Ninety-two in the Shade by Thomas McGuane

First published: 1973

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Comic realism

Time of plot: Late 1960’s

Locale: Key West, Florida

Principal characters

• Thomas Skelton, who wants to become a skiff guide in Key West
• Nichol Dance, a rival skiff guide who threatens to kill Skelton
• Goldsboro Skelton, Skelton’s eccentric grandfather
• Miranda Cole, Skelton’s girlfriend
• Faron Carter, another guide, Dance’s occasional partner
• Skelton’s mother,
• Skelton’s father,

The Story:

Thomas Skelton, having quit college, wants to become a skiff guide at home in Key West, Florida. Upset by the decadence of American culture, Skelton has fallen back on a life of drugs and promiscuity. He has arrived at his ideal occupation only after realizing that there is nothing else he would like to do. Sportfishing, suddenly, is the only job that makes sense to him in an America that prizes excess and waste.

Skelton, however, unexpectedly develops a rivalry with Nichol Dance, another skiff guide from Key Marathon. Dance is upset by Skelton’s decision to be a guide, and he warns the young man to steer clear of his territory. Dance feels that Skelton has no business as a fishing guide, but Skelton feels that becoming a guide is his only chance at sanity and a somewhat normal life.

Dance goes to prison for attacking a man and “gives” Skelton his business. He sends his clients, the Rudleighs, out with Skelton. Dance is released from prison because the man he attacked did not die. While Skelton and the Rudleighs are out on their expedition, Dance finds them. He plays a practical joke on Skelton, taking the Rudleighs away as if they have been kidnapped. The joke is also meant to serve as a warning to Skelton not to compete with Dance now that he is free to reclaim his business.

The rivalry between the two men escalates. Skelton burns Dance’s boat, and Dance threatens to kill Skelton. Despite knowing that Dance is capable of making good on his threat, Skelton refuses to retreat. He knows that being a skiff guide is the last chance he has of keeping his sanity, and he decides to continue. His girlfriend, father, and grandfather all try to talk Skelton out of competing with Dance. Meanwhile, Dance considers his options: If he kills Skelton, he will go to jail for life. If he does not follow through on his threat and he allows Skelton to guide, his credibility will be lost and he will be left with nothing.

Skelton takes Olie Slatt out fishing, and Dance trails them. Dance boards Skelton’s boat, gun in hand. He asks Skelton where he would like to be shot. Calmly and courageously, Skelton—having previously imagined himself in this situation—tells him where to shoot. Dance shoots him in the heart, and Skelton achieves, finally, a weird sense of peace. Dance gives the gun to Slatt and sits down next to Skelton. Slatt beats Dance over the head with the gun until he feels his head turn to jelly. Then, he takes the skiff back in, Skelton and Dance crumpled at his feet.

Bibliography

Carter, Albert Howard, III. “McGuane’s First Three Novels: Games, Fun, Nemesis.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 17, no. 1 (Summer, 1975): 91-104. Reviews The Sporting Club, The Bushwhacked Piano, and Ninety-two in the Shade, focusing on McGuane’s utilization of the comedy and sadness inherent in competition.

Grant, J. Kerry. “Apocryphal America: Thomas McGuane’s Troubled Republic.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 48, no. 1 (Fall, 2006): 103-111. Argues that McGuane reveals, over the course of nine novels, a deep understanding of America’s “sickness.” While McGuane’s protagonists seek to distance themselves from mainstream American life, Grant says, they cannot fully escape being guided by cultural norms of excess and decadence.

Ingram, David. “Thomas McGuane: Nature, Environmentalism, and the American West.” Journal of American Studies 29, no. 3 (December, 1995): 423-439. Claims that the most important thing to McGuane—an ardent naturalist and conservationist—is the desire for pristine nature. McGuane’s deep concern with the frontier and the American West reveals an interest in the power of nature to separate the wheat from the chaff. Notes that McGuane also recognizes the allure of urban life.

McClintock, James I. “’Unextended Selves and Unformed Visions’: Roman Catholicism in Thomas McGuane’s Novels.” Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature 49, no. 2 (Winter, 1997): 139-152. Analyzes the influence of Roman Catholicism in McGuane’s work. Argues that McGuane’s protagonists are often in the midst of a crisis of faith and in deep need of spiritual redemption. Connects McGuane and Walker Percy, another writer whose Roman Catholic vision informed his portrayal of a spiritually sick America in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Morris, Gregory L. “How Ambivalence Won the West: Thomas McGuane and the Fiction of the New West.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 32, no. 3 (Spring, 1991): 180-189. Examines McGuane’s representation of the “new West.” Talks about the deep spirit of the American West that informs McGuane’s fiction, redefining the sense of space and place.

Wallace, Jon. “The Language Plot in Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-two in the Shade.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 29, no. 2 (Winter, 1988): 111-120. Examines McGuane’s use of language in Ninety-two in the Shade, paying particular attention to shifts in point of view from third person to second person to first person and how these shifts reflect the spiritual malaise of American life.

Westrum, Dexter. Thomas McGuane. Boston: Twayne, 1991. Brief biographical study of McGuane’s life and career, followed by several critical essays on his most important work. Includes bibliographical references and an index.