The Street - October CC Book Club Selection

Parent Cafe
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For me, Petry is strongest when depicting the “street.” I could feel the whistling of the cold wind, picture the boys running/dodging down the sidewalk, feel Mrs. Hedges eyes on everyone … and so on. It becomes an entity in its own right … an entity Lutie blames (unfairly) for all her troubles at the end:

The “street” gets the last word though, as the final sentence belongs to it:

And the similarity to the last sentence of The Haunting of Hill House struck me:

And yes I know we’re not comparing the two books. Can’t help it though.

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Well, perhaps the overriding question about the book is, Were Lutie’s problems the result of her actions, or were they the result of the street – i.e., the system?

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@ignatius, It’s an apt comparison. The Dry is another book where I felt the location was a key antagonist. The street, the house, and the outback in these stories are monstrous in some way, and malevolent. (Location as character worked the other way in The Secret Garden — protective and nurturing.)

@VeryHappy, despite some bad decisions on Lutie’s part, I lean toward the system. Lutie wasn’t an inherently evil person. If she had been dropped into a world devoid of racism, sexism and economic hardship, I think she and Bub would have lived a fine and happy life.

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Unrelated to the book: If I seem to disappear for a bit, it’s because I’m headed to the country for the weekend, to a spot of land with no wi-fi. Posting may be a challenge, we’ll see!

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Mary13 have a wonderful time away, if the countryside is Wisconsin be safe. Enjoy

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Have fun @Mary13 we have a place we share in Vermont that has no cell signal and no telephone. I love it, though we usually go down the mountain to town and have a coffee at the internet cafe pretty regularly.

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Yes, it’s Wisconsin, but we’ll be snuggled away from any areas of unrest (I hope)!

@stradmom, thanks for the link to the book covers. This is the cover of the edition I read — as you can see, it highlights the motherhood aspect of the book: https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Street-by-Ann-Petry-1998-Trade-Paperback/254726654033?epid=524458&hash=item3b4ee44851:g:TdIAAOSw~AVYpOuV

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First - have fun on your country weekend, Mary!

How about both Lutie’s actions and the street as the source of problems? Lutie can’t really blame the street for actions prior to living there. Lutie and her husband earn some money keeping foster children. However, they start going out at night, leaving Bub and her fosters with her alcoholic father. Not good but fixable, except Lutie continues going out even after a neighbor complains about the loud parties going on at her house in her absence. Lutie loses that source of income in the blink of an eye. Foreshadowing, maybe, Lutie sending Bub off to the movies and going to Junto’s. She later learns the creepy super spent time in her apartment with Bub in her absence but it doesn’t alter her behavior. Bub remains in the super’s grip. On the other hand, to raise a child in that setting seems to take more than Lutie has to give. I don’t doubt she loves Bub but she does leave him to the mercy of the street and its malevolence (exactly the right word, @Mary13.) Bub would have even been in more of a predicament without Mrs. Hedges and constant window presence.

I also noted that each time Lutie moves she cut ties with those who help - somewhat. The grocery store lady who warns her about leaving her husband to live and work elsewhere. Her dad and Lil, by no means ideal grandparents, but at least present when Lutie’s not. Bub, in his innocence, is no match for the street and Lutie, in her preoccupation with earning money, neglects her child. @Mary13, I agree Lutie’s not inherently evil but she doesn’t live in a world devoid of racism, sexism, hardship. I think you’re right when you point out that Mrs. Hedges offers power; not that Lutie should have accepted that offer. Still, Lutie wants to play the system without the power to do so. No way could she control Boots: that headed south from the time she met him.

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Just finished reading – only 1 day late!

I had never heard of “The Street” and doubt if I would have read it without this group selecting it. I feel odd saying I liked it, but I did. It was both enlightening and depressing. Although I’m almost always a sucker for a happy ending, clearly this book didn’t have one. And at the end, where is Lutie headed? To another city and another street that will be just like the one she left – except she won’t have her son.

