Elroy Nights [Hardcover]

Frederick Barthelme (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2003

A generous and intimate new novel--the first in six years--from American literature's premier chronicler of middle-class angst in the new South. In Elroy Nights , Frederick Barthelme does a fresh turn on territory he's made his own over the last two decades: a middle-class America studded with characters maybe a little more wised-up than not--cautious, skeptical, private folks who would rather joke about their problems than complain about them. Elroy Nights is a reasonably successful artist and professor, fifty-something, who is caught between the midlife crisis of his forties and the much anticipated sublime decay of his sixties. Elroy and his wife Clare, perhaps too comfortable with each other, elect to try living separately, a choice characteristic of their relationship--fond and thoughtful, responsive, generous to a fault. So Elroy moves out, leases a condo, begins hanging out with his twenty-something students, and experiences a splendid reenchantment with the world. But when an unforeseen tragedy throws his, and everyone's, foibles and failures into high relief, he's confronted with reordering, retracking--and reimagining--a world gone suddenly haywire. With his trademark precision and pitch-perfect dialogue, Barthelme elegantly lays open this interweaving of twenty-year-olds with their fifty-something fellow traveler, exploring the relationships that develop in a delicate display of the sweetness of privacy and the privilege of intimacy. The result is a lovely, lilting romance, a spare yet generous masterpiece from a writer at the top of his form.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This slight story of midlife crisis and fantasy romance follows Barthelme's familiar path along the southern Gulf Coast. Elroy Nights is a 50-something art professor at a small, third-rate Mississippi university. Amicably separated from his wife, Clare, he fills his otherwise solitary life with occasional visits or dinner at Clare's when her grown daughter Winter is there. When Winter brings home Freddie, a free spirit of a girl who will be Elroy's student in the coming term, Elroy is instantly smitten. But the affair into which they casually fall leads to tragedy for their friends and near disaster for them. As Elroy ambles along, attempting to rediscover his youth by hanging out with his students, drinking and smoking again, taking impromptu road trips and listening to collegiate wisdom, he narrates his adventures, such as they are, but remains little more than a hazy collection of half-formed impressions. None of the other characters ever quite emerges as three-dimensional, either. The story is too precious and whimsical by half; no events-be they deaths, shootings or divorce talks-leave much of a mark. Through it all, Elroy observes and questions ("I thought it would be great to be inside somebody else's head for a while, to hear the noise in there," he thinks about Freddie), striving halfheartedly to regain his bearings. Barthelme's 13th work of fiction-with its slight romance and unexceptional protagonist-may disappoint fans of his earlier work.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Barthelme is the master of stealthy humor, machine-gun dialogue, and the fusing of ordinary moments with metaphysical resonance, traits that electrify his first novel since Bob the Gambler (1997). The territory is the same, the vegetatively extravagant, bird-graced, casino-sporting environs around Biloxi, Mississippi, and once again Barthelme proves to be sharply attuned to the dissonance between generations. Elroy Nights (night is his element: he spends it outdoors stargazing and soul-searching in scenes of bittersweet beauty) was once a big deal in the art world, now he teaches at a comfortably mediocre state college. Middle age is inducing feelings of irrelevancy, his marriage to Clare has gone cold, and he isn't much of a father to his smart-alecky, college-age but drifty stepdaughter, Winter. He and Clare separate, and Elroy gets too involved with his students, including an intriguingly conflicted gal named Freddie. Another student's suicide launches a nearly disastrous road trip, and inspires intense reflections on life, art, eroticism, age, and love. Barthelme's cogent and haunting musings on the human condition are so laconic, jokey, and misdirected in a meandering Mississippi Delta manner as to be almost subliminal, but the impact of his psychological insights increases incrementally as his bumbling hero rediscovers the wonder of life. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint Press; 1 edition (September 23, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582431280
• ISBN-13: 978-1582431284
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,887,284 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Frederick Barthelme is author of sixteen books including Moon Deluxe, Second Marriage, Tracer, Two Against One, Natural Selection, The Brothers, Painted Desert, and Bob the Gambler. He is an occasional contributor toThe New Yorker and has published in GQ, Kansas Quarterly, Epoch, Playboy, Esquire, TriQuarterly, North American Review, Frank, New Ohio Review and elsewhere. His memoir, Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, was co-authored with his brother Steven. A retrospective collection of stories, The Law of Averages, was published by Counterpoint. His novel, Elroy Nights, was published in 2003 by Counterpoint, was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and was one of five finalists for the 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award. His new novel, Waveland, is from Doubleday.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Masterwork, November 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Elroy Nights (Hardcover)

I've been reading Barthelme since his first collection of stories - the mesmerizing 'Moon Deluxe' - and ELROY NIGHTS is his finest work yet. It's a masterpiece. Measured, beautiful, heartbreaking, and deeply felt.

