Man About Town [Hardcover]

Mark Merlis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 29, 2003

Joel Lingeman has been set adrift. Until recently, life was 'relative contentedness'; working for Congress, frequenting the Hill club a little too frequently, cooking dinner for two every night and routine sex on Sundays. Now Sam, his lover of fifteen years, has left him for a stunning twenty-three year old and he cannot score a trick in the sleaziest pick-up joint in town. Joel's revulsion for the politics around him has dissipated into mild amusement at the 'social Darwinists' ready to snatch the last cents from the hands of the old and ailing. And he is increasingly obsessed by the different lives he could have led. When a teenage fantasy reasserts itself, the blond haired demi-god his eye once fell upon modelling swimsuits in the back of an old magazine, Joel is overcome by a pervasive sense of loss and embarks on a quest to hunt down 'the Santa Fe boy'. Astutely observed and resonant with dark, sardonic undertones, Man About Town is an unforgettable novel about losing your way, your self-esteem and your security.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Joel Lingeman, the protagonist of the third novel by Washington insider-cum-novelist Merlis (American Studies), is, at 45, a man in full, with a high-profile job as a health policy adviser to Congress, a long-term lover and a tightly knit circle of like-minded friends. Still, he is unable to avoid the eternal question of "what if?" His mind wanders off medicare and HMOs, drifting back to his high school years, yearning for another chance to correct his juvenile mistakes, to chart a different course in life. Change, however, is thrust upon him when Sam, his lover of 15 years, leaves him for a younger man. Lingeman's world implodes, and he is thrown back into the scene of Washington's gay bars, seeking reaffirmation and companionship. His sudden change of status propels him into an obsession with one of his boyhood fantasies, a model in an ad he saw in a magazine as a child. Lingeman is so engrossed by this ephemeral man that he misses a more obvious and tangible potential lover. Cleverly, Lingeman's career echoes his romantic life, as he finds himself disgusted with the opportunism and cynicism of Washington politics. Merlis's staccato style, stinging and insightful, puts the reader inside Lingeman's head as he treads the fine line between fantasy and reality, between the superficial and the meaningful. Merlis is able to move from describing a certain assistant's dress as one "an organ grinder might have chosen for his monkey" to the deepest contemplations of commitment, couplehood and the importance of candor. He creates a protagonist with broad appeal, proving beyond doubt that the personal is political and vice versa.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Middle-aged Washington, D.C., functionary Joel first realized his same-sex orientation at age 14, when a male swimsuit model riveted his gaze. Indeed, he has subconsciously spent his life since trying to match a real man to that image and never finding one who measures up, as he grasps only after his partner of 15 years leaves him for a younger man, and he finds himself hanging around in bars again, hoping against hope (he has "let himself go," which doesn't help). When he meets Michael, physically an unlikely match for him, he scarcely trusts his feelings, and he still can't relinquish his 30-year dream of that swimsuit model. Meanwhile, he starts entertaining doubts about his work, specifically the morality of providing legislators with "hard facts" to promote such measures as denying Medicare to those who haven't practiced safe sex. Seamlessly weaving together inner thoughts, exterior action, and dialogue, Merlis conveys the tension between unspoken yearnings and fear of expressing them. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (April 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007156111
• ISBN-13: 978-0007156115
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,323,560 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A portrait of gay life in Washington, September 23, 2003

By 

M. J Leonard "MikeonAlpha" (Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Man About Town (Hardcover)

The main protagonist of the last book I read was desperately searching for love and substance and he had hurled himself headfirst into a world of shallow relationships and easy sex. The main character of this story, however, is probably just the opposite. Sheltered from gay life for years, and settled in a cushy government job with a cozy circle of drinking buddies, Joel doesnt have much idea of what the world is like outside of Dupont Circle, the Hill Club, and reading the Congressional Record. Poor Joel, he looks longingly at the Chelsea boys with their muscular bodies and their body piercings and he just feels as though life has left him behind. After his long term lover, Sam leaves him after 15 years, he not only has to cope with, eating too much and getting fat, and the ant-gay legislation going through Congress, but he develops an obsession with a picture of a man in a sexy swimsuit from a magazine that came out back in 1964.

Man About Town is remarkably whimsical and tenderhearted in its portrayal of an aging gay man, who feels as though hes let life pass him by. This story is good, not just for an insiders view of the goings on in Washington, and the cynical descriptions of how legislation is formed through the lobbying of special interest groups. But it is also good for showing what many aging gay men are going through, or have gone through. Joels obsession with the swim suited man in the magazine Man About Town, is an attempt to recapture his past, and to come to terms with the fact that  yes, he could have done things differently. Joels journey is touching, comic and deftly observed, as he questions his relationship with Sam, and his life as he drastically tries to get back into the dating game by dating men again, and of course, running off to Zippers Bar every chance he can get.