One thing I kept thinking about – how much different would Lutie’s situation have been if she hadn’t been so attractive? Maybe she wouldn’t have had so many men who wanted her so badly, but the rest of her life would have been the same – she still would have been stuck on “the street” and Bub would still be alone after school.

I read the Kindle version of the book – the cover is the 2020 version; the last one in the article linked by @stradmom.

@Mary13 Enjoy your weekend. These days a change of scenery is always welcome, IMO.

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Clarification when I mentioned Wisconsin I meant stay safe from the virus … scary rate increases there

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@Mary13 Have a fun weekend and please stay safe.

I’m enjoying this discussion far more than I did the book. You guys are making me see things that I had overlooked or forgotten. I’m on vacation as well for the weekend and WiFi is not the greatest so I can’t always access or post.

To @ignatius point, I think Lutie contributes to her own downfall by giving in to temptation and her own wishes and desires. At first, when she is fostering kids, she lets her father move in knowing the kind of lifestyle change he would bring to her household and then she gives in to her husband and goes partying even when she knows what is happening at home in her absence. She continues that when she moves out with Bub.

Leaving a little kid at home at night without even a small light just so she could have a beer is hard to accept even accounting for the times they lived in. Then there is her disproportionately angry and violent reaction to Bub’s trying to help by earning money as a shoeshine boy.
Abandoning Bub in the end was just another completely self-absorbed decision — I would like to hope that some kindly fate intervened and rescued him.

As the book unfolded more of Lutie’s character, I lost interest in her. She became what she did, partly because of the street’s malevolent tentacular hold on her life — no matter what she tried, the street wouldn’t let go. But I feel like she was hurtling towards disaster, spiraling out of control into a kind of madness that would destroy her in the end.

Regarding Mrs. Hedges. I admire her because she worked hard for her success. She didn’t let the street bring her down. Her escape from the fire is a testament to her strength of character.
Yes, she was a goodhearted woman, kind to Mary, she saved Lutie from Jones, she helped Bub, and she offered Lutie a way to end her struggles.
But few women would actually choose the life of a prostitute and that was all she was offering Lutie. What would happen when Junto tired of her — would she be back on the street, just another aging streetwalker?

In my opinion, Mrs. H had the ability and influence to do much more but she chose to hold back that help. Junto cared for her and one word from her could’ve made all the difference.

She saw in Lutie what she never had and what she had lost; youth, attractiveness, the undamaged body. But they had in common the raw ambition, intelligence and determination to build a better life. Why push her into a life that she was clearly trying to escape from? Why not help her get there through her talent or her skills?

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Popping in to say I didn’t read this month’s selection, the grim summer of 2020, depresses me so much, to be reminded of “how-far -we -haven’t -come”would have been too sad. I know I’m a baby sometimes.

But, I am following this discussion with great interest.
The Link posted about the marketing of this book, the evolution of the Book covers, does show some us moving in the right direction.

I’m glad I’m learning about this iconic and very important book, and thank you all for your insightful posts, so many thoughtful perspectives. .

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/05/03/ann-petrys-storied-life/773d556b-1cdf-4734-bb6f-0068cb62eeb3/

How about this view, streets were relatively benign and how tough in 1992,… fast forward to 2020…depressing, right ?
“ In 1992, when the original publisher, Houghton Mifflin, bought back the rights and reissued “The Street,” it got a front-page review in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Petry’s Harlem, Michael Dorris wrote, "hard as it was, now seems in some respects almost nostalgically benign. The streets of New York, as she describes them in the mid-1940s, were indisputably mean to the downtrodden, but in those days it was still possible for a Lutie Johnson to walk 12 blocks safely, at midnight, or to ride the last subway alone. It was a place where the worst thing a child might bring to public school was a penknife, a place where neighbors tried to watch out for one another, where violent death was a rare and awful occurrence."

And, today we see so many brutal police killings.

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^^^ It was before there were so many guns in our society.