If there were any justice in the world, this new novel would sweep the literary awards. My fear, however, is that publishing insiders will continue to reward their own mediocrity.

The story does travel some of the same paths as Barthelme's other work, but the language here is more mature, richer than anything else in his catalog.

As always, the characters are remarkable, smart, sassy, and brutal. And impossible not to watch.

The climax of the story is shocking, and the sweet denoument plays honest and forlorn.

I can't recommend it enough.

3.0 out of 5 stars Evening approaches night, August 5, 2011

By 

Wirklich Verrukt - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elroy Nights (Hardcover)

I found Elroy Nights on a list of novels supposed to be about artists. That didn't turn out to be quite accurate. Elroy, the protagonist--and a narrator so casual that he doesn't name himself until page 19--teaches art at a former junior college that grew with increasing enrollments into a four-year state college. Although he used to make art, and some of his work lurks unseen in the background, he makes none in these pages, and seems not to have made any anytime recently. The one undisputed artist in the book, one of his students, commits suicide early on, and his death precipitates some desultory events and maudlin, if sincere, soul-searching. Anyone unfamiliar with what's called Minimalism (Raymond Carver, Ann Beattie, etc) may find this a dry read.The talk is realistically cryptic: they know what they mean in the moment, and we have to read between the lines. It's also ironic, mocking, funny in a way the speakers are enjoying without laughter. This kind of impossibly clever patter will be familiar from TV and movies, which in their insatiable need for material stole it blind (and tone deaf). Readers used to conventional dialogue, which sounds like nothing outside of fictional narratives, may be lost or misled. Most of all, though, nothing dramatic happens in the present moment. We learn of the suicide, rather than see it. Even when a character is shot, a reader whose attention blinks could miss it.

Those familiar with minimalism might imagine a whole novel (228 pages) written by Carver and necessarily (don't take any nonsense about it) edited by Gordon Lish. The worse news, though, is that this isn't a book for today's primary book demographic, which is an alliance of fantasy-prone teenagers and their mothers. There are no living dead here, unless you count the long-married couple with a teenage daughter of their own. Elroy and Clare's separation frames the novel, but it's a separation as ambivalent as it is amiable. He may be a little more candid about the learning-sparking erotic charge between teacher and student than some readers are ready for. Or what goes on in the mind of a step-father. On the other hand, we all know a woman like Freddie, whose first serious entanglement is with her best friend's father. What are we to make of it when Elroy says he not only loves his wife, but he has no other feelings for her? It may be that everything trivial has weathered away. His having been an artist is useful because when young, artists more than anyone else think of themselves as different, apart from the hoi polloi. Yet what comes with experience is the unwelcome realization that we're all so much more alike than we are unique. Our lives are more like Barthelme's account than they are like movies or adventures. That gives us reason to escape, but it also gives us reason to return to honest literature like this.

7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, February 6, 2004

By 

J. Hood (Charlotte, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Elroy Nights (Hardcover)

I am an avid reader and writer, and I had to force myself to finish this novel. Although I appreciate the sentiments the author evokes, the reading is BORING. It seems more like a memoir, or a vehicle solely for the author to convey his personal feelings and/or experiences regarding the disillusionment of mid-life contrasted with the searching and angst of today's youth. A fertile subject matter, but the way this book is written you'd either have to be in awe of the author's personna or had almost exact similar experiences as the narrator for the book to grab you. It doesn't grab me, and I wanted to go there. Berthelme says the same thing over and over again, with the same words re-tossed, and I got it the first few times. This one should've been a short story.

No doubt Barthelme is a good writer. My problem with large portions of this book is that he seems to know this, and the writing gets a little too smart for its own good, at the expense of this reader's interest. What is frustrating is that you have to wade through stilted dialouge and ruminations for the sake of ruminating (like the technicaly great music solo that goes everywhere, but nowhere) to get to the brilliant passages - the nights the protagonist spends outside on his wife's deck, and his detailed noticing of nature with clarity he hasn't enjoyed since youth. Good stuff.

I don't enjoy writing negative reviews, and, therefore, I don't do it often. But, I guess if these pages are to serve what I assume to be their purpose, I need to be honest. This book is NOT a masterpiece. For it to be hailed as one would be unjust in my mind, given that we all have our own notions of justice. The other stuff I've read by Barthelme is better. Read some, because this guy can write. He just misses the mark here, but at least he's shooting.