Apartment by Teddy Wayne

 

 Apartment buildings in Manhattan's StuyTown

Apartment - Teddy Wayne's penetrating portrait of a lonely 24-year-old wannabe novelist living in an illegal sublet of a StuyTown apartment (paid for by his father) as he pursues a graduate degree in writing (also paid for by his father). At the center of the story is the unnamed narrator's friendship with a fellow writing student - dirt poor, unassuming, Illinois bred Billy Campbell, a young man with a special gift for writing fiction.

Since this recently published book has received a good number of reviews already, both on Goodreads and elsewhere, I will make a quick shift to focus on a few points that might otherwise be overlooked. And I'll include snips of my own experience in the mix. Also, I'll give our unnamed narrator a name: Chad.

INSTITUTIONAL INTIMIDATION
“There is no good reason, at this stage of your life, to play it safe and hold back,” she’d said. “This is the time to experiment and make mistakes and open yourself up to brutally honest feedback. That’s the only way to grow as an artist. Fail again, fail better.” So proclaims older published novelist Sylvia to the twelve graduate students in her fiction writing workshop at Columbia University’s Master of Fine Arts Writing Program.

Although there’s an undeniable measure of wisdom in her advice for a beginning writer to experiment and open up to brutally honest feedback, my sense is such feedback is ideally conducted one on one, teacher and student. The last thing a beginning writer needs is to be publicly scalded and humiliated, most especially in front of members of the opposite sex. Exactly the fate of sensitive Chad.

Quick aside: when I first began writing, I attended a writers’ group of men and women like myself, hovering around age 40, all unpublished. First session I read my surreal flash fiction. The group sliced and diced my writing but I stuck to my vision and sent out my microfiction as I wrote it. At our second session, I shared the good news: a batch of my flash fiction was accepted for publication. Some grumbling words of congratulations. At our third session I let everyone know more great news: another batch of my flash fiction was accepted and two editors in particular asked me to send more. Silence. It became painfully clear the writing group did not want me to return. Takeaway message: avoid group feedback; seek out an empathetic teacher/experienced writer for help one on one.

Unfortunately Clad and everyone else in the class must remain in the class and continue to subject their writing to public scorn. Such are the dynamics when you are after a formal college degree. Ooh, you're a graduate of Columbia’s MFA program! Oh, wow! Maybe you'll be hired by a college to teach writing. Exactly the goal of a number of students in the program.

PATHETIC CLOWN
“You know what ruined the country?” he asked rhetorically, since no one else was saying much. "Abolishing the draft. You’re all removed from real suffering, your own and other people’s. Someone else does the dirty work while you watch movies about tornadoes and space aliens. It’s made your generation a bunch of epicene candy-asses.” Harsh judgement rendered at an uptown pub by Stockton, the workshop’s new professor, a “fiftysomething fire hydrant of a man” who’s a twice divorced alcoholic.

Put-down of the young - regrettably, typical in many of such older men I’ve had the misfortune to come in contact with. One can only wonder what Chad and Billy make of this older man’s words since Stockton couldn’t take marriage and we can infer he also couldn’t take being a good father (both Chad and Billy had a father that left their mother). If I happened to be at the pub, I’d confront Stockton directly, asking him: What gives you the right to put down younger men? After all, you’re obviously a vulgar slob, a jowly, potbellied pig, a booze hound tied to a whisky bottle who couldn’t even begin to be a good husband or father - not to mention the fact your creative output ended decades ago.

On a personal note, I’ve never put down younger men (or women), never pulled rank suggesting I’m more knowledgeable or wiser since I’m older. Why would I? When I think back on all those physically and mentally constipated louts who put me down for being young it makes my blood boil. Well, respecting those now dead oldsters – may their livers rest in peace.

THE LONG SHADOW OF MARXISM
"I don't have a dad who pays for everything. This" - he tapped his laptop - "is all I have, man. It's the only thing I've got that gives me a chance not to be a bartender the rest of my life." So Billy tells Chad. No denying it - the truth of Marxism remains: a person's underlying everyday reality and range of choices is defined by one question: Are you rich or are you poor?

CONCLUDING REMARKS
This Teddy Wayne novel is so worth a reader's time. We're given a panoramic tour of not only the narrator's heart and mind but, as if standing at the window of an upper story Manhattan apartment, a broad view of 1990s society and culture.



"I'd long been curious how, exactly, other people who had their days mostly to themselves filled them up. I wasn't so much a procrastinator as a time waster getting my work done and then frittering away the spare hours with lackadaisical urgency, half-reading a handful of magazine articles and roaming stores for thirty minutes when five would suffice. Billy was ruthlessly economical with his limited freedom. No matter how late he'd been out or how much he'd drunk the previous night, he wrote at least a little the next day, and when he didn't have the handicaps of a hangover or external commitments, he was a pack mule, working hours without a break." - Teddy Wayne, Apartment


American author Teddy Wayne, born 1979