Lapham Rising: A Novel - Hardcover

Rosenblatt, Roger

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060833610 ISBN 13: 9780060833619

Publisher: Ecco, 2006

Synopsis

Harry March's troubles begin when Lapham, a self-aggrandizing, ostentatious multimillionaire, commences construction of a 36,000-square-foot house (complete with a cutting-edge air-conditioner that cools his entire eight-acre property) directly across the creek from Harry's island home in Quogue, in the Hamptons. Harry, an island himself, is something of a wreck and half-nuts, but principled. His wife has left him for an event planner in Beverly Hills; he cuts the polo player out of his shirts; and he speaks mainly with his dog, Hector, a born-again Evangelical and a capitalist who admires Lapham's monstrosity as a symbol of American progress. But to Harry, Lapham represents everything that is ruining modern civilization. So he sends daily notes to his nemesis by way of a remote-control toy motorboat, which read: "Mr. Lapham, tear down that house!" When his efforts fail, he turns to politics by other means.]

Lapham Rising follows Harry's progress during a single day -- through the strange habits of Hamptons social life; the power of local real estate (embodied in Kathy Polite, who advertises her agency by swimming naked from her boat every morning); the odd workings of his own mind, such as it is; and into his elaborate plot to devise a weapon of individual destruction with which to bring down Lapham and all the Laphams of the world. Of course, it backfires.

About this title

About the Author

Roger Rosenblatt  is the author of six off-Broadway plays and eighteen books, including Lapham Rising, Making Toast, Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective. He is the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

From the Back Cover

Harry March's troubles begin when Lapham, a self-aggrandizing, ostentatious multimillionaire, commences construction of a 36,000-square-foot house (complete with a cutting-edge air-conditioner that cools his entire eight-acre property) directly across the creek from Harry's island home in Quogue, in the Hamptons. Harry, an island himself, is something of a wreck and half-nuts, but principled. His wife has left him for an event planner in Beverly Hills; he cuts the polo player out of his shirts; and he speaks mainly with his dog, Hector, a born-again Evangelical and a capitalist who admires Lapham's monstrosity as a symbol of American progress. But to Harry, Lapham represents everything that is ruining modern civilization. So he sends daily notes to his nemesis by way of a remote-control toy motorboat, which read: "Mr. Lapham, tear down that house!" When his efforts fail, he turns to politics by other means.]

Lapham Rising follows Harry's progress during a single day -- through the strange habits of Hamptons social life; the power of local real estate (embodied in Kathy Polite, who advertises her agency by swimming naked from her boat every morning); the odd workings of his own mind, such as it is; and into his elaborate plot to devise a weapon of individual destruction with which to bring down Lapham and all the Laphams of the world. Of course, it backfires.

Reviews

If you know only his sententious essays on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," then the idea of Roger Rosenblatt writing a comic novel sounds as promising as Henry Kissinger doing ballet. In fact, Rosenblatt turns out to be a very funny man. His friends probably know this already, as do readers of Rules for Aging (2000), a humor book so burdened by the author's solemn reputation that its subtitle pleaded that it was "a wry and witty guide to life." When he's not writing on the evils of racism, the plight of children in Cambodia or the spiritual landscape since 9/11, this other Rosenblatt -- the funny one -- dons a deadpan tone in the tradition of Mark Twain, equal parts misanthropy and idealism.

His debut novel, Lapham Rising, is about a brilliant curmudgeon driven to madness by his abhorrence of modern-day excess. The book has nothing to do with Lewis Lapham, the brilliant curmudgeon who rises each month to express his abhorrence of modern-day excess in the pages of Harper's magazine. Coincidentally, the title alludes to a novel written by a much earlier editor of Harper's named William Dean Howells. In addition to reigning over American criticism for a couple of decades at the end of the 19th century, Howells wrote a lot of very fine, boring novels that nobody -- except, apparently, Roger Rosenblatt -- reads anymore. His best, The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), is about a socially ambitious paint manufacturer who builds a spectacular mansion in Boston that eventually burns down, leading to his financial ruin -- and his moral redemption.

Rosenblatt's novel plays with this story very loosely and sports a kind of goofiness and despair that would have rattled Howells's tea cup. The narrator is Harry March, an aging, divorced, long-blocked novelist who lives in ferocious isolation on a tiny sandbar in Quogue, N.Y., in the Hamptons, "because," he says, "I have trouble making connections." That's putting it mildly. He usually communicates with the outside world by megaphone or by passing notes on a remote-controlled toy boat. His only companion -- besides a life-sized statue of his ex-wife at the kitchen table -- is Hector, his talking dog, who's a born-again Christian. So witty and gentle are Hector's admonitions that it's impossible to tell if this absurdity is meant to be taken literally or if Harry is merely projecting his saner thoughts onto his dog.

