Not a Fair Trade Book
Title: The Runner
Title: The Runner
Date: 1985
Publisher: Atheneum
ISBN: 0-689-31069-2
Length: 181 pages
Quote: “Up five miles along the shoreline, back five miles. Rain or sleet made no difference to him.”
In Homecoming
, the first published book about the Tillerman family, Cynthia Voigt characterized the four children as genetic reruns of the older generation: nerdy James is just like his uncle John; softwitted Maybeth is like their mother, Liza; tough, fast-talking Dicey is like their brisk, quirky grandmother; and Sammy reminds everyone of the other uncle, named Samuel but always called Bullet, who was killed in Vietnam.John never gets a speaking part in any of the stories, and we never find out about any wife or children he may have. Liza gets one casual speech, at the beginning of Homecoming, that turns out to be her last words. It’s not entirely clear whether Liza’s children ever catch up with their father. But in 1985 some families were still debating the Vietnam War, so there was a demand for a story about Bullet. This is it.
Voigt never wrote preachy stories about goody-goody characters. Each of her characters was imperfect in a different way; each, in a different way, embodied Voigt’s ideal of excellence. They’re not all that much more intelligent than other people in the academic sense, but they’re more honest with themselves, more diligent, closer to self-actualization. Bullet’s short life, I think, shows that Voigt didn’t agree with the choices he made. His story shows that she respected those choices.
Bullet isn’t big, but he’s tough enough to beat up the bullies who pick on him. He isn’t “popular,” but he’s welcome to join any of the cliques any time he feels like talking to his classmates. He’s a “Landed Poor” aristocrat, but he works, and earns his employer’s respect. At seventeen Bullet is already the sort of guy who aims to be respected, not “liked.” In high school this social dynamic can be made quite effective: “He didn’t care about people,” Voigt summarizes, somewhat idealistically, “and so people cared about him.”
Bullet is richly and rightly contemptuous of most of the social life at school, but this story is mostly about the three friends he has in grade twelve: Tommy rebels in a predictable way, clings to delusions, and seems to Bullet “willing to settle for being about a quarter of what he could be.” Patrice tells him secrets, teaches him philosophy, and, at just the right moment, convinces Bullet that Bullet is not really a racist. Tamer shows Bullet that it’s possible to be his own man and still be part of a team.
Readers knew that Bullet’s life was going to be short. If you’ve not already read how Tamer and the children’s “Gran” reminisced about Bullet, don’t set yourself up for disappointment. This story ends with a dead teen soldier, an angry old widow in a big empty house, and only hints of the grandchildren who will join her in the house later. If you’re in the majority of readers who haaate that he died, Voigt has succeeded in what I believe was the statement she intended to make: Because soldiers are good men, war is never a good thing.
That part of the story is so true to life it may make you cry. Other parts are frankly fake. Bullet’s athletic year fits neatly into his school year, just like a math course. “Is that how they do it in Maryland?” readers might have wondered; the sense of place in Voigt’s writing is strong even when she tries to mute it, and while she was living in Maryland she brought Maryland to life so vividly, so lovingly, that if she’d said that Marylanders eat live cicadas some people would probably have organized an Annual Cynthia Voigt Cicada Feast. Actually, Voigt admits, she made cross-country running into a year-long, September-to-June series of races building up to a state championship for the sake of the story. Maryland schools’ track and field schedules resemble other schools’.
That, I think, is a weak point—one of the few Voigt’s stories had. The strong point is of course that she convinces me that Bullet would have been one of those kids who achieve a kind of popularity in high school by being too close to grown-up life, too concerned about work and family, to give a flamin’ flip about high school popularity. It worked for the people I liked in high school; to some extent it worked for me. Basically high school popularity requires rich, indulgent parents. If you’re not rich and you try to be part of the popular crowd, in high school, you will probably earn ridicule. If you’re not rich and you try to fake being too grown-up to care about popularity in high school, you will certainly earn ridicule. If you’re not rich and you are, in fact, too grown-up to care about popularity in high school, you will be hated as well as admired, but you rule; you're not really in the popular clique, but you're interesting enough that you can probably join any group or pick any buddy you choose whenever clumping-up is required.
Scholastic keeps reprinting Voigt's books, so the best way to encourage her is to buy them new...Y'know what? As an Amazon Associate I can sell them new. There are enough old beat-up first editions Out There that I could offer the Tillerman sequence as Fair Trade Books, but that is neither the most effective way to encourage Voigt nor the most effective way to get you to support this web site. I've been addressing secondhand book buyers for all these years, and you readers have not been gobbling up Fair Trade Books, have you? So I'm going with Scholastic on this one. You can still buy the Tillerman Family stories here; they're a good read, some of the last novels I really loved, and warmly recommended; but online shoppers can buy them as new books. That brings the price up to only $10 per book online. If there are novels for teenagers that are worth $10 per book, these are the ones. Paperback editions of all seven volumes will fit into one $5 package.
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