The Day the Bozarts Died
A Novel
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Stanley Noseworthy is, at best, a serial monogamist. At worst, a faithless rake. Now his record-breaking long-term lover (“1001 better-than-Arabian nights”) Nina is fed up with his “inimitable bull%#$#” and threatening to end their relationship. “Show us there is some good in you,” Stanley’s best friend urges. “Show us there is a brain.” But Stanley’s decisions do not tend to be made by his brain.
He has profoundly mixed feelings about losing Nina, for he is nothing if not a profoundly mixed (up) fellow. Stanley is either a dedicated artist or a posturing fraud, a charming rogue or a shallow lothario, tragic victim or pathetic loser—or all of the above. (“Vote Online!” Stanley might well say to this, for he is always prepared to satirize his own life as sharply as the life around him.)
Meanwhile, Stanley’s beloved artists’ cooperative, The “Hotel Beaux-Arts” (hence Bozