The Way Things Are: A Novel - Hardcover

Wheelis, Allen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1880909146 ISBN 13: 9781880909140

Publisher: Baskerville Pub, 1994

Synopsis

Julian falls in love with a much younger woman, Mariane, who is still under the influence of her former college professor, Eliot Hawkins, who offers a nightmarish vision of the world

About this title

From Booklist:

Psychoanalyst Wheelis invokes his knowledge of the human subconscious in a novel that reveals the futile endeavors of a 70 year-old man to secure his quickly fading youth. Reeking of Freudian pessimism, this novel describes the affair between Julian, the white-haired, sexually voracious protagonist, and Mariann, a masochistic, young woman controlled by former professor Elliot Hawkins. The bizarre relationship that unfolds in the Sea-Wrack Theater breeds questions concerning human transience, social limitations, and inherent human bestiality. The scope of issues and the ambitious title seem to betray a certain arrogance and suggest that the author alone is privy to humanity's "deeply shrouded" secrets. Wheelis, however, does not play the pedagogue; he provides neither reply nor relief to his suffering characters. The novel is a realistic, though unsympathetic, portrayal of humankind's denial of its own fragility and the paralysis born of that revelation. Hawkins' violent and obscene discourse is designed to expose and shock the audience, likewise the reader, out of a somnambulistic existence and into a life of action. The language is halting and disconnected as if to suggest stream of consciousness, but occasionally establishes only a vague simplicity. Nonetheless, the characters are fascinating and indebted to psychological insight. Kathleen Chrysler

From Publishers Weekly:

Wheelis, a psychoanalyst and novelist ( The Desert ), has here produced a seductive novel of ideas, a full-bodied May-September love story and a probing study of charismatic power. Trim, silver-haired Julian, a retired biochemistry professor, at age 70 falls for calm, reserved Mariane, a 26-year old San Francisco bookstore clerk who is currently preoccupied by her former psychology professor, a brooding, semimanic prophet of doom named Eliot Hawkins. Hawkins's public lectures, accompanied by photos of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, sex and bodily functions and pronouncements on the hypocrisy of societal taboos, update Freud's theories of Eros and Thanatos for the late 20th century. Julian weans Mariane away from this guru, but his brief affair with her turns out to be, on his part, a shield against his own fear of death, while she transfers her unfulfilled love for Hawkins to the lustful, four-times-married septuagenarian. Wheelis skillfully uses his characters' dreams and interior monologues to lay bare their unspoken thoughts and feelings. He also displays a gift for black comedy, as in Julian's visit to a dermatologist and Hawkins's funeral, which is dominated by a loud, overpossessive mother.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Baskerville Pub
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 1880909146
• ISBN 13: 9781880909140
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 181