A Holiday Break: Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass

Books are always the best holiday gift for me. The only thing I like better than the anticipation of reading a long sought after title is the fondness that comes with remembering the discovery of an unexpected treasure.

As I look back on all the books I've profiled here in 2019, the one I'd most like to revisit is Nashville Chrome by Rick Bass. I blogged about it back in September, and found it to be both beautiful and evocative. In telling an outwardly simple story about the early Country music sensation known as the Browns, Bass explores something much deeper and more primal.

In his judgment, the story of the Browns -- both the raggedness that gave their talent its birth and the hungers that compelled them throughout their lives -- it is all part of some fundamental force that shapes us and the way the world receives us. This “elemental force” is mentioned frequently, given as an explanation that of course explains nothing.

The girls didn’t get to sleep around. That was the boys’ task, the boys’ duty. Bonnie didn’t want to -- was saving herself for marriage -- and Maxine, though she wanted to, didn’t, mostly just because she wasn’t supposed to. More smoldering. So much waiting. Still believing she had a hand in this matter of her life -- in any of it.

In the morning the party-life would be gone entirely, passing like a wonderful storm for the boys, and they would all four reconvene for breakfast, bleary-eyes and wrung out, but filling back up, the well recharging from what was surely a limitless reservoir.

Did Maxine and Bonnie want their own partners, as enduring and steadfast as were the boys’ liaisons fleeting? Bonnie, certainly; Maxine, less so. By that point she would bury any ten lovers if it helped her get more of the drug she needed. She told Bonnie she was “horny as a two-peckered billy goat,” but her real hunger was for something far below.

Was it her fault that she was that way, or anyone’s fault that two sisters of the same parents could be so different? There was no right or wrong in it. It was all only an elemental force blowing through them. It was all requisite for the world to turn as it turned.

Bass is able to capture the poignancy of it all, even if his characters never really do. When it comes to Nashville Chrome -- both the sweet sound of the Browns and the metaphoric spirit that it represents -- there can never really be an explanation for why it comes and why it goes. The world produces it, the same way it produces both summer showers and raging hurricanes, either for reasons beyond our comprehension or for no reason at all. We, after all, are only the droplets of water that the world harnesses for its inscrutable purpose.

As you enjoy your holiday break, I hope you find some time to curl up with a good book. I know I will.

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This post was written by Eric Lanke, an association executive, blogger and author. For more information, visit www.ericlanke.blogspot.com, follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.