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Tayari Jones email regarding the rerelease of “The Street” …

https://www.theday.com/article/20200227/ENT10/200229449

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Petry lost me a bit here. Every single man (recording businessman, lawyer …) with whom Lutie comes in contact mentions her beauty or wants to engage sexually (except her husband). I ended up feeling Petry overplayed that card. Not so much with Boots and Junto, integral to the story but the super, definitely. The super detracts from the story (for me) as he gets creepier and creepier. I wanted less of the psychopath and more street and inhabitants. The other characters come across as true inhabitants of time and place and move the story along - all the way from Lutie’s father and Lil to the boys running the streets. I find it hard to believe that Lutie does nothing after the super roots around in her closet and later nearly rapes her. Yes, Mrs. Hedges reassures her but still … come on. Lutie continues doing her thing with little protection of Bub. I just think the super could have been half that bad and things could have played out in much the same way. He ended up seeming less a product of the street, racism, etc., but as a seriously disturbed individual.

And, as long as I’m talking Petry overplaying her hand, the brother of the couple she works for commits suicide on Christmas. I already felt the inherent racism of Lutie’s employers and her unhappiness. The suicide seemed a little much and then never to be mentioned again. It’s like a point to made and then move on to the next.

Min is the unattractive “Lutie.” She’s willing to exchange sex, cooking and cleaning for home.

And as much as Lutie dislikes Lil, at least Lil seems happy enough compared to just about anyone else.

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Good post above, @ignatius. I agree.

Lutie’s lack of urgency with the super really bothered me. It gives the impression she believed she didn’t have control of her life. It was such a big issue to ignore, especially since she knew he spent time with Bub.

As I’m writing this, I’m wondering what Lutie would be like from her husband’s perspective. Maybe we would get an earlier preview of her mental health.

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Boots Smith was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think that his behavior, although awful, was still the least egregious of the three men, in terms of crimes specifically against Lutie. And like her, he had felt trapped in his life and had suffered at the hands of racist employers. They would have found a lot in common had they ever had an actual conversation. But Boots turns out to be the target because he puts his hands on Lutie and that’s the last straw:

I read “Native Son” a few years ago, and yes, there are several similarities. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, commits a murder that is not pre-meditated, but is the result of a rising tide of circumstances that all tie back to the color of his skin. From Wikipedia:

Native Son takes Bigger’s story beyond the initial murder through his violent and fruitless attempt to escape the authorities. What do you think was Lutie’s fate? One big difference is that Bigger kills a white woman from a “respectable” family and Lutie kills a black criminal from the street. Thus, Bigger becomes the focus of a city-wide manhunt, but will the police or anyone else care enough about the fate of Boots Smith to pursue Lutie? Does her choice of victim mean she’ll get off scot-free?

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@Mary13 I did have this thought while finishing the book. BUT, didn’t Boots tell Junto to come back later that evening after he had “talked” Lutie into being with Junto? Junto would know that Lutie was the only one with Boots and therefore had killed him – AND since Junto is white, the police would have been more likely to pay attention. Although, they may not have cared enough to try to track down Lutie in another city.

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Because of my reading of The Street, I also just read *The Warmth of Other Suns./i Warmth, in case you don’t know, is a nonfiction book – which won the Pulitzer Prize – about the Great Migration of black people from the south to the north in the 20th century. The author (Isabel Wilkerson) follows three different people through their lives, starting with their experiences in the Jim Crow south and ending with their experiences in the north.

In The Street, Boots Jones remembers with anger his work as a Pullman porter. He felt it was humiliating, always having to cater to white men, finding them women to sleep with, lifting their bags, saying Yes Sir and No Sir, and it was the impetus behind his working for Junto so he didn’t have to be a servant anymore. In The Warmth of Other Suns, one of the people followed through his migration journey was a Pullman porter; the job let him live a decent life, and he understood very well what his role was in that job. He didn’t hate it the way Boots did, but he recognized that he could use the job to help other black people.

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@VeryHappy Funny you should mention “The Warmth of Other Suns” – my RL Book Club is reading it for our October 29 (Zoom) meeting. I’ll be starting it as soon as I finish my current book, a quick, “lite” read.