Access Today Last Night At The Lobster Scripted By Stewart ONan Compiled As EText

I live in my own little world inside my head, complete with pugs dressed as butlers and rainbows made of Laffy Taffy, it was a long time before I became aware of Stewart ONan.
Partially, I suppose, this is due to the fact that ONans books do not draw undue attention to themselves, He is not an elegant prose stylist he does not construct elaborate plots that bend time and space and then loop back again and he does not fetishize the typical professions found in most novels/television series/movies.


Instead, ONan produces sparelywritten books that subtly mine the realities of the actual human condition, His characters arent rich, or powerful, or imbued with remarkable gifts, They are just muddling, middling human beings, like the ones you see every day, like the one you might be yourself.
Of course, this doesnt provide much of an escape, and it might leave you a little befuddled by the end.
ONan, you see, isnt following the typical threeact structure that frames most novels or screenplays, Sure, there is often a genre hook in his fiction a murder, a kidnapping but thats never the focus, Readers acclimatized by modern storytelling techniques might be a bit puzzled, You finish one of his novels and think Thats it

Thats something you need to know going in to an ONan novel: that no matter what the book jacket says its about, its not about the plot.
There is no action there is only people reacting to action, which most often takes place off center stage,

My love affair with Stewart ONan began with Last Night At the Lobster, It was a fortuitous meeting: Had ONan chosen to set his novel at a Chipotle, I probably would have lived and died without ever cracking one of his books.
As it is, however, he chose the Red Lobster, and the Red Lobster and I have a history, One of the great middleclass pleasures of my life is the Admirals Feast, which can feed me for close to a week, depending on how many biscuits I can slip into my pocket without the waiter noticing.


Last Night at the Lobster is about as the title strongly hints the last day of a Red Lobster that is being closed.
Its main character is Manny, a potsmoking manager who is really serious about doing a good job, He reminds me of that Martin Luther King, Jr, quote about how if you are called to be a streetsweeper, you should sweep as Michaelangelo painted or Beethoven wrote music.
Manny treats his job as though it were the most important thing in the world he gives it the care of a master craftsman, with an eye to the smallest details.
It is something that is both sad and noble,

The Lobster's final day is snowy and treacherous, Manny has to deal with the fact that many of his employees at least the ones who aren't leaving with him to go to the Olive Garden in the hands of anyone but ONan, I wouldve assumed this to be a snide joke directed at MiddleAmerica ONan, however, has such empathy, that the thought never crossed my mind haven't come in.
He is also trying to sort out his relationship with Jacquie, a waitress and past lover who has moved on with her life.
Manny still loves Jacquie, but he has a pregnant girlfriend, Deena, back home,

This is a slim book, an epic in miniature, It is a minutely detailed reconstruction of a day, The tasks, mundane as they are, are inflated to heroic proportions, There is Manny's courageous attempts to clear the sidewalks with a stubborn snow blower there is Manny's shuttle diplomacy as he keeps peace with a tempestuous cook, bickering waitresses, and annoying customers there is Manny's Homeric trek across a treacherous parking lot to reach a shopping mall, where he then tries to find a gift for Deena.
All of this is just cover for ONan to explore humble lives given meaning through love,

Despite the title and subject, this is not an ironic book, And I say this as a person who actually purchased this book a bit tongue in cheek, I mean, its about Red Lobster! Its the hillbilly Delmonicos, O'Nan never makes fun of the plight of these lowermiddle class service providers, There is no false nobility or artificial inflation of the working man and there is also no condescension or patronization.
He treats his characters, simply, as humans, and ONan has a fine eye for people, Manny's struggle to keep the Red Lobster open until closing time may seem like a small thing to us, but for him, it is akin to blowing up the Death Star or throwing the Ring of Power into the fires of Mount Doom.
We don't all get to save the world, or even lives most of us do the mundane to get a paycheck, but we try to do it well, because there is some honor there, in a job well done, whatever that job may be.


This is a short, quick, gratifying read, O'Nan is a propulsive storyteller, He writes in simple, clear prose that is blunt and tothepoint, Im quite impressed with the details he can limn with so few pages and so few adjectives, That said, there's nothing poetic or elegant in the words, I can't remember a single line from the book, or a single profound thought, The profundity is in the story itself, Its a subtle point is worth looking for, This isnt a novel that helps you escape from your life it is a novel that helps you relate to life.


The only lingering question I have is this: what caused this Red Lobster to close Those places are always packed.
Always. The most dangerous place I've been is a Red Lobster parking lot during Lent,
With every Stewart O'Nan novel I read, he increasingly secures a place on my favorite authors list, In this thin volume, "Last Night at the Lobster", the scene is set in a 'has seen better days' New England town during a blizzard

in the days before Christmas.
The story takes place in a Red Lobster restaurant on its last day open for business, The restaurant is a corporate owned one and is underperforming and so will be closed at the end of the business day.
Manny is the manager of this Red Lobster and this story is told in his voice and through his thoughts.


There is not a great deal of action in this novel, The story centers around its characters, Manny, his crew or what's left of it and of course, the feeling you are left with as a reader experiencing what these characters are thinking and feeling about their last day of work.
Having worked in restaurants to help pay for my education, I can confirm that Mr, O'Nan writes about work in a restaurant in a very truetolife way, Just by reading his words, I could feel the humid air from the dishwasher I could relate to the pressure to be speedy and yet efficient and the scenes in the dining room with a mother and her preschooler who could not sit still and whom she could not or would not control really rang true for me.


