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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W Hardcover – September 30, 2002

by Gabriel Brownstein (Author)

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This Brilliantly Inventive first collection captures the disparate lives of the residents of Manhattan's West 89th Street. Five stories are set in one apartment building, where young Davie Birnbaum watches his neighbors' lives unfold. The title story reworks F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, " whose hero is born as an old man and ages in reverse; Brownstein's Button lives on the third floor, fading away toward infancy. In apartment 7E, a lawyer named Zauberman reenacts the life of Hawthorne's Wakefield: he abandons his family so that he can spy on them. Meanwhile, the proctologist in the penthouse plays Icarus and Daedalus with his misfit son.These are tales of literary voyeurism, as the narrators look in on other people's everyday victories and misfortunes -- marriages, car accidents, love affairs, and adoptions -- and make sense of what they see by thinking about the stories they know best.

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Gabriel Brownstein

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The inhabitants of an apartment building on the Upper West Side of New York City are the actors in five deft reenactments of classic literary works in this debut collection; the other four stories explore the fringes of comfortable late-20th-century life in and around the city. On West 89th St. in the 1970s and '80s, young Davie Birnbaum ("I was a spooky kid in my cousin's hand-me-down corduroys.... My hair was cut in a puffy bell") takes stock of his neighbors' eccentricities. There is Solly Schlacter, unfortunate young son of a disbarred proctologist, who plummets to his death on Icarus wings from the roof of the building ("Musee des Beaux Arts," indebted to W.H. Auden's poem of the same title). There is Benjamin Button, of the title story, a shady-looking young man who is revealed to have been born as a withered ancient, like the protagonist of Fitzgerald's story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." There is the mysterious Wakefield, who fakes his death and spies on his wife and children across the street ("Wakefield, 7E"). And there is Kevin MacMichaelman, onetime ringleader of Davie's band of friends and, as an adult, the demented docent of an autobiographical museum he has created out of his parents' apartment ("A Penal Colony of His Own, 11E"). Set slightly farther afield, in Cold Spring Harbor, is "Bachelor Party," in which the narrator's devoutly Jewish older brother tells of his bizarre affair with the daughter of an ex-Nazi. Brownstein's distinctively skeptical, faintly elegiac voice and sense of place link all the stories, overriding the anxiety of influence to produce marvelously smooth hybrid tales that prompt readers to think twice about the intersection of life and fiction.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Brownstein's first collection offers a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of the tenants of a West 89th Street apartment building in New York City. Incorporating elements of works by Auden, Kafka, Hawthorne, Singer, and Fitzgerald (the title story, in fact, is a reworking of a Fitzgerald tale of the same name), Brownstein combines humor, absurdity, and elegy to create linked stories that are strong enough to stand on their own. Speaking retrospectively, in some cases even beyond death, his narrators are brilliantly observant. In the voice of Davey Birnbaum, Brownstein demonstrates a talent for capturing innocence comparable to that of Salinger or Capote. Davey's accounts of his mid-1970s childhood and of friends and neighbors falling into madness and obscurity are made vivid by precise details and descriptions. Sympathetic and perceptive, unpretentious yet engaging, these stories are infused with a genuine sense of place; Brownstein's New York is a home for memories, a refuge for eccentrics. Highly recommended. Julia LoFaso, formerly with "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (September 30, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 039305151X
ISBN-13: 978-0393051513
Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces
Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,347,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #33892 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies > Anthologies
- #62340 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Short Stories & Anthologies > Short Stories
- #274069 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States

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Depends on How You Want to Judge It

By S. Kim on March 11, 2005

Format: Hardcover

Some people might find the stories in this book difficult to digest in terms of plot, but that does not diminish its literary value in terms of the writing. Gabriel Brownstein's writing style is unique and thoroughly enjoyable. He writes with a very sharp wit that the reader would find both humorous and thought-provoking.

I was not completely taken in by the stories themselves, but I would be willing to read more of Brownstein's writings. Undoubtedly, he has a tremendous amount of talent, but it just was not displayed well in this book. In sum, there are better stories to be told than the ones in this book, but his writing makes the book worth a glance.

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Don't waste your money

By Rick Grunwald on February 14, 2004

Format: Hardcover

It looked like a great read but was dissapointing. There is weird sexual problems and psychosis, but not well written. One never seems to be able to "relate" to the outlandish characters and feeble story lines.

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt. 3W Hardcover – September 30, 2002

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