We meet Harry on the day he is about to commit "an act of social protest" using a catapult he built from a mail-order kit. "This may be the most important day of my life," Harry says, "the moment when all the stray and whorling strands of my existence merge into one clear, straight ribbon of light, and I at last win the towering moral satisfaction due all those who are driven to defend what is decent, modest, and right in the world."

For across the creek from his little cottage rises the awesome House of Lapham, a four-story, 36,000-square-foot monstrosity that sounds like a fantasy dreamed up by Kubla Khan, Jay Gatsby and Bill Gates. The shocking extravagance of today's mansions is a fast-moving target even for the sharpest social critic to hit, but Rosenblatt's description is a tour de force, a vast compendium of the real and soon-to-be-real accouterments of the superrich, from "scatter rugs made from the hair of a dingo" to "a bidet carved from a single piece of murky pink marble found only in a quarry in Oslo, by the hand of Carmen of Nordstrom" to jet-powered air conditioners that keep the grounds around Lapham's house at a pleasant 65 degrees.

"Every time I take my eyes off the construction site," Harry says, "it seems to double its size, as though it were an endlessly enlarging mythical animal -- one of those terrible Greek freak creations born of the forced copulation of a god with an animal, a god of cathedral ceilings or of mansard roofs with a toucan or a buffalo -- producing a vague composite with indefinite haunches and misty tentacles."

The whole book is a witty rant like this -- poorly plotted and uneven, but such a rich collection of satiric scenes and cracks that you won't mind. (And it's very short.) Usually, it swings out wildly at the absurd sense of self-importance inspired by wealth and epitomized by Lapham, who, after making a fortune selling asparagus tongs, now delivers banal advice on his blog while contemplating a run for the Senate. But sometimes the story punches at more specific targets, such as the Hamptons or the Chautauqua Institution, that tony summer school for adults in upstate New York, where Lapham Rising should sell especially well.

The tragedy at the heart of this bitter comedy, though, is not just Lapham's monstrous vanity and the enormous footprint his money allows him to leave on the world; it's the insane response Lapham's obnoxiousness provokes in Harry, corroding his sensitivity and humor into a bitter lamentation. As wave after wave of high-class vulgarity breaks against him, Harry becomes an absurd old freak, crying in a soon-to-be subdivided wilderness. If only he could master the empty grin and hollow enthusiasm of the Hamptons crowd, he wouldn't be so enraged by everything Lapham represents. Sadly, he can't help but "seethe and fume and rant and go nuts," knowing that despite anything Harry might catapult at him, Lapham will win in the end. Maybe, but enjoying such a sharp satire is a brief moment of victory.

Reviewed by Ron Charles
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Starred Review. The yahoos take the Hamptons in the barbed first novel from the Time and PBS Newshour cultural critic Rosenblatt (The Rules of Aging), a wicked sendup of class relations on Long Island's East End. Harry March—a disgruntled novelist, misanthrope and recluse on a Quogue sandbar he calls Noman ("Noman is an island")—has only his little cottage and his West Highland terrier Hector to call his own: his wife has left; his three children are grown. Three generations of Harry's family are rooted in town as noble-thinking doctors and teachers, so perhaps he has his history, too, but that history, and Harry's whole quietly seething existence, are under attack by the noisy erection of the arriviste's bells-and-whistles mansion across the water. Lapham (as in Silas, not Lewis) has new money that originates in asparagus tongs. His Quogue invasion, undertaken along with sexy Southern real estate agent Kathy Polite (rhymes with "elite"), sparks Harry's very active critical mind to action, and he quickly plans fiery vengeance. Rosenblatt thumps his familiar socialist themes and is quotably tongue-in-cheek: there's a restaurant in town called Writer's Crock; in his catalogue of Lapham's objets is a chandelier left over from Kristallnacht. This satisfyingly old-school stab at the Hamptons' debasement will have New Yorker readers laughing out loud, even as it sends them up, too. (Feb. 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The author is a highly regarded columnist and commentator and has several nonfiction books to his credit, including the well--received Children of War (1983), which details the effect of war on children. His foray into fiction isn't totally successful, but the result is an entertaining story nevertheless. Harry March is a reclusive writer living on a small island separated by a creek from the "mainland" of Long Island, in the posh area known collectively as the Hamptons. He's basically a misanthrope, separated from his wife and wondered about by his three grown children. And he has a dog he speaks to (and who talks back to him--a gimmick that adds nothing to the tale). Across the creek, a rich businessman is constructing a monstrously outlandish new "castle." Harry is determined to undermine this awful example of bad-taste consumerism and environmental despoliation; however, his efforts only lead him to shoot himself in the foot. Light satire that will amuse readers more than arouse them. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Lapham Rising

A NovelBy Roger Rosenblatt

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright ©2006 Roger Rosenblatt
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060833610

Chapter One

Bang bang bang bang bang. I start to flip out of bed, forgetting that Hector is beside me. I roll over on top of him. He bites my ear. I attempt to bite his. Another perfect summer day begins in the Hamptons.

