Walks With Men: Fiction [Hardcover]

Ann Beattie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 8, 2010

Ann Beattie arrived in New York young, observant and celebrated (as The New Yorker’s young fiction star) in one of the most compelling and creative eras of recent times. So does the protagonist of her intense new novella, Walks with Men.

It is 1980 in New York City, and Jane, a valedictorian fresh out of Harvard, strikes a deal with Neil, an intoxicating writer twenty years her senior. The two quickly become lovers, living together in a Chelsea brownstone, and Neil reveals the rules for a life well lived: If you take food home from a restaurant, don’t say it’s because you want leftovers for "the dog." Say that you want the bones for "a friend who does autopsies." If you can’t stand on your head (which is best), learn to do cartwheels. Have sex in airplane bathrooms. Wear only raincoats made in England. Neil’s certainties, Jane discovers, mask his deceptions. Her true education begins.

"One of our era’s most vital masters of the short form" (The Washington Post), Beattie brilliantly captures a time, a place and a style of engagement. Her voice is original and iconic.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beattie (Follies) turns a clinical eye on young love in this moody period piece about Jane Jay Costner, who, just out of college in 1980, is given the opportunity to learn the ways of the world and of love from an older man. The affair is proposed as an intellectual experiment, and the reader cringes as young Jane becomes deeply involved with Neil, an older writer who is, predictably, married and no great catch besides. He offers a stream of pretentious aphorisms (When you travel to Europe, never wear a fragrance from the country you're in) that Jane initially admires but eventually distrusts. But even as her dislike for her lover grows, she becomes ever more entrenched. Beattie's talent as a prose stylist is evident: the sentences are gorgeous and there isn't a word out of place, but emotion is subdued to the point of aloofness, leaving the reader with little more than idle concern for Jane. Beattie effortlessly conjures 1980s New York, but the human terrain could be less muted. (June)
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From Bookmarks Magazine

A hybrid of the minimalist style she pioneered forty years ago and the more evocative stories she has produced more recently, Beattie's new novella drew mixed reviews. Detractors panned the detached, camera-like record of events, claiming that the lack of depth rendered her characters passive and prevented readers from empathizing with them. On the other hand, the Miami Herald praised Beattie for "kick[ing] away all the scaffolding of psychobabble and pathography and let[ting] the story tell itself." Admirers also praised her sharp sense of humor and "amazing gift for presenting a complete story in out-of-sequence fragments" (Miami Herald). Walks With Men, though flawed, will entice readers with its haunting tribute to the naivete of youth. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 102 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (June 8, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439175764
• ISBN-13: 978-1439175767
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 4.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,463,634 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections and in John Updike's Best American Short Stories of the Century. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story form. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Key West, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Walks With Men is One to Skip, July 6, 2010

By 

Bonnie Brody "Book Lover and Knitter" (Port St. Lucie, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Walks With Men: Fiction (Paperback)

I've read most of Beattie's books and have liked them very much; I've even loved some of them. Thus, I was shocked by the postured unreadability of her novella, Walks With Men: Fiction. At only 100 pages, I thought I'd fly through It. Instead, I felt like I was trying to work myself through quicksand.

The premise starts with a young woman of 22 years going out with a 44 year-old man. Besides his being twice her age, he is married, which she doesn't know. Their relationship is based on her letting him teach her how men think. "I explain anything you want to know about men, but nobody can know I'm the source of your information." The book goes downhill from there. The young woman breaks up with her organic farmer boyfriend to live with the older man. She and the older man end up getting married and develop a pre-nup that takes into account the possibility of his future philandering.

I don't know why Ann Beattie published this book. She has such talent and has written so many lovely works. I'd skip this one.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I Think It's Great, December 3, 2010

By 

Tsuruoka "tsuruoka" (Columbia, MD United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walks With Men: Fiction (Paperback)

I picked this book up almost by accident. I was looking through the Paul Auster books at the store and WALKS WITH MEN happened to be faced out on the next shelf.
Something about it, don't remember what, caught my eye so I read the back and decided to buy it. I'd never read Ann Beattie before and had no preconceived notions of what it ought to be.

I enjoyed the book immensely. The minimalist style worked perfectly -maybe it helped that I was born & bred in New York City and know what a Chelsea brownstone looks like, know Gramercy Park & the other parts of the city her characters inhabit -because it allowed me to get past the trappings of scenery and focus on the characters. I'm glad Ann Beattie didn't spend lots of time developing every aspect of her characters. It forces the reader to just dive in and go with it, to take what she chooses to tell us about them for what it is and to form impressions of them based on what they do and say.
I couldn't disagree more with the other reviewers on this one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Are you guys crazy?, December 7, 2010

By 

Juniper - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walks With Men: Fiction (Paperback)

I read this book twice. 1980's Manhattan became very real to me. The story left me thinking. The "lack of emotion" seemed appropriate in a microcosm where characters weren't connecting or living from their hearts. They were detached, so my own detachment didn't bother me. I loved the main character who was an incredibly accomplished woman, but regressed to a dependent state.