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The Rationalization and Romantization of a Criminal Personality
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“Groundskeeping,” Lee Cole’s first book, was impossible to put down once I started reading it. The fascinating and enthusiastic advertising blurbs have nothing to do with my appreciation of it.
“Groundskeeping” is deemed a “gut-wrenching exploration of class divisions” by critics “as “a forensic assessment of our poisonous politics” and as “a novel of young authors in love” with an emphasis on “the agonising journey between youth and maturity.” “It’s a delight – a relief” to read “a writer who addresses his masculine characters with kindness and insight,” as The New York Times’ Hamilton Cain put it.
The Rationalization and Romantization of a Criminal Personality
As a forensic psychologist was struck by how the story’s likeable male protagonist, Owen, gradually reveals a criminal nature. Owen, a nascent author, falls in love with Alma, a teaching fellow at Ashby College in Kentucky. The lives of Owen, who grew up in rural Kentucky, and Alma, whose parents are physicians who left their home Bosnia to settle in suburban Washington, D.C., couldn’t be more different.
Unlike Owen, who wandered from place to place while high on drugs and squandering money he didn’t have, Alma had a goal in life. “I wasn’t passing any bongs in high school,” she told Owen. My SAT preparation was in full swing. Three prestigious universities accepted her, and she ultimately chose and attended Princeton. The author, who has already had works published, was given funding for another book.
Alma is empathetic and acts on her feelings for others. Unlike Owen, who has a difficult connection with his parents, Alma has a positive one. Owen may wax sentimental about his youth in rural Kentucky, but he has only loathing for his parents and siblings.
Owen loves to take risks and experience new things. At the start of the tale, he is working as a “groundskeeper” and taking one English class at Ashby College. Owen is a self-absorbed and chronically dissatisfied nomad with “a history of lousy odd jobs.” He is deeply in debt and has been living in his vehicle for months since he has never had a place of his own. His drug usage, he tells Alma, has been “tame,” yet he admits to abusing booze, cocaine, and heroin. He tells Alma, “Because it felt wonderful,” when she questions why drugs were a part of his life for so long.
If Owen doesn’t feel like doing anything, he won’t force himself to. He utilises and is comfortable among relatives when it suits him. Once in a while he goes to see his grandpa, whose major hobby is sitting in a chair and watching John Wayne movies, and he flops down on a sofa to do so. Not much of what he does genuinely helps him or improves his situation. Owen, who makes a livelihood cutting down trees, says, “It doesn’t even need it” when “Pop” asks him to trim the maple tree in the backyard. Shortly thereafter, Pop freezes to death chopping down trees in the cold. Owen’s mother attempts to get in touch with him fourteen times to tell him this, but Owen ignores all of them and puts his phone on “do not disturb” because he doesn’t want to hear the bad news.
The giving Alma stands in stark contrast to the parasitic Owen. She accommodates Owen’s stay at the university’s guest home by letting him share her room. She foots the bill for his $80 bottle of wine. Alma offers to pay for Owen’s airline ticket when she asks him to join her to her parents’ house. Owen begs his father for money and is embarrassed to take it. The father laments his son’s “aimlessness” and says, “I simply don’t know if I can keep supporting you to fail.” Just before he cut his dad off on the phone, Owen thought to himself, “All I could think of were furious, hateful words.” In order to pay for the airline ticket, he decides to sell his grandfather’s antique bayonet, which he describes as “just a bit of metal,” for $250. At a later time, Pop fails to retrieve the bayonet, but Owen continues to lie about being the thief.
Owen seldom foots the bill. He works as a tree trimmer full-time but has just $100 saved. For as long as he can remember, he has been doing “manual work for awful earnings,” he says. He loses out to a coworker in a promotion competition and is unable to get to the position of supervisor. He keeps blowing through his money. Tasting menu items cost “seventy dollars a pop, money I don’t really have,” so he and Alma opt out.
