Moments of Doubt (Paperback)

~ Walter B. Levis (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

What was Eli Shaffner thinking? He had it all. An attractive, intelligent girlfriend, a wealthy family, the perks of privilege. He had the opportunity to build the kind of life most people can only dream about. But a few obstacles got in his way—lust, pride, a high-minded sense of professional purpose, and a profound aversion to living like the rich, guilt-ridden Jews he felt surrounded by. So Eli, a Chicago-area tennis pro with a thirst for philosophy, a commitment to Yoga, and a passion for an exotic beauty named Malaika, decides to throw it all away and build a life on his own terms, a task that will prove far more difficult, and dangerous, than he could ever have predicted. In the darkly comic tradition of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, Moments of Doubt is the emotionally charged account of how a man makes his way through passion, pain, and paradox toward the cathartic realization that sometimes, in the end, the very things you thought were destroying your life prove to be the only things that can make you happy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 226 pages
• Publisher: PublishAmerica (March 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591296277
• ISBN-13: 978-1591296270
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,144,922 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An original voice, a wonderful story., May 20, 2003

By A Customer

Walter Levis's novel is a smashing success, both witty and thoughtful. He manages with great sensitivity to examine the passions, contradictions, impertinences and foolishness of young manhood. In Eli Shaffner, Levis has created a character that earnestly--and often hilariously--attempts to create himself in his own eccentric image of the ideal man. Levis depicts Eli's slow, resistant surrender to the inevitability of first truths, and his genuine commitment to adulthood, with rare insight and genuine authenticity.

While this novel occurs in the milieu of the affluent Jewish North Shore, its themes and circumstances are truly universal. An Irish-American kid from Canaryville or an African-American kid from Austin faces, in his own way, the same issues.

A breathtakingly good first novel. I can't wait for Levis to produce his next one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read! Bravo Walter Levis!!, May 15, 2003

By	Daniel Farrell (Presently Seattle ...) - See all my reviews

Oh to be young again! Or at least to view the fictionalized world of Eli Shaffner through Walter Levis's eyes. I felt myself longing again for the freedom of lost youth and for love that might have been ... had I not chosen the "safe" path subtly chosen by my strict Irish-American parents. Mr. Levis's first novel portrays his lead character's life in a way that will appeal to the "rebel" lost in all of us. Decisions made in the moment that last a lifetime ... and decisions made over time, after anguished thought, that amount to nothing in the grand scheme ... such is the vivid world painted in words by Walter Levis. I shyly admit that I did have to take a cold shower or two prior to completing the book and I still hold a dear place in my heart for Levis's fictionalized free spirit, "Malaika". To that end, I have enrolled in a local yoga class to experience the calm, inner peace, introspection, and inspiration the author has obviously drawn upon for this book. Walter Levis is a consummate storyteller.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Holy Moses and the Prince, May 19, 2003

By A Customer

So this writing instructor tells his class that the four all-time best gimmicks in the history of fiction are sex, mystery, religion, and royalty. The next day, his star pupil gives him this story: "Holy Moses," said the Princess. "Pregnant again! I wonder who did it."

Walter B. Levis does it better. In his first novel, Moments of Doubt, he puts his own wonderfully funny personal spin on the Fab Four. There is plenty of sex, and even a pregnancy, though nowadays of course the question is not who done it, but what they are going to do about it. As for royalty, the protagonist's nickname for himself is "Prince"-- he says it on impulse, looking at the label on his tennis shirt, but everything about the book suggests that Levis wants to make the adjective "Jappy" into a label that guys can wear too.

And religion. First, there is a lot of casual, promiscuous religion-- religious one-night-stands, as it were, with yoga, with philosophy, with therapy, with a certain earnestness about tennis or honesty in personal conversation. But really, the book is about what it means to be a Jew in America today. "I flirted once with a life of real meaning," says the hero's father, "but I traded it in long ago for a life of real comfort." Some of the protagonist's self-destructive behavior--only some, mind you, he's a horny clueless bumbler like anybody else-- can be read as his attempt to avoid that life of real comfort, to find worthy continuity with the long and long-suffering traditions of his ancestors. After he messes up his life pretty completely, a voice from the grave tells him to talk to a rabbi, and it is no small triumph of Levis's art to have created in Rabbi Chernowitz ("Call me Danny") a comic counselor equal to the task.

To comment on where the Prince has arrived at the end of the fable would be like giving away the ending in an Agatha Christie mystery. Suffice it to say that his journey there matters. Levis has written a very funny, a very insightful, a very wise book, tackling some very large themes with grace and tact. It is a book to savor.