It started with a note in a package from our librarian daughter back in 2016, “Dad, you’ll recognize yourself on page 140 especially (and other pages as well). You’ll both enjoy this.” Inside the package was A Man Called Ove. Page 140 said, “When he was driving somewhere, he drew up schedules and plans and decided where they’d fill up and when they’d stop for coffee, all in the interest of making the trip as time efficient as possible. He studied maps and estimated exactly how long each leg of the journey would take . . .”
Now I have read the book, seen the Swedish movie with subtitles and the new movie in English with Tom Hanks who has been renamed “Otto,” and reread the book. Each time I’ve been amazed, as our daughter was, about how closely Ove/Otto resembled Al. A few instances with slight differences will prove my point.
“Ove felt he could actually be good as a soldier. In fact, as he went down the stairs to have his obligatory medical examination, he felt lighter in his heart than he had for many years.” The trouble is that he failed the physical. But Al passed the physical in spite of hearing loss in his right ear. He became a good soldier for almost 25 years, attaining the highest enlisted rank of Sgt. Major.
Ove’s wife is named Sonja with the following description, “She liked talking, and Ove liked keeping quiet . . . She was studying to be a teacher.” The only correction that needs to be made for Al is his wife’s name is Virginia.
“Ove . . . was the sort of man who, when he was not quite certain where he was going, just carried on walking straight ahead, convinced that the world would eventually fall in line.” I remembered our first long distance road trip when we neared Atlanta as it got dark before the age of the interstate and the internet. Al followed the way he “thought” we should go while I kept up with the path he was really taking on the map. He became really lost before he was willing to follow my navigation skills to the motel.
Sonja used to laugh at Ove and call him “the most inflexible man in the world.” Ove refused to take that as an insult. He thought there should be some order in things. There should be routines and one should be able to feel secure around them.” The Army and Al agreed with Ove.
Most significantly, Al and Ove have the ability to do stuff that needs to be done with little patience for inept nincompoops. Their reaction to requests for help begins with the word “No” and a little contempt, assuming the nincompoops could do it themselves. Once the nincompoop begins doing it wrong, they jump right in and do it right, accepting the thanks that follows with the air of a card-carrying curmudgeon.
As much alike as they are, Al has one thing that Ove/Otto lacks. In a just-published book, he has a dedication that reads, “To Martin and Lillie Pope, who encouraged Ezra to follow his dreams, and to Allen Butler, who has encouraged me to follow mine.”
