Sylvia: A Novel (Paperback)

by Leonard Michaels (Author), Diane Johnson (Introduction) "In 1960, after two years of graduate school at Berkeley, returned to New York without a Ph.D. or any idea what I'd do, only a..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, New Jersey, University of Michigan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

First acclaimed as a story-length memoir, then expanded into a novel, Sylvia draws us into the lives of a young couple whose struggle to survive Manhattan in the early 1960s involves them in sexual fantasias, paranoia, drugs, and the extreme intimacy of self-destructive violence.

Reproducing a time and place with extraordinary clarity, Leonard Michaels explores with self-wounding honesty the excruciating particulars of a youthful marriage headed for disaster.

About the Author

Leonard Michaels (1933–2003) was the author of Going Places, I Would Have Saved Them If I Could, and The Men’s Club, among other books. FSG will publish his Collected Stories in June to coincide with the reissue of Sylvia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (May 29, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374271070
• ISBN-13: 978-0374271077
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #323,816 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Lenny Michaels: A Lost Master, June 25, 2007

By	Howard Goldowsky "ChessWriter" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Like another reviewer, I learned about Leonard Michaels just a few weeks ago from the NY Times review of his collected stories. The review piqued my interest; I read the editor's note in the bookstore, which said Michaels would incessantly edit his work for lyrical quality. That's when I knew this was my guy. Constantly searching the plethora of writing available for writers I can learn from, who care about the rhythm of the sounds of their words on the page, I was pleasantly surprised to find the full oeuvre of Leonard Michaels republished and ready for consumption. SYLVIA seemed like a good place to start. It was short; it was venerated. I finished the book in a few days.

SYLVIA is about the relationship between the narrator and Sylvia, a young college girl the narrator meets in NYC, a few months after he drops out of a literature graduate program. The writing is a fictional memoir, and the narrator's background excuses him for the magic in his prose. For example, a simple look out of his Manhattan apartment window produces writing like this: "Trucks, cars, and trains flashed through the grid of cables, crossing the East River to and from Brooklyn. Freighters progressed slowly, as if in a dream, to and from the ocean. In the sky, squadrons of pigeons made grand loops, and soaring gulls made line drawings...All day and night, from every direction, came the hum of the tremendum."

The narrator turns out to have certain mild psychiatric issues; his new lover has major issues never diagnosed. The combined problems, mixed with the cultural mores of the 60's and the familial and Jewish guilt of the era, converge to create problems for the narrator. The end is unexpected but not unlikely.

SYLVIA, which reads sort of like an autobiographical novella, (this opinion is based on the obituaries I've read of Michaels -- obits that I dug up after perusing his stories and needing to know more about this lost talent), one can understand that this book could have been written as a closure to his first marriage.

I'm looking forward to reading his collected stories. I will most certainly read THE MEN'S CLUB. Leonard Michaels is what today they would call a "writer's writer."

Here is an quote from an essay Michaels wrote for The Partisan Review. If this quote doesn't make you want to go out and read Michaels, then nothing will: "Basic elements of writing -- diction, grammar, tone, imagery, the patterns of sound made by your sentences -- will say a good deal about you (whether you are conscious of it or not) so that it is possible for you to be writing about yourself before you even know you are writing about yourself. Regardless of your subject, these basic elements, as well as countless and immeasurable qualities of mind, are at play in your writing and will make your presence felt to a reader as palpably as your handwriting. You virtually write your name, as it were, before you literally sign your name, every time you write."

These ideas of Michaels' resonate all over SYLVIA. If you're a writer, read this book and then study it. Then go out and read the rest of Michaels' work. It's not a lot of volume, but it's a lot of quality.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant and disturbing, June 17, 2007

By	elektrophyte - See all my reviews

An intense and tragic story based on reality. It is about a man who married a woman whose demons were trying to consume her. He saw no other way.

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A twit in New York, June 7, 2007

By	littlecatland "littlecatland" (MA) - See all my reviews

I read "The Men's Club" many years ago and liked it. It was about a group of clueless men who got together and talked about women while they trashed a house with knives. The problem with "Sylvia" a novel/memoir (not sure which) is that Michaels himself talks and writes like the arrogant fools that were characters in "The Men's Club."

The narrator, Michaels, writes how he hated Sylvia, screamed at her, cheated on her, never should've married her, and then she suicides. She might have lived but the ambulance took her to a hospital full of non-white doctors who barely knew what they were doing.

This tale is coupled with little, timely anecdotes about NYC in the 1960s: they go to the Village Vanguard, they see Lenny Bruce, Michaels meets Allen Ginsburg for the third time and Ginsburg doesn't remember him (or maybe pretends not to recognize him). Michaels mentions current events from the time period and then mentions how he never got Sylvia to take any interest in the news paper. Sylvia is presented as kind of dumb and emotional as are the narrator's parents.

I don't know how much of this book is really true but if this is actually a portrait of the writer's ex-wife, orphaned, suicided and leaving no children, it's a miserable way to present her, even if he hated her.

The short book is well-written but the tight style can't save such an arrogant self portrait.