Tenement of Clay: A Novel - Hardcover

West, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0929701275 ISBN 13: 9780929701271

Publisher: McPherson, 1993

Synopsis

Slums of the American city of New Babylon provide an all-too-real setting for Paul West’s premier fiction, Tenement of Clay, the prescient novel that launched his marvelous and tenebrous career more than a quarter century ago. Amazingly, this major work has not been published in the United States until now. At surface level, this narrative fugue discovers a self-righteous man attempting to provide temporal salvation to a hodgepodge of homeless, most notably Pee Wee Lazarus (midget wrestler and part-time narrator) and John Lacland (an insensate semi-adult foundling). But lying just beneath Papa Nick’s altruistic intent are complex motives, depths of human conflict which call up the great themes of Melville, and reveal the treacherous tenor of our times.

About this title

About the Author:

Educated at Oxford and Columbia, Paul West is the author of some forty books. A former Guggenheim Fellow, and twice an NEA Fellow, he has won the Aka Khan Fiction Prize, the Hazlett Memorial Award for Excellence in the Arts, and received in 1985 an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

Bill Marx lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and reviews books regularly for the Boston Phoenix. His reviews and critical essays have also appeared in The Boston Review, the Voice Literary Supplement, and The Nation

From Publishers Weekly:

First published in England in 1965, West's ( Lord Byron's Doctor ) first novel is a depressing account of homelessness and spiritual death. Set in New Babylon, this eccentric story revolves around Papa Nick, a nurturing old man who lives among the destitute and desperate; Pee Wee Lazarus, a midget professional wrestler; and Lacland, a homeless man whom Nick takes in. This novel, for the most part, is a character study of these figures as they encounter betrayal, hopelessness and the overdetermined vagaries of those who live on society's margins. After finding Lacland on the streets and housing him in a basement for rehabilitation, Papa Nick goodnaturedly sets about bringing order and commitment to the homeless man's life. Lacland learns quickly and is soon the toast of the town. Eventually, though, he withdraws from Papa Nick and, when he is involved in a young woman's drowning, begins to slide back into his old ways. This Eliza Doolittle-turned-Frankenstein story revolves around the themes of liberal intentions gone awry and the decay of neighborly community values. Not for the faint of heart, this is a dark, unrelenting novel.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: McPherson
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0929701275
• ISBN 13: 9780929701271
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 214