Apartment : a novel

Title:

Apartment : a novel

Author:

Wayne, Teddy, author.

Personal Author:

Wayne, Teddy, author.

ISBN:

9781635574005

Physical Description:

195 pages ; 22 cm

Abstract:

"In 1996, the unnamed narrator in Teddy Wayne's Apartment is attending the MFA program at Columbia on his father's dime and living in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment. Feeling guilty about his good fortune, the narrator offers his spare bedroom - rent-free - to Billy, a handsome, talented classmate from a working-class family in the Midwest, who is attending Columbia on scholarship. As the semester progresses, the narrator's rapport with Billy develops into a friendship he hasn't had over a lifetime of holding acquaintances at arm's length. But the close quarters and power imbalance of their living arrangement breed tensions that neither man could predict. In elegant prose that interrogates the Clinton-era origins of today's most sensitive and resonant issues - the spectrums of gender and sexuality, the clash between coastal liberalism and heartland conservatism, socioeconomic identity and privilege - Apartment is a gutting portrait of one of New York's many lost, disconnected souls"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Male friendship -- Fiction.

Loneliness -- Fiction.

Apartments -- Fiction.

Roommates -- Fiction.

Friendship -- Fiction.

Graduate students -- Fiction.

College students -- Fiction.

Social classes -- Fiction.

Identity -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction.

Manhattan (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Bildungsromans.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Belmont	Book	FICTION WAYNE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ginter Park	Book	FICTION WAYNE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Westover Hills	Book	FICTION WAYNE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

A New York Times Editors Choice
Longlisted for the 2020 Simpson / Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize
One of Vogue.com's "Best Books of 2020 So Far"
One of Elle's "Best Books of 2020 So Far"

Named A Most-Anticipated Book by The New York Times , Vogue, The Boston Globe, Salon ,
The Millions , Inside Hook , and Vol. 1 Brooklyn

In 1996, the unnamed narrator of Teddy Wayne's Apartment is attending the MFA writing program at Columbia on his father's dime and living in an illegal sublet of a rent-stabilized apartment. Feeling guilty about his good fortune, he offers his spare bedroom--rent-free--to Billy, a talented, charismatic classmate from the Midwest eking out a hand-to-mouth existence in Manhattan.

The narrator's rapport with Billy develops into the friendship he's never had due to a lifetime of holding people at arm's length, hovering at the periphery, feeling "fundamentally defective." But their living arrangement, not to mention their radically different upbringings, breeds tensions neither man could predict. Interrogating the origins of our contemporary political divide and its ties to masculinity and class, Apartment is a gutting portrait of one of New York's many lost, disconnected souls by a writer with an uncommon aptitude for embodying them.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Wayne's latest foray into the dark minds of lonely young men follows the rise and fall of a friendship between two aspiring fiction writers on opposite sides of a vast cultural divide.In 1996, our unnamed protagonist is living a cushy New York City life: He's a first-year student in Columbia's MFA program in fiction (the exorbitant bill footed by his father) who's illegally subletting his great-aunt's rent-controlled East Village apartment (for which his father also foots the bill). And it is in this stateacutely aware of his unearned advantages, questioning his literary potential, and deeply alonethat he meets Billy. Billy is an anomaly in the program: a community college grad from small-town Illinois, staggeringly talented, and very broke. But shared unease is as strong a foundation for friendship as any, and soon, our protagonist invites Billy to take over his spare room, a mutually beneficial if precarious arrangement. They are the very clear products of two different Americas, one the paragon of working-class hardscrabble masculinity, the other an exemplar of the emasculating properties of parental wealthmirror images, each in possession of what the other lacks. "He would always have to struggle to stay financially afloat," our protagonist realizes, "and I would always be fine, all because my father was a professional and his was a layabout. I had an abundance of resources; here was a concrete means for me to share it." And he means it, when he thinks it, and for a while, the affection between them is enough to (mostly) paper over the awkward imbalance of the setup. Wayne (Loner, 2016) captures the nuances of this dynamica musky cocktail of intimacy and rage and unspoken mutual resentmentwith draftsmanlike precision, and when the breaking point comes, as, of course, it does, it leaves one feeling vaguely ill, in the best way possible.A near-anthropological study of male insecurity. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.