Martin Bauman: he gets no respect

Martin Bauman is a young writer looking for respect. He doesn’t get it from his writing professor, the acerbic Stanley Flint, who is as rigid in his standards as his last name suggests.

Undaunted by Professor Flint’s disapproval, Bauman goes to New York to seek his fame and fortune. There he finds a publishing world and literati, which are no less sardonic anf imperious than his former teacher. To his own amazement, Bauman gets a short story published in the New Yorker (referred to by his friends with awe only as “the magazine”). When an editor offers the dazed Baumann a contract, she gushes that his is the first ever story with a gay THEME to published by the vaunted journal. She further praises him for writing a homosexual narrative that is not “sociological”. Bauman is not so overwhelmed by this development as to quit his day job which consists of ponderously wading through “slush” piles of unsolicited manuscripts for a Manhattan publishing house. Incredibly, professor Flint ends up getting a job as the senior editor at the same house.

Bauman naively presumes that Flint will advocate the publication of his novel. Instead, Flint dismisses it with a derisive chuckle: “This is just paper with little black marks on it.” Bauman retaliates by trying to get Flint fired.

All the while, Bauman is trying to manage his personal life; he seeks love and gets mugged, he rejects love from a doting amour who lacks the drama and glamour Bauman requires, he continually competes with a Sally Bowles type neurotic who demands most of the attention of his more thrilling lover. To his credit, Bauman does not deny or rationalize his immature psychological neediness. He does not deny the artist and the shallow fame seeker that “co-exist” within him. He does not offer excuses; when his loyalty is not returned he finds revenge with a puerile ferocity. This book confounds this reviewer with a dilemma: do I recommend it to others? Although Leavitt’s biographical interior monologue propepelled me through many pages without stopping, I cannot say if it was his skill in prose that caused this, or my special empathy for the elite trials and tribulations of a writer. Would the symbolic aspects of this novel compensate for the inertia of the narrative to one who is not a writer? Suffice to say, if you are not breathlessly engaged by the first 20 pages, you will probably not be interested in the next 50. It doesn’t get any better.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic