. Instead, he shows up at their designated meeting place with Governor Packer – a double insult, as it shows he won’t speak to her as promised and he is also flouting his support of a loathed authoritarian candidate. Faye throws the rocks at Periwinkle in a spontaneous fit of pique, but they hit the wrong person – to Periwinkle’s delight, because now the Governor gets lots of free media coverage.
Once we know that Periwinkle was Faye’s target—and that he knew it , too–his earlier comments to Samuel become funny in hindsight. Talking about the shrinking window of public interest in the Packer Attacker, Periwinkle remarks, "Who cares about some lady who threw rocks at a guy most people acknowledge is sort of a d**che bag?” (p. 202).
I am a little more forgiving of the plot - the whole book is such an exaggeration that I guess I didn’t take any particular element too seriously. I think it’s possible to harbor a fantasy that keeps building when reality isn’t measuring up. Clearly Faye was her father’s daughter and held onto some idealized version of the past, but she didn’t stick around and brood. She’s part passive, part impulsive. I think it’s hard to feel any real empathy for her and that’s where the book falls apart for me - it was more of a cynical, fun read rather than something that has a lasting impact. I’ve already forgotten a lot of it (but that may be my memory as well)!
By contrast, someone asked me for a book recommendation - they wanted a fiction book with some kind of medical theme. What came to mind was Cutting For Stone - that book really had substance, at least for me.
I was glad The Nix had some kind of humanistic message about the paths we take and about forgiveness - I’ll try to hold onto that.
@ignatius, I agree with all you wrote about the utter improbability of the timeline. But to answer your question of why Faye threw the rocks at Periwinkle: She asked to meet privately with him to discuss the lawsuit he was bringing against Samuel for the failed book contract. Instead, he shows up at their designated meeting place with Governor Packer – a double insult, as it shows he won’t speak to her as promised and he is also flouting his support of a loathed authoritarian candidate. Faye throws the rocks at Periwinkle in a spontaneous fit of pique, but they hit the wrong person – to Periwinkle’s delight, because now the Governor gets lots of free media coverage.
Once we know that Periwinkle was Faye’s target—and that he knew it , too–his earlier comments to Samuel become funny in hindsight. Talking about the shrinking window of public interest in the Packer Attacker, Periwinkle remarks, "Who cares about some lady who threw rocks at a guy most people acknowledge is sort of a ■■■■■■ bag?” (p. 202).
I still think about Cutting for Stone, eight years later.
That’s where I stand, too.
i didn’t remember that Faye planned to meet Periwinkle then and there so my memory could use some work too. Thanks @Mary13
I find it more difficult to remember certain parts of a book when it bounces around in chronological order. This was a difficult book to keep track of.
Nathan Hill needed that timeline because he wanted to contrast 1968 protests with 2011 ones, and he needed Faye to be old enough that it’s plausible that birth control would be a big deal. I don’t think we got much of a payoff there. In fact, when I think about it, the characters I remember and care about are all from the more recent timeline. Even Laura.
Finally finished! Sometimes when I read a book I don’t like, the insights from this group make me appreciate it more. This choice was the opposite. I loved the writing, the humor, the character descriptions (especially the beginning). I mostly listened on audio and the narrator did a great job making the characters real, and funny. Like @mathmom, I have a gamer kid, so I found the Pwnage sections fascinating, if a bit alarming.
But the comments here reminded me of all the things that bothered me. Ultimately neither the story nor the motivations of the characters hung together. I appreciated Hill’s point that motivations are often more complicated and different than what we expect. But the story took that too far, Faye and Sebastian/Periwinkle being the worst examples, in my opinion:
Faye had 9 years with Henry when she could have left–or made a more interesting life for herself. But then after she was a mother (with presumably more reason to stay) she planned her departure for a long time, based on the first chapter where things from the house kept disappearing. Were she and Periwinkle in touch? And if so, why would she be so unaware of how he’d changed? After she left, she didn’t change her name. But neither Henry nor Samuel ever seemed to do so much as a google search out of curiosity. If she and Periwinkle could have found each other in the 80’s, they could have found her on the internet. It wasn’t believable to me that Faye could go from a life of disappearing acts to Iowa Alzheimer’s caregiver in the blink of an eye. I doubt that could have lasted.
Samuel and Bethany were the only characters I liked. Maybe they end up together.
My favorite part was when Samuel buys the compilation cassette of John Cage’s 4’33’ for Bethany, without knowing what it is. That takes place right before Samuel and Bishop go out into the “darkness and silence of the night” to poison the headmaster, a chilling juxtaposition. Those details are what made the book worthwhile for me.
I discovered that there’s a forthcoming boxed set of 50 4’33" variations!
http://mute.com/stumm-433
And if any of you live near Davenport, IA, there’s a reading with Nathan Hill along with a concert to complement the book, in March. It includes John Cage, and Bethany’s concert piece, Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1. 
https://www.chambermusicqc.org/event/an-evening-with-nathan-hill/
Yep, the narrator brought Pwnage to life. Great reading!
