Beautiful Ruins

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-13

Chapters 14-17

Chapters 18-21

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Chapters 10-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “The UK Tour”

In 2008, Pat Bender, Dee’s son and the former front man of the Reticents, finds himself in a slump. He spends his time performing “comic-music” (154) lackluster in comparison to his older material. He captures the attention of an Irish club promoter named Joe, who suggests that Pat go on tour in the United Kingdom. Having failed to make his comeback in America, Pat enthusiastically accepts Joe’s invitation.

Pat thinks of how people only seem to come to his show out of morbid curiosity; fans express shock that “he didn’t go the gorgeous-corpse route” (155) after years of using hard drugs. At 45 years old, he still dreams of redeeming himself and becoming a star, but Dee and his ex-girlfriend Lydia try to reason with him. Pat wants to make up with Lydia and promises to stay sober, but the disillusioned Lydia refuses him.

Pat arrives in London and stays in a flat with Joe and his friends Kurtis and Umi. Joe sets Pat up with a gig at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. While in London, Pat soaks up British culture and visits a record store. He asks the clerk if the store carries any of the Reticents’ albums and is dismayed to discover that it only carries “relevant stuff” (160). Pat’s disappointment leads him to sleep with Umi, who is Kurtis’s girlfriend. During a postcoital conversation, Pat reveals that Dee lives and runs a theater group in Sandpoint, Idaho and that she has cancer.

Pat and Joe arrive in Edinburgh and learn that Pat’s promised stipend is less than expected and all marketing falls on them. On the first night, Pat plays to a nearly empty crowd. Determined to play to a bigger audience, he begins to self-advertise, which leads to bigger shows and positive reviews.

Joe, who also has feelings for Umi, discovers that Pat had sex with her; he lashes out at and disappears. Pat never locates him and performs poorly enough to forfeit his contract renewal, leaving him destitute and unable to go back to the United States. He makes a scant amount of money by playing in the street and returns to London, where he encounters an angry Kurtis. Pat’s desperation peaks when he calls Lydia to tell her he will change his ways if she gives him a second chance. Dee, standing near Lydia, asks who is on the phone; Lydia says, “It’s no one, Dee” (172).

Chapter 11 Summary: “Dee of Troy”

Pasquale meets Richard Burton, who plays Marc Antony in Cleopatra, and the two drive back to Porto Vergogna to reunite with Dee. Along the way, Richard Burton declares that he is the man Dee is waiting for, the biological father of her child. He laments about Cleopatra, calling it “Satan’s asshole” (175), but admits that he stays on for Elizabeth Taylor though his passion lies in acting on the stage rather than on film. Burton loves Taylor, who is married to Eddie Fisher, but Dee is the woman he seeks when he needs to be comforted. He binges on cognac and tells Pasquale his life story as they make their way to The Hotel Adequate View.

Once Pasquale and Richard Burton arrive in Porto Vergogna, Tommaso the Communist tells them that Gualfredo and Pelle and took Dee to Portovenere. They decide to go to Portovenere that night. Before leaving, Pasquale speaks with Antonia, who gives him her blessing to marry Dee.

With the help of the local fishermen, Pasquale and Richard Burton set sail for Portovenere. Richard Burton continues to drink, and he delivers a dramatic speech that is cut short by the catching of the boat’s motor. Once they reach their destination, Richard Burton and Dee “[crash] into each other’s arms” (185) in front of a jealous Pasquale. Pasquale waits outside Dee’s hotel room as Richard Burton reveals that she is pregnant, not dying of cancer. After a while, Dee emerges from the room, hugs Pasquale, and thanks him. Pasquale hands her the things Michael Deane gave him earlier, and Dee announces that she and Richard will go to Switzerland and see a doctor to “get [the abortion] taken care of” (187). Pasquale ends their conversation by saying that “life is a story” (187) fitting together with others to make a larger, expansive story.

Dee returns to her room, and Pasquale wonders “if it would have been better to never have glimpsed what lay beyond the door” (188).

