Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a girlfriend) tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off ...
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Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. A self-employed tech expert, superintendent of his Baltimore apartment building, cautious to a fault behind the steering wheel, he seems content leading a steady, circumscribed life. But one day his routines are blown apart when his woman friend (he refuses to call anyone in her late thirties a girlfriend) tells him she's facing eviction, and a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son. These surprises, and the ways they throw Micah's meticulously organized life off-kilter, risk changing him forever. An intimate look into the heart and mind of a man who finds those around him just out of reach, and a funny, joyful, deeply compassionate story about seeing the world through new eyes, Redhead by the Side of the Road is a triumph, filled with Anne Tyler's signature wit and gimlet-eyed observation.
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When I say Anne Tyler's recent short novel, "Redhead by the Side of the Road" (2020) on the library shelf, the title reminded me of the title of a book in a seemingly different style and mood: David Goodis' bleak noir novel of 1954 with the evocative title, "The Blonde on the Street Corner". In both cases, with the seeming allurement of a dangerously inviting sexual encounter the titles suggest something different than they deliver. There are similarities. Goodis' novel is set among the poor and desperate in Depression-era Philadelphia. Tyler's story is set slightly later and to the south in contemporary Baltimore among people and places that are middle-class or lower middle-class. Goodis' noir novel is harsh and pessimistic while Tyler takes a realistically eyed but kinder view of the human condition. What both novels have in common is the focus on loneliness, as illustrated by the passing title figure of a love to be found in an unexpected place.
Tyler's novel tells the story of Micah Mortimer, 43, a crusty man set in his ways who works for himself fixing computers under the name of the "Tech Hermit" while moonlighting as the superintendent of a crumbling Baltimore apartment building where he lives for free in the basement. The Tech Hermit lives alone, and follows a strict routine which Tyler describes concretly in her story's opening pages. With her sharp-eyed description of places and character, Tyler soon gets to the point in commenting on the Tech Hermit:
"Does he ever stop to consider his life? The meaning of it, the point? Does it trouble him to think that he will probably spend his next thirty or forty years this way? Nobody knows. And it's almost certain nobody's ever asked him."
The novel follows the Tech Hermit through his routines and chores over a few pivotal days with flashbacks into his earlier life. Micah spends much time alone, and much of the book has an inward character, including a discussion of Micah's dreams and his hallucinations of the "Redhead". . Still, more of the story shows his relationship with others. As the story develops, it focuses on Micah's floundering relationship with his woman friend of about three years, Cass, who teaches fourth grade, and his odd relationship with a young man, Brink, a college student who randomly drops in one evening. Brink is the son of Micah's old college flame, Lorna. He hasn't seen much of Lorna in the long intervening years since college. She has become a public interest lawyer married to a corporate lawyer. The couple have three children and a comfortable home and life.
Tyler has a knack for endearing descriptions of her characters. She makes the reader understand the many people in this little story, their dreams, frustrations, and misunderstandings. She is a wonderfully observant writer and describes the buildings and streets of Baltimore and is a poet of that city, much as David Goodis is a noir poet of the underside of Philadelphia. She never loses her focus on Micah, the Tech Hermit. As the various stories work toward their denouement, there is a sense of hope for him as he learns to understand himself better and work to estabish human connection and love in face of his ongoing loneliness which threatens to continue through old age.
"Redhead by the Side of the Road" is a lovely novel with writing both light and thoughtful. The story suggests that, unlike Goodis' vision of loneliness and loss in "The Blonde on the Street Corner" it is not too late for the solitary Tech Hermit to become a Micah with a meaningful connected human life. So may it be.
