The Shipping News: Chapter 1: Quoyle Summary & Analysis

At the age of 36, Quoyle is a large, unaccomplished, and deeply lonely man. Born in Brooklyn and raised in upstate New York, his appearance—his mountainous height and bulk, his enormous chin—have always set him apart. His childhood was marred by his brother Dick’s teasing; his father Guy’s disapproval; and his own struggles to succeed in the classroom, in social situations, and at work. By adulthood, Quoyle has only two friends: Partridge—a small, feisty Black man who works as a copyeditor at the local newspaper—and Partridge’s second wife, Mercalia. Partridge struck up a conversation with Quoyle one day at the laundromat and they’ve been friends since. 

Partridge also helped Quoyle get his on-again, off-again job at the Mockingburg Record. Quoyle isn’t very good at it. Partridge tries to help him develop an ear for what makes a good—attention-grabbing—story, but Quoyle never figures it out. Managing editor Ed Punch fires him each summer when the college-aged kids who work for the paper come back from school. Quoyle survives during those periods on a series of demeaning jobs, like cabdriver and car wash attendant. Still, each fall, Punch rehires him, because Quoyle’s quiet, needy attentiveness gets people to talk, and talk is good for crafting newspaper articles.

Then, one night, Partridge tells Quoyle that he and Mercalia are moving to California. The news breaks Quoyle’s heart. Now he’s utterly alone in the world. He runs his errands, attends local government meetings and writes about them for the paper, and eats lonely meals of canned ravioli. He does not look beyond the limits of his own small routines or the borders of Mockingburg, and thus he has no sense of the chaos and disorder of late-20th-century life. He just waits quietly for his own life to begin. And, as he often tells himself, “Who knows?” Maybe it will begin soon, and maybe it will be amazing.