I was startled by how much Pwnage reminded me of a 20-something coworker. The big plans that never seemed to get off the ground, the new healthy diet, the comments about being exhausted…twins!
I liked the book and the writing is what led me to choose to join your discussion this month. I had read The Nix several years ago.I renewed my memory of it through the Audible version. I believe, I enjoyed the audio version more than reading. I didn’t remember chuckling out loud while reading.
I was a McCarthy volunteer, so the Chicago part drew me to initially select the book. The bludgeoning of my “Clean Gene” friends at the convention frightened us all. After the country elected Nixon, disheartened with my countrymen, I left the political stage. My Nix brought me down, like Samuel, I fell off the wagon of doing what is right.
I understand how Faye may have gone home to marry and live a more inward life for the years before she left her family, especially with her history of panic attacks and being in Chicago…
“It didn’t feel like she was panicking; it felt more like she was being forcibly and methodically deactivated all over. Like a wall of televisions being turned off one by one - how the images on each TV shrank to pinholes before disappearing altogether.”
Did any of you know family or friends with a bomb shelter in their home?
Welcome @author!
Nope. But there were nine of us at home, so I’m sure any neighbors stockpiling in their underground shelter would have made darn sure we never found out. 
Not that I know of, but much of my childhood was spent overseas. Never did any of that huddle under the deck stuff either. However why my youngest was in 4th grade the gifted class put together a newspaper and one of the things they did was get the principal to give them a tour of the hidden parts of the elementary school - and one of the things we found was the old bomb shelter, originally coal cellar and now just used for storage. All the radiation signs were still up.
In HI, I’ve never seen any bomb shelters. Much of our older buildings are simple wooden, single wall construction. A bomb would leave very little standing and anything nuclear would incinerate everything.
Sorry, I just wasn’t a fan of this book. I didn’t really identify with any of the characters and found them irritating for different reasons. Where was Faye’s mom? Why couldn’t Henry step up and help Samuel more? Why the huge time gaps? Sounded like Bishop had been poisoning the headmaster slowly for a long time with his mysterious health issues and for whatever reason decided to do a major poisoning and finish the job.
I probably hated Sebastian/Periwinkle most. He was really amoral.
I think one of the points Hill tries to make is that there are many different ways of doing what is right. We are led down unexpected paths as we play the “Choose Your Own Adventure” game, but all choices have value.
Alice, the fiery non-conformist, gives up her “badass” activism, and at first feels guilt that her focus is no longer “the peace and justice and equality movements she intended to devote her life to when she was twenty.”
I suppose that, strictly speaking, Alice is a sell-out like Sebastian, but where he abandons the radical movement for greed, she chooses something more intangible, and ultimately more rewarding for both herself and her fellow human beings.
I didn’t think Sebastian was ever really in the radical movement. He only joined so he could get out of going to Vietnam. He was there to spy and instigate trouble.
@mathmom points out in post #29 Hill’s need for 1968 and 2011 and hence his need for that timeline. I agree, though I like the 1968 parts of the book best.
@Midwest67 asked why I like Alice (my favorite character). @Mary13 answered for me in the above post #136. Meeting Alice in 2011, she seems to have a self-awareness and contentment and has built a life for herself in a way that none of the other characters have. She shows empathy for Samuel, deciding not to tell him details and then changing her mind when she hears the name Charlie Brown. Her younger self is a force to be reckoned with. I think “exploring” would be the word to describe her 1968 persona. Unfortunately she runs headlong into something dangerous and that she can’t handle. She was smart enough to get the h-ll out of Dodge (i.e. Chicago), to run. I’m not sure Alice would have been okay - Faye either - had Charlie Brown not been so grievously injured in the riots.
Talking about change: outwardly Charlie Brown has changed - law school, judge, a success. Inwardly he’s much the same. Hard to believe for forty years he still holds Faye responsible for things she didn’t do/isn’t even aware of. Obsessed is a good word to describe him. We all hope that none of our loved ones runs into someone like that. He’s my least favorite character - a vicious man.
Periwinkle may be amoral but he has a wry self-awareness. Yes to amoral; no to evil. I’d take him over Charlie Brown any day of the week.
Speaking of Chicago, when I read some of Hill’s descriptions of the city, I thought, “he can’t be from here.” And he’s not. I should have read the Afterword first (but who does that?) because I knew right away that Circle had no dorms in 1968, much less one with a view of Lake Michigan. Turns out Nathan Hill decided to take a few liberties. I was amused at the way he described the campus layout with such disdain, almost as if it were Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell. Not fair! It’s not called Circle because of the architecture though — it’s because of the nearby expressway.
It dropped the “Circle” name in the early 80s, and it took a long time for the locals to make the switch. Now it’s just UIC to everybody.