Two Halves Of New Haven [Hardcover]

Martin Schecter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 16, 1992

As Paul Levinson, a student at Yale Medical School, fights his way through the relentless pressure that the program presents, he struggles to come to terms with his identity as a homosexual who does not really want to become a doctor. A first novel. 12,500 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This dextrous but ultimately uneven and superficial first novel offers an inside look at the Yale Medical School, from the point of view of a disaffected first-year student, Paul Levinson. As the term starts he is awed by Yale and all that it signifies. Simultaneous to Paul's confrontation with his first cadaver we read his exploration of his own inner workings and heretofore unacknowledged homosexuality. As he pursues gay experiences and embraces a gay identity, he renounces his goal of becoming a doctor in the Ivy League medical establishment and discovers that working as a bartender and making videos allows him to stop feeling like an imposter. An incident early in the story--the unmasking of a fellow student who turns out to have a history of fraudulent identities--serves as Paul's point of reference as he searches for self-knowledge and acceptance. Schecter, a science writer who attended Yale Medical School, has written a funny and sympathetic New Age bildungsroman . But it misses the mark; the author's concerns are too personal, too specific, and the story is less authentic in background, setting and atmosphere than it purports to be.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Although unquestionably sincere in its intentions, this first novel about a Yale medical student who decides to chuck it all and embark on that youthful odyssey known as "finding yourself" just misses. The author has an easy, fluent style and a real facility for storytelling, and his characterization is nearly always good, or at least credible. But he fails to handle the plot satisfactorily; after a promising beginning, the narrative degenerates into a loose collection of episodes. By mistake or mistaken design, protagonist Paul Levinson's curiosity about sex and experiments with homosexual love get an amount of space out of proportion to their importance to the story. A little of this ho-hum tale goes a long way. -- A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st edition (June 16, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517584182
• ISBN-13: 978-0517584187
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,948,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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