Chapter 12 Summary: “The Tenth Pass”

Claire wakes up next to Shane in a hotel room on the morning after his pitch. At first, she thinks that he is her negligent, emotionally unavailable boyfriend, Daryl, and is confused about how she ended up with Shane. She recalls the previous night in a “boozy flashback” (192) where she and Shane drunkenly commiserate and kiss. The flashback ends with the two of them falling asleep instead of having sex.

Shane asks Claire if she and Daryl will break up since Shane and Claire spent the night together. Claire compares Shane to Daryl and determines that Shane is “the anti-Daryl” (194). When Shane asks her what she sees in Daryl, she thinks about the first time she and Daryl had sex and how “she looked up and saw herself…every bit of herself…in his eyes” (194). She tells Shane that she liked Daryl for his abs. Shane wants Claire to leave Daryl for him.

Claire asks about Shane’s interest in the Donner Party. Shane confesses that stories about starvation fascinate him because his older sister was bulimic and anorexic during his childhood. Claire notices Shane’s confidence and wonders if it influenced Michael Deane’s decision to produce Shane’s film.

Michael Deane’s producing partner, Danny, emails Claire to tell her that the pitch “has to look good” (197). Claire deciphers Danny’s cryptic message and realizes that Michael Deane means to exploit Shane. Universal Studios binds Michael Deane with a contract that Michael Deane can break by pitching 10 bad film ideas over the course of five years. Claire realizes Michael Deane only wants to pitch Donner! To Universal Studios because he knows the studio will pass on it and free him. Once freed, Michael Deane can pitch to other studios and make millions. Claire tells Shane the truth about why Michael Deane liked his pitch.

Michael Deane calls Claire to let her know that he found Dee. He commands her to gather Pasquale and Shane and meet him at LAX airport to fly out to visit Dee. Shane plans to barter with Michael Deane; he wants Michael Deane to pay him $80,000.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Dee Sees a Movie”

The narrative flashes back to Seattle, Washington, in 1978. Dee goes by the name Debra Moore-Bender and works as a high school drama and Italian teacher. She readies herself for a date with Steve, a PE teacher who teaches at the same school as her. She thinks about how Pat came between her and her last boyfriend, Marv, by sleeping with one of Marv’s daughters. The men Debra dates always find Pat to be a dealbreaker, and she wonders if Steve can handle him.

Before Steve arrives, Debra goes into Pat’s room to check on Pat. Pat puts a marijuana pipe in the drawer of his nightstand as soon as she enters the room. Debra opens the drawer and takes the pipe from him; she wonders whether she should go on the date after all. Pat encourages her to go and asks if his friend can come over while Debra is gone. Debra agrees, leaves, and returns to find Pat writing a song about Alvis, his late adoptive father.

Steve arrives, and he and Debra go to see The Exorcist II, a movie featuring Richard Burton, at the local movie theater. Debra watches Richard Burton intently and feels “both exhilaration and sadness” (210) as she notes his deterioration. Debra and Steve leave once the film ends. Debra daydreams about Richard Burton and being Dee Moray again, “waking up in that tiny hotel on the Italian coast and getting sweet, shy Pasquale to take her to Switzerland, where she would do what [the producers of Cleopatra] had wanted, trade a baby for a career” (211). Steve notices that Debra’s silence and becomes irritated. He tells her that he feels as though she is not even there and drops her off at her house.

Debra enters her home and notices that Pat and her car keys are missing. She receives a phone call from the police, who notify her that they apprehended Pat after he crashed her car while under the influence of alcohol and cocaine. Debra rushes to the station to see Pat, dreaming of what her life would be like if she had not had him.

Chapters 10-13 Analysis

Chapter 10 focuses on Pat’s decline during the 2000s. Categorized as a self-destructive former front man for a late ’80s-early ’90s Seattle rock band, Pat fits an archetype made famous by tragic grunge rock stars such as Kurt Cobain from Nirvana and Lane Staley from Alice in Chains. However, unlike Cobain and Staley, Pat does not “go the gorgeous-corpse route” (155) by overdosing on drugs and dying young. He instead subverts cultural expectations and lives to be a middle-aged man who falls out of prominence and becomes “a failure and an unknown” (159). Reduced to a comedic musician, Pat allows his addiction to fame and sense of entitlement to consume him while he bemoans, “There must be a mistake; I was supposed to be bigger than this” (166). He sees playing in the United Kingdom as his “second chance to do something…BIG” (155), but his fantasies do not manifest. He does not get the kind of comeback seen in movies; he becomes a penniless vagrant. Chapter 10’s depiction of Pat’s narcissistic ambition and deterioration speaks to the novel’s themes regarding the dangerous nature of unchecked desire.