The bleakness and the coldness of this story was a result of more than the raging snowstorm occurring outside.
. although that was certainly helpful, Instead, you were introduced a bit to characters whose futures were uncertain, Manny, the manager, was being sent on to be an assistant manager at an Olive Garden nearby but could only take five of his current employees with him.
From the description of the town and the nearby mall, . not even bustling with shoppers at Christmastime, . you got the sense that along with the closing of the Red Lobster, so were the hopes of many of its employees.


Manny's story and his thoughts which were front and center in this story were also less than hopeful.
You become aware that Manny, the grandson of a proud Puerto Rican woman, is dealing with his own struggles, . feeling as if he had failed the corporation, his crew and himself, if he could have brought in larger profits, perhaps they would all still have jobs the next day, He was also dealing with some personal struggles, . having a pregnant girlfriend but in love with another woman, . . having to realize that for every decision you make, there are consequences, he was learning that he had to play the hand that was dealt him, Manny's struggles, both personal and professional, lent a coldness and hopelessness to an already bleak story,

It's difficult to write a review for this story which mainly takes place in the thoughts of its protagonist.
It is a story that evoked a 'feel' or a mood, There is no 'happily ever after' at the end of this book, I was left wondering what would happen to Manny and his crew from the Red Lobster, Although Mr. O' Nan really didn't provide any clues as to these characters' futures, . . I still choose to hope for the best,

Reading this book I was reminded of Joe Queenan's Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon, an unfunny book of tossedoff "humor" pieces about the irrevocable cheesiness of American culture.
In an essay called "Slouching toward Red Lobster" see what I mean by "unfunny", Queenan describes the chain as a place for people who think they're too good for Roy Roger's.
That about sums up his point: I'm better than other people, and I get to write a book about it!

What I loved about LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER is that forces people who revert to that reactionary snark to rethink their condescension toward the service industry.
O'Nan finds poetry in the routine of checklists and machinery, in the effort to treat customers more kindly than they treat waitresses and servers, in the effort to not give into despair but find some pride in work.
The story and style are deceptively simply, and it's easy if we read too fast to miss the emotional subtext.
In effect, O'Nan walks a tightrope herehe doesn't veer toward melodrama or sentimentality but a kind of fanfare for the common man.
The most dramatic moment comes when Manny ponders stealing the giant stuffed fish as a momento of all his time at the restaurant.
For some folks, that may seem too miniature to command attention, but to me it's indicative of the thousand little daily ethical challenges we face that make us a moral people.
Simply put, a beautiful little book, Last Night at the Lobster owes what little effectiveness it has more to its three conceits than to skill or insight.
First, it's narrated in the present tense, for a sense of immediacy, Second, it's set entirely in environments a chain restaurant and a shopping mall that are comforting by design, Third, the story takes place during a snow storm, for a sense of surreality and semiisolation, O'Nan does little else to generate the mood on which the novel depends in particular he provides few of the details that would have brought the settings to life, relying instead on the reader's familiarity with the locations.


The tone makes it obvious from the beginning that action and plot aren't going to be the point we don't expect anything to happen, and nothing much ever does.
This wouldn't be a problem if Lobster delivered what it should: character development, meaningful interaction, humor, insight, Unfortunately we get nothing more than we would get if we actually spent a day wandering around in a Red Lobster, voyeuristically eavesdropping on the very ordinary people working and dining there.
Actually we get less we learn nothing more about any of the characters than the bare essentials that define them as each is introduced, and we learn next to nothing about the minutiae of running a restaurant.


There's nothing wrong with celebrating the quotidian, but shouldn't that celebration be something more than a dull reflection
Meh,.
rounded up.

I read this more than a dozen years ago and didn't remember the story, When I saw someone's read list, I saw it and decided that I should reread it, This was entertaining while not particularly memorable,

The writing is strong though understated, We are shown rather than told and thus the reason for rounding up to,

Manny recently got notice that his Red Lobster restaurant will close, before Christmas, Decemberdue to recently lower sales.
While there has been recent road construction nearby that impacted sales numbers, corporate doesn't see wisdom in future operation and has offered him a demotion to assistant store manager at a nearby Olive Garden.
He is allowed to "take" five employees and his choices were a bit difficult to make, Many employees quit upon learning of their upcoming termination, The last day, several of the remaining employees show up only to sabotage the day's operation and abruptly leaving the others showing up to pick up the slack, some who were offered Olive Garden positions.
The day is fraught with old memories and challenges including a bad snow storm and power outage that further reduce customers and staffing.


These moments remind Manny of halcyon days and his continued difficulty in releasing his relationship with a waitress for whom he felt a deep connection, meanwhile, he also struggles with the morality of staying with his current partner, who is pregnant and pressing him for a more firm commitment marriage even though he doesn't foresee a future with her.


Manny is in fact, struggling with accepting the his future that doesn't glow nearly as bright as the Christmas lights in the restaurant.


While the reader likes Manny okay, his wishy washy feelings toward the past and present girlfriends makes him seem like a smuck at least as a female reader.
He seems like a decent boss but I would not be inclined to be his friend, He represents everyman woman at that time in their thirties or forties, when they suddenly realize that the sky isn't the limit.
Life has plenty of limitations because of circumstances beyond our control, and dreams are a lot different than naked reality.
Is that his biggest issue with commitment He isn't clear, One thing he starts to realize, there comes a time, that one must come to accept life on life's terms.


A quick read, but we don't develop new insights from this tired theme, The title says it all, This is a slim novel about the closing night of a Red Lobster in Connecticut, Manager Manny and his staff must get through the evening in spite of a snowstorm, disgruntled employees, and a few difficult customers.
It seems realistic. Manny comes across as a hardworking guy who is sad that most of his employees are losing their jobs, He has a complicated relationship history, Not much happens. The main attraction is the interaction among the characters, I enjoyed it. .