Ive never been to Washington, but Merlis bought the city, and the goings on in Capital Hill vividly to life for me. He has a nice, easy economical style, and an excellent ear for natural conversation. The secondary characters that weave in and out of Joels life are also deftly observed: Kevin, Sams new boyfriend is young, insecure and dresses like a rapper; Andrew, Joels colleague, ambitious and still in the closet, and prepared to compromise his principles for his career; and then theres Michael, young, black, and confessing to like older men like Joel. Theres much to enjoy in this book, as Merlis takes us on a very special journey with a rather ordinary but wise man.

Michael

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another "The Way We Live Now" Story, July 20, 2003

By 

H. F. Corbin "Foster Corbin" (ATLANTA, GA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Man About Town (Hardcover)

It's the mid-nineties. Joel Lingeman is gay and 45, makes good money with a job in Congress, has a receding hairline and an expanding waistline, likes to eat fatty foods, is in a relationship of 15 years with Sam but is so out of touch with his lover that he is totally surprised and blown away when Sam leaves him for a twenty-three year old. He opines that he is probably alive today because of this stagnating relationship since he and Sam, by their monotonous monogamy, have managed to avoid the plague. Joel is a civilian example of the military's "Don't ask; don't tell" in that he is out to practically nobody but his friends. In his defense, he does manage to come out when backed into a corner. One more thing: he discovers sex with African Americans. He is for the most part unappealing but totally believable. Unfortunately, he is pretty much like most every gay person I have ever known in D. C. They have some mid-level position connected with the government, they wouldn't be seen leaving Lambda Rising Bookstore, but they'll dress up in a tuxedo in a flash and attend an expensive gay fundraiser that does not use the word "gay" in any of its advertisements. One suspects they are closet Log Cabin Republicans. Sound familiar?

Yet in spite of this less than admirable set of characters, Mark Merlis has managed to spin an interesting yarn, which is proof positive that he is an exceptionally good writer. He appears to have gotten the cynicism of lawmakers on Capitol Hill and their underlings accurate as well. I had a good time trying to figure out of some of the lawmakers Merlis describes were based on real people.

Merlis is one of the half dozen or so gay writers whose novels I eagerly await to read.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE THOUGHTFUL ODYSSEY OF AN ANTI-HERO, October 29, 2003

By 

Charles Slovenski (Geneva Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Man About Town (Hardcover)

Joel is an anti-hero. At 45, he's described by his new, young and hunky boyfriend as an "old white guy." He falls far short of the unwritten but absolute requirements that a gay man must have in order to be a player. Nevertheless, Joel is someone to contend with and Merlis outlines his adventures and self-appraisal with touching and bitter clarity.

The story begins when, after 15 years, Joel's boyfriend leaves him for a "younger man." Thus Joel embarks on an oddyssey which includes a search for emotional and sexual contacts as well as an even more elusive search for the "Sante Fe boy," a model he saw in a 1964 swimwear ad who never ceased to fascinate Joel while at the same time making him feel outside everything that is both masculine and fraternal.

Although it is described as dull and ineffectual, Joel actually has an interesting job in the Office of Legislative Analysis. Joel complains that the job is useless, but it is obvious that he takes delight in the workings on Capitol Hill and his part in it. When he is called upon to give advice on a Medicare ruling that would exclude benefits to AIDS patients based on prior sexual activity regarding "personal responsibility," Joel is faced with a moral dilemma. He finds the proposition absurd: "once you start down that line, there's no end to it: smokers, drinkers..." However, he can see both sides: "... to a man in Montana ... there was honestly something disturbing about the spectacle of people partying  pumping themselves up, dropping a few chemicals, getting it on in open defiance of every recommended precaution  and then handing Uncle Sam the bill." The atmosphere in Washington with its political background and characters, its variety of men  some of whom head straight from work to get drunk at the Hill Club  is telling and cynical.

When he finally locates the one-time model, who now is a grandfather living in New Jersey, he visits him and experiences a moment of defining revelation. "Petras has radiated beauty one day in 1963," Merlis writes, "and in 1964 Joel had caught a glimpse of it...by the time Joel saw it, it was already gone." He begins to realize the purpose of all this: we are on the planet so that "like a man watching from light years away the flash of a star that had died a billion years before ...[it] would not pass away unobserved." Not bad for a non-player like Joel. Now, if Merlis could just get him to join a gym and floss his teeth...