Tenement of Clay (Paperback, American ed)

A secular savior takes a derelict into his crumbling brownstone with predictably gloomy results - first US publication for this early (1965) novel by the author of The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper, Lord Byron's Doctor, etc. Edward Nicholas, a.k.a. Papa Nick, is a man with a mission: the free home he provides in the northeastern city of New Babylon for the likes of Brownie, Rachel, Johnny Sligo, Mazzini, and Edgar the Time. One day Papa Nick and dwarf wrestler Pee Wee Lazarus make a new acquisition, John Lacland, a fully grown Wild Child who can scarcely speak or tolerate light, shoes, and open spaces. Determining to humanize Lacland, Papa Nick takes him in, shelters him in a crate, locks him in a reassuring basement room, and embarks on a course of urban acculturation - climaxing in a grimly humorous evening at ringside for one of Lazarus' wrestling matches. But Lacland is no Kaspar Hauser, and Papa Nick, the sonorous "custodian become jailer," succeeds only in deculturating himself in a hallucinatory folie a trois, as Lacland talks him out of his high-minded ideals and Lazarus ends selling naughty negligees through the mail. This depressing tale is garnished with grotesque secondary figures (like Papa Nick's movie-star lover Venetia and Mimi, the blond whom Lacland meets while he's cheering on Lazarus) and presented in a prose poetry redolent of Poe, Eliot, Beckett, Grass, and Tristram Shandy, though still less florid - perhaps because of loyalty to its models - than that of West's more recent, no-holds-barred style-pieces. Not a must read, or a fun read, but curiously prophetic of the recent calamitous effects of enforced acculturation in places like united Germany. (Kirkus Reviews)

Slums of the American city of New Babylon provide an all-too-real setting for this prescient novel of homelessness, noble intentions, moral corruption, and social castoffs. Tenement of Clay tells of Papa Nick, a dwarf wrestler named Lazarus, and a derelict called Lacland.

General

Imprint:	McPherson & Co Publishers,U.S.
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	March 1998
First published:	April 1993
Authors:	Paul West
Dimensions:	216 x 140 x 17mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	216
Edition:	American ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-929701-28-8
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction Promotions
LSN:	0-929701-28-3
Barcode:	9780929701288

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!