The one person who is always ready with criticism is Owen. The dwellings “projected a type of cleanliness that bordered on sterility,” he says of the area where Alma’s parents reside for the first time. His nighttime hangout in Louisville, Schadenfreude, gets a bad reputation from a local who claims that the pub caters to “scumbags” during the day “ot cool.” To which I reply, “In the brutal light of day, you could see how disgusting the bar was,” he says. Owen mocks Cracker Barrel, a prominent southern chain restaurant where he and Alma eat, as “commodified nostalgia exploited to peddle gimmicky crap to octogenarians,” despite the fact that he brings Alma there for a lunch.
Cort, Pop’s son, who seldom leaves his room, grows frustrated and says to Owen, “You believe everything’s about you.” That inference is spot on. Owen has a sense of entitlement and expects other people to cater to his needs. To himself, he wonders, “I pondered when in my life I’d be allowed to name a location my own.” The world’s unsatisfactoriness to him is a constant source of anger for him. Just being angry, he thinks, was simple. The effort put into it was disgraceful.
He has a deep-seated animosity for Alma’s parents, and this is only one of many grudges he harbours. To his dismay, he draws the conclusion that, despite their best efforts, “They don’t believe I’m good enough for her.” Even though she and Owen’s stepfather had accepted Alma and even self-consciously corrected their own language while doing so, Owen accuses his mother of being “lukewarm” about Alma. When Own rails about his home Kentucky and the “country South grotesqueries” he finds there, Alma is both attracted and disgusted.
Alma had seen Owen taking careful notes for a considerable amount of time. At long last, he lets her read his finished piece. Alma, devastated by the realisation that she is now “the object of his work,” explodes with anger, saying, “It’s my stuff. “You wasted my life.” She calls plagiarism on Own and tells him, “You get to be the hero. You made me appear like a “stuck-up spoilt wealthy girl…the rich girl who you go to degrade,” and you seemed perfectly at ease doing it. Is that what titillates you?
Owen is mystified by Alma’s decision to teach creative writing in the English department at Ashby College. He just doesn’t see why she won’t leave boring old Kentucky for the bright lights of New York. Alma tells him, “Creating a life doesn’t seem like such a horrible idea. You must initiate action. The language she was using may as well have been a whole other one.
Owen is disheartened to learn that the English Department at Florida State University in Tallahassee is offering him a fellowship. He had previously tried to get fellowships that would have sent him to New York City, San Francisco, or Europe, but to no avail. A job in Slovakia “had the promise of adventure,” so he applied there. At the end of the novel, Owen backs out of his hesitant pledge to attend Florida State. There, he decides not to board the aircraft. This is the last chapter.
Groundskeeping is engrossing from beginning to finish because of the author’s vivid portrayal of its diverse cast of characters and their environments. But Owen’s criminal character doesn’t seem to be acknowledged or explained. As an alternative, he is shown in a sympathetic light. Owen is a serial liar, user, and thief who also happens to be a narcissist and a self-centered egomaniac. In his mind, he is the centre of the universe, and everything else is a cog in the wheel. Owen, a grump who expects everyone else to cater to his every whim, appears to be able to tolerate very little.
Summary
Lee Cole’s “Groundskeeping” is deemed a “gut-wrenching exploration of class divisions”. The story’s likeable male protagonist, Owen, gradually reveals a criminal nature. Alma is empathetic and acts on her feelings for others; unlike Owen, Alma has a positive one. Owen is comfortable among relatives when it suits him, but not much of what he does genuinely helps him or improves his situation. Alma accommodates Owen’s stay at the university’s guest home by letting him share her room.
She foots the bill for his $80 bottle of wine. Own’s nighttime hangout in Louisville, Schadenfreude, gets a bad reputation from a local who claims that the pub caters to “scumbags” during the day “ot cool” Owen mocks Cracker Barrel as “commodified nostalgia exploited to peddle gimmicky crap to octogenarians”. Groundskeeping is engrossing from beginning to finish. Owen is a serial liar, user, and thief who also happens to be a narcissist. In his mind, he is the centre of the universe, and everything else is a cog in the wheel.
Reference:
Samenow, S.E., 2022. A criminal personality rationalized and romanticized. Psychology Today. Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/inside-the-criminal-mind/202205/criminal-personality-rationalized-and-romanticized [Accessed August 28, 2022].
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