It is hard to believe that I could catch an otherwise unremarked anachronism in a novel by a major novelist that was published by Alfred Knopf.  Well maybe it’s just me, but we’ll see what you think. The novel is Everybody’s Fool by Richard Russo.  It is a kind of sequel to Nobody’s Fool which was made into a movie starring Paul Newman.

She glanced nervously into the front room, where his father sat with the drapes drawn, as usual, the television on but the sound turned down.

Word of his father’s death came when he was in England during the final days of preparation before Normandy.

I should spell it out a little more for you Gen X and younger folks.  Hardly anybody had television sets in 1941 and it would have been an extremely remarkable feature in the home of a laid off alcoholic handyman,  And there was really not enough broadcasting going on for the “as usual”.

The other possible anomaly in Sully’s back story is not as clear cut, but I will try to make the case.  It comes a page later.

there was indeed such a thing as being too late, Normandy, the hedgerows, the Hurtgen Forest, the camps and finally Berlin

It was the Russians that took Berlin. On the other had American troops did occupy their section of Berlin on 4 July  1945,  So it is really just the implied continuity that I’m troubled by,

I’m not going to give up on the television though. In some ways I would like to be wrong and for Richard Russo to have an explanation as to how Sully’s father had a television set that he watched all the time in 1941.

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Peter J Reilly makes a small attempt to keep up with contemporary serious literature through the deal with Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn that sends him author signed first editions once a month.  Most of them are unread, but he does try.  All a result of the good influence of his son William who recently received a degree in creative writing from Pratt Institute.