Walter titles Chapter 11 “Dee of Troy” in reference to Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. The Iliad begins with Prince Paris of Troy stealing the beautiful demigoddess Helen, who is married to King Menelaus of Sparta. Her abduction leads the Greek Achaeans to go to war with Troy to bring her back. Like Helen, Dee is a beautiful woman romantically involved with a powerful man (Richard Burton). Gualfredo and Pelle abduct her from Porto Vergogna and take her to Portovenere just as Paris abducts Helen from Sparta and takes her to Troy.

Walter strengthens the parallel between Chapter 11 and The Iliad by having Richard Burton deliver a melodramatic speech before setting sail to rescue Dee with Pasquale and the Porto Vergogna fishermen:

Fear not, Achaean brothers. I swear to you: tonight there will be the weeping of soft tears in Portovenere...tears for want of their dead sons…upon whom we now go to wage war, for the sake of fair Dee, that woman who so makes the blood run. I give you my word as a gentle man, as an Achaean: we shall return victorious, or not at all! […] O you lost sons of Portovenere, prepare to meet the shock of doom borne down upon you by this fearless army of good men (183-84).

In his speech, Richard Burton specifically references the Achaeans and speaks in Homeric language. Later, he refers to Pasquale as Achilles, who is the Achaeans’ finest warrior and the protagonist of The Iliad. Walter intends for the parallels and allusions within the text to be ironic. Richard Burton, drunkenly shouting and nearly falling overboard, is not the poised, regal Menelaus; neither is Pasquale, shy and overshadowed by Richard Burton, the bold, attention-capturing Achilles.

Pasquale rationalizes Dee’s rejection of him for Burton as only natural. In the movies, the leading man always wins the heart of the leading woman. Pasquale only comes close to being an extra in Cleopatra, while A-list celebrity Richard Burton plays the film’s leading man. Walter allows Dee to pass over Pasquale for Richard Burton, but his comic depiction of Richard Burton is as an alcoholic buffoon instead of a valiant, romantic leading man. Pasquale looks upon himself as “a donkey watching two Thoroughbreds prance in a field” (185), but his chivalrous traits make him far more attractive than Richard Burton.

While Pasquale is envious of Richard Burton in 1962, Shane is envious of Daryl in the 2010s. Shane cannot fathom why Claire would want to stay with a man who “unapologetically watches online porn all day and goes to strip clubs at night and then laughs when [Claire] suggests this might be disrespectful to her” (191). Shane forces Claire to reflect on what makes Daryl better than him, and Claire compares the two men. She primarily thinks of the two men in terms of their physiques, contrasting Shane’s “scrawny attractiveness” (194) with Daryl’s “five-hundred-push-ups-a-day chest” (194). She knows that she loves Daryl because of the inexplicable, romantic moment they shared the first time they had sex, but she cannot articulate her thoughts to Shane. Instead, she tells Shane that she is drawn to Daryl’s physique. Her focus on the men in her life as bodies points toward the superficialness of Hollywood.

Chapter 13 provides a glimpse of how Dee (now Debra) lives in the aftermath of her love affair with Richard Burton. Widowed after Alvis’s death, Debra goes on dates with men who cannot tolerate her troubled son and lives vicariously through supporting actresses in Richard Burton’s latest films. No longer in contact with him, all Debra can do is watch her former lover deteriorate onscreen and fantasize about what her life would look like if Pat never existed. Her regrets about not getting the abortion and fantasies of stardom are placed in tandem with Pat’s manipulative tactics and selfishness. Pat makes life more difficult for Debra by lying to her and abusing illegal substances, but she looks at him and sees Burton’s “dark charisma” (214). Her conflicting desires wage war against her, but she cannot deny her feeling that “they [are] in this together, Pat and her” (214). She struggles with regret, but manages to put it aside out of love for her son.