Shimmer [Paperback]

Sarah Schulman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 1999

Manhattan, 1948. From the garlic-scented walkups of Little Italy to the Times Square Automat to the plush booths of the Stork Club, three New Yorkers strive to make their mark on the city under the growing shadow of the Red Scare.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Shimmer is the fifth (and, to date, best) novel from Sarah Schulman, the lesbian bard of contemporary urban fiction. Set in Manhattan during the harrowing McCarthy era of the early 1950s, the book follows Sylvia Golubowsky, a Brooklyn-born and bred gay Jewish woman who aspires to a career as a reporter, biding her time as the head typist in the stenographer pool of a major New York tabloid; the aptly named Austin Van Cleeve, a conniving, pretentious "blue-blooded" Republican gossip columnist armed with a sinister pen that threatens both New York City and Washington, D.C.; and Cal Byfield, an African American Columbia University graduate married to a white jazz pianist, who finds himself working as a short-order cook while seeking recognition as a great American playwright.

It is through the eyes of each of these richly drawn characters, whose lives overlap in unexpected and credible ways, that Schulman so artfully depicts the tempo and texture of one of the lowest points in American history. Here we witness a young, insecure, and vengeful Richard Nixon as he seeks to destroy Alger Hiss to advance his own career from the perspective of Sylvia, who reveals her desire to elect the Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace, and from that of racist, archconservative Van Cleeve, who would do almost anything to see Eisenhower in office. And, through Schulman's sensitive and skillful prose, we experience the struggles Byfield must face to assert and maintain his integrity while trying to break out as a serious writer as he works to get his plays produced on Broadway.

A major departure for Schulman in both content and style, Shimmer is at once a memorable entertainment and an excellent evocation of race, class, and sex in postwar New York. --Kera Bolonik --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Set in the McCarthy era, Schulman's seventh novel (after Rat Bohemia) is a study of justice, loyalty and selling out?a scenario of how national politics and gender bias can blight a generation's talents and livelihoods. Three distinctive narrators provide a prismatic view of New York in the late 1940s and '50s; while this device grants perspective, it sometimes gives the reader vertigo. Sylvia Golubowsky's retrospective story is the most personal?and therefore the most affecting of the three. She has worked her way up the steno pool to qualify as a reporter for the New York Star only to have editor-in-chief Jim O'Dwyer hire her unqualified brother, Lou, instead. Sylvia's oppression by her family has many echoes, in both her own life as a lesbian and in the two parallel stories in the book. Second narrator Austin Van Cleeve, an anti-New Deal patrician social columnist, is the friend and nemesis of O'Dwyer, whose liberal editorials earn him a subpoena from the dreaded HUAC. Third narrator Tammi Byfield is a contemporary black Columbia student sharing the journals of her grandfather, Cal Byfield, written at the time he was Sylvia's neighbor. Cal, a Columbia graduate who works as a cook and writes plays, wants his work to transcend the Negro theater and play on Broadway. As Sylvia's affair with Cal's white wife plays into the new sensationalistic focus of the Star, irony becomes the great leveler. More than a study of interlinked lives, the novel is a diligent, atmospherically detailed slice of social and cultural history. Schulman adroitly evokes the time when Whittaker Chambers, Miles Davis and Willy Loman were household names, when the Rosenbergs were electrocuted, blacklisting was a national shame and the man always got the job. Editor, Charlotte Abbott.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Perennial (August 3, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380797658
• ISBN-13: 978-0380797653
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,157,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sarah Schulman is the author of fifteen books, including nine novels. Forthcoming is the hard cover edition of a new nonfiction book THE GENTRIFICATION OF THE MIND: WItness to a Lost Imagination by University of California Press, to be followed in Spring, 2012 by the paperback of TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences Then is Fall 2012, Duke University Press will publish ISRAEL/PALESTINE AND THE QUEER INTERNATIONAL. Most recently the paperback edition of her novel THE MERE FUTURE was published by Arsenal Pulp.Previous novels are THE CHILD, SHIMMER, EMPATHY, RAT BOHEMIA, PEOPLE IN TROUBLE, AFTER DELORE, GIRLS VISIONS AND EVERYTHING and THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY. Her nonfiction titles are TIES THAT BIND: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, STAGESTRUCK:Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America, and MY AMERICAN HISTORY: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years. A working playwright, her productions include: CARSON McCULLERS (published by Playscripts Ink), MANIC FLIGHT REACTION and the theatrical adaptation of Isaac Singer's ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY. As a screenwriter, her films include THE OWLS (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye)- Berlin Film Festival 2010, MOMMY IS COMING (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye)- Berlin Film Festival selection 2011, and she is co-producer with Jim Hubbard of his feature documentary UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP, which will premiere in Jan/Feb 2012.. SOPHIE, a film based on her 1984 novel, THE SOPHIE HOROWITZ STORY is being written and director by Claude Mangold and is currently in pre-production. As a journalist, her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Interview. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwrighting, a Fullbright in Judaic Studies, two American Library Association Book Awards, and is the 2009 recipient of the Kessler Prize for sustained contribution to LGBT studies. Sarah is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, College of State Island, a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. She is on the advisory board of the Center for Human Rights and Social Movements at Harvard's Kennedy School. She is the US coordinator of the first LGBT Delegation to Palestine. She lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars as it is, April 1, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Shimmer (Paperback)

I read "shimmer" in german, the paperback-edition. And as in the beginning I expected fiction and characters like I knew them from other Sarah Schulman books like Empathy or Rat Bohemia, such ones I could easily identify with, I first was surprised, that it had not this issue. I was breathless each time I took the book - I read her using words I didn't find yet to express thoughts I didn't have yet, but knew and felt deep inside. And the more I read I loved the way she used the 1950ies to describe today's reality.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too shetchy, August 15, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shimmer (Hardcover)

A real disappointment. The story is sketchy, some of the characters one-dimensional and unmotivated. The nasty air of menace and evil that we associate with the McCarthy Era is well-evoked. But I'm never made to feel anything for the characters, which is too bad because lines between good and evil, and right and wrong are made so clear, so black and white.

We never really learn why sopme of the major characters do or feel anything they do or feel. The right-wing columnist and the black playwright are especially flat characters. Racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Communism: these are big topics that people have deep conflicts about, and there's not enough deep conflict within the characters in 'Shimmer.' People are who they seem to be and that's it.

4.0 out of 5 stars Sarah Schulman borrows from Kurt Vonnegut, June 8, 2001

By 

Dre "andrea_marie" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shimmer (Paperback)

I bought this book after reading "Girls, Visions & Everything" and was initially disappointed in the characters in this book. Schulman abandons the gay urban setting, trading it for the age of McCarthyism. However, after reading a few chapters, I began to get immensely drawn into the narrative. The writing is amazing, linking different characters from different times and places into one cohesive story. The ability to see the events from many perspectives is creative and interesting.

The book reminded me a great deal of "Slaughterhouse Five" in its seemingly disconnected events that later are drawn together into one larger story.