Where Fiction Dares, a New Novel of Modern Americana

I’m a seafood snob. I don’t order fish unless I’m close enough to the sea to smell the salt, or unless I’m near a reliable freshwater source. I go to school in Ohio.  Suffice to say, I skip the “Cajun-spiced Scrod” at the dining hall.

My holidays, however, are filled with Ahi tuna, seared, sesame-encrusted and settled on a bed of oriental noodles; little neck clams in a white wine sauce; blue crabs, fresh from the Chesapeake; Oysters on the half shell. Going to a Red Lobster on the Delaware shore would be like going to an Olive Garden in Italy.

And yet I’m intrigued by Stewart O’Nan’s latest novel, Last Night at the Lobster. According to a NYTBR article, O’Nan was inspired to write the novel by a newspaper article about a couple who went for some deep-frozen seafood at a Red Lobster in Connecticut and found the branch restaurant closed.

“That little article made me think it was this loss of a little world and I just started daydreaming about it,” said O’Nan in the NYTBR article.

The novel follows General Manager Manny DeLeon, as he sees his branch through its last day, from the mid-morning food prep to the emptying of the register. DeLeon tries to maintain some sense of dignity, even though a new Red Lobster is doubtlessly being built in a new strip mall in a new suburb somewhere, anywhere he isn’t. There are, according to NYTBR, “nuanced portraits” of tensions between workers, and a lament on DeLeon’s part for a spent affair with a waitress.

True Americana is something that authors constantly grasp at, and some, like Updike and Ford, achieve it spectacularly. I’m shocked that it took someone this long to recognize the loamy, fertile literary peat in places like Red Lobster, or Applebee’s, or any similar fast-food-plus restaurant. I worked at an Applebee’s in Ocean, New Jersey for a summer, and everything about the restaurant, from its customers to its employees, was beyond ridiculous. One of the servers had inch-long fake nails, purple weave and a shrill voice that summoned us hosts across the restaurant to report on any number of things: why we double-sat her, why we didn’t bus her table, if Alonzo’s (her boyfriend’s) baby’s momma had called. On her twenty-first birthday she got drunk off a single Long Island Iced Tea, fell of her bar stool and walked out the door to pick up her daughter from the babysitter’s.

One of the managers was a stalwart drunk and an indiscriminate leerer. He sulked around the dining room, asking how-is-your-meal-tonight with all the enthusiasm of a U.S. Census taker.

The “smoke area” in the back actually functioned as a make-out den for two of our guy servers.

Places like Applebee’s have eluded literature because they’re caricatures of themselves, completely devoid of sincerity or meaning. Even the most creative Post-Modernism couldn’t ennoble the Ocean branch.

In any event, I’m looking forward to seeing how O’Nan’s DeLeon handles his last day as general manager, seeing his ship to the bottom of Red Lobster’s hypothetical ocean, as the corporate goons offer cheery waves and a middling termination bonus. Meanwhile, all the servers chuck their aprons over their shoulders and walk next door to the Olive Garden.

At least they won’t have to fold napkins for the next day.