The Very Heart of It
New York Diaries, 1983-1994
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • ONE OF NPR’S “BOOKS WE LOVE” • From the renowned novelist and critic, an exquisite collection of journal entries from the 1980s and ’90s, tracking a young, gay author’s literary coming-of-age in New York during the AIDS crisis
In 1983, Thomas Mallon was still unknown. A literature professor at Vassar College, he spent his days traveling from Manhattan to campus, reviewing books to make ends meet and searching the city for his own purpose and fulfillment. The AIDS epidemic was beginning to surge in New York City, the ever-bustling epicenter of literary culture and gay life, alive with parties, art, and sex.
Though he didn’t know it, everything would soon change for Mallon. Riding the success of his debut, A Book of One’s Own, he became a fixture within the city’s literary scene, crossing paths with cultural giants and becoming an editor at GQ. He captured it all in his daily journals. But in some ways it was the worst possible time for a gay coming-of-age in the city. One of his lovers succumbed to AIDS, and the illness of others was both a heartbreaking reality and a constant reminder of his own exposure.
Tracing his own life day by day, Mallon evokes all that those years encompassed: the hookups, intensifying politics, personal tragedies, as well as his own blossoming success and eventual romantic happiness. The Very Heart of It is a brilliant and bewitching look into the daily life of one of our most important literary figures, and a keepsake from a bygone era.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this compulsively browsable collection, novelist Mallon (Up with the Sun) presents diary entries covering the 11 years following his move to Manhattan at age 32. Things started hopefully: Mallon scored book-reviewing gigs and got tenure as an English professor at Vassar, but he also weathered grief and fear as the AIDS epidemic claimed his friends and then his lover, whose death overshadowed Mallon's first months in the city. After a low period ("All day long I've swung between tears, panic, rage, revenge fantasies," he fumes after the New York Times pans one of his books), he slowly gathered momentum: a job as an editor at GQ gave him entry into literary circles; he met his soulmate, artist Bill Bodenschatz; and his 1994 historical novel, Henry and Clara, became a hit thanks in part to a rave from John Updike. Mallon's diaries paint an arresting panorama of Reagan-era New York City, full of droll character studies—William S. Burroughs "looked like a bewildered old street person." Mallon himself comes across as complicated and often prickly, but his prose conveys deep emotion with clear-eyed, matter-of-fact detail. It amounts to an engrossing evocation of an artist and a city in transition.
