New novel asks: How much can a male friendship take?

In a pivotal scene in the new novel Dream State, by Eric Puchner, buds Garrett and Charlie are in college, walking home from a Halloween party. They’re dunking on each other the way guys love to do, until Garrett accidentally makes an antisemitic joke. Charlie blows up. They fight. And neither of them quite know where to go from here. The novel goes:

“Male friendship was all about rhythm. It was a kind of song without words, an instrumental you knew by heart, you learned the rhythm together and practiced it all the time, for days and months and years, perfecting it by feel, it was the swing of your silences, the karaoke track behind the gibberish you sang. The rhythm itself said the important things, the non-jokey things, so you wouldn’t have to. Still, there are times like this, rare ones, when it wasn’t enough.”

Dream State is the latest pick in Oprah’s Book Club. It’s also the rare literary novel that examines the different angles of contemporary male friendship. “Friendship is such a huge, important part of my own life,” Puchner said. “I felt like I wanted to write something that I wanted to read but didn’t – as far as I knew – exist in the world.”

For 19-year-old men, like Garrett and Charlie, using expressions like “hey man, I’m sorry” or “I love you” may run the risk of ruining the vibe. But Puchner said he wanted to write about how male relationships can change over time. When we talked, Puchner had just gotten back from a trip with his friends.

“It was remarkable how much of it still revolved around that sort of jokey insult stuff,” he said. “We play euchre and we drink beer and we insult each other. The difference now is there’s also direct expressions of warmth and gratitude and affection.”

A classic love triangle

The novel opens with a beautiful, Edenic lakeside wedding in Montana. Bride and groom Cece and Charlie are set to be married when a bout of norovirus spreads through the wedding party, leaving a portion of the guests hurling chunks. And that’s not even the worst thing that happens at the wedding. Because Cece, the love of Charlie’s life, ends up marrying Garrett instead.

“I wanted the book to feel in its first 100 pages like an old-fashioned Russian novel. That this was a love story that turns into a love triangle,” Puchner said. But he wanted to do something more ambitious in the second half, and show how the mistakes this trio makes “have repercussions not only for themselves, but for their children and the next generation.”

Puchner touches on the marriages, careers and kids that come out of the triangle. But also how his characters react to a changing world. The book is set in Montana. And as time goes on, the air gets a little dirtier. The lake gets drier. Puchner said that the way his characters’ lives paralleled climate change’s affects on the American West “felt serendipitous.”

A bittersweet setting

The setting was inspired by a house in Montana where Puchner’s wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, spent a lot of time. Her great-grandfather built the house, and the family still goes there to visit every summer. But there’s an element of sadness to these trips.

“It’s amazing to be there. It’s such a beautiful state. But yes, Glacier Park looks different than it did when I was a child. Flathead Lake is different,” Noel said. “Those things feel sad and difficult, but they are also manifestations of something that is sad and difficult all the time. It’s not like I’m only thinking about the environment when I’m in Montana, but Montana is a place where it feels very concrete.”

This isn’t a spoiler, but by the end of Dream State you get the sense that your relationships, your home, your world will not – and cannot – look the same in five, 10, 50 years. That’s obvious. But the book asks – is it worth trying to hold onto those things anyway?