"Goddammit it, Hector!" I slap on a bandage, grab my clothes, and head outside.

"Taketh not the Lord's name in vain," he says, then flattens himself, tail and all, and returns to sleep. Nothing on earth is snootier than a West Highland white terrier, especially a pious one. The Westie in question happens to be a born-again evangelical.

I shamble off my porch toward the beach. Oh, what can that banging be? I do not need to ask as the overtime Mexicans detonate their salsa radios and continue the erection of the House of Lapham across the creek. Outer walls, inner walls, pool-house walls, gazebo walls, atrium, aquarium, arboretum, auditorium walls. Up up up. Bang bang bang. Olé.

"And what does Mr. Lapham require today?" I call over the water to Dave the contractor and his band of merry noisemakers. When I wish to communicate with them, I employ a cardboard megaphone purchased for that purpose at a junk shop in Eastport. Originally it was used for Harvard crew races in the late 1920s; a white H on a crimson horn. When the men wish to communicate with me, they use a bullhorn. These exchanges constitute most of my social life.

"Señor Moment!" cries one of the carpenters, always happy to see me for purposes of derision. They call me Señor Moment -- "senior moment" -- which I kind of like.

"One more floor," Dave says. He shrugs apologetically. "I don't get it either. But that's what he wants: four floors."

"Because no one else has more than three," I suggest.

Dave is too tactful to agree. "Sorry for the disruption, Harry. But we're coming to the end."

"You have no idea." That I mutter.

My name is Harry March. I am the last and least of three generations of Marches who have lived year-round on this private and once-tranquil island in once-tranquil Quogue. The first two generations, teachers and doctors, were spared rude awakenings. They reared strong and handsome families in this house, which too was strong and handsome once, as was its current resident. (You'll have to take my word for that.) Now the old place molts shingles and its shutters tilt into commas and apostrophes. The effort that some people expend to achieve the distressed look in their homes is unnecessary here. Bang bang bang bang bang.

"I bet you'll make a novel out of all this," says Dave. He wants me to start writing again.

"What should I call it, Lapham Rising?"

"You can do better than that." He smiles.

"Not these days."

It is 5:45 A.M. on my island. If there were justice in the universe at this hour, if there were justice on the East End of Long Island at this hour, I would be alone with the egrets and the cormorants drilling the water in their birdy silence. I would be alone with the tides and the swales of the dunes, also silent, and with the pines speckled by splashes of early sunlight, and with the line traced on the sea by a distant ketch -- all silent. I would be alone with the oversexed ducks flying above me in their crazy syntax, and with the streaks of the reluctantly awakening red sky (sailors take warning), silent as well.

But the House of Lapham requires four floors. The House of Lapham requires a movie theater. The House of Lapham requires a state-of-the-art kitchen and a state-of-the-art toilet and a sundeck and a moon deck and a hot tub. Gaah. The House of Lapham requires a master bedroom with a view to die for.

Of course, the view they will die for -- Mr. and Mrs. Lapham propped up in their cherrywood sleigh bed, their heads resting against an Alp of fluffed goose-down pillows wrapped in white cases, further supported by yet more pillows encased in white shams, their safely tanned legs stretched out beneath white sheets and a white duvet in their bedroom for the master -- is me. Out their Andersen triple-pane picture window they will peer, only to see Harry March on his barren island in his shapeless house, sans air conditioners, sans Belgian tiles, sans everything but life, cracked as it is. The Laphams will die for the view of the one watching them hoping that they will die for the view of the one who likewise has them as a view to die for.

Bang bang bang bang bang. Do not concern yourself. I am not barking yet. Not yet. Hector does the barking around here. Religiously.

"Hombres!" I cry to the carpenters. "Good news! I've called the INS. Soon you'll be able to ditch your girlfriends and go home to your wives and their mothers!"

They laugh, as they do every morning. "The INS eesn't up yet, Señor March." They laugh some more. When Latins speak English with that comic lilt, they sound as if they're making fun of the language. They probably are.

"These early starts weren't my idea," Dave says. "He's pushing us, and he's paying for it."

"Lapham," I say, my voice as festive as an autopsy.

"Lapham," he confirms with a sigh. "Ten months is no time at all for a job this big."

"Ten months?" I spread open my arms in mock wonderment. "Has it been only ten months?"

Dave's a good guy. I have known him for some ten years. Local, in his forties; his people once worked as housemaids and chauffeurs for families whose fortunes have long since been dissipated and whose scions, half drunk and half dressed, now shuffle around the Hamptons villages in bedroom slippers, calling to one another in loud, patrician voices absent of gender. When employed, they curate the local whaling museum; the local scrimshaw . . .

Continues...

Excerpted from Lapham Risingby Roger Rosenblatt Copyright ©2006 by Roger Rosenblatt. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Ecco
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060833610
• ISBN 13: 9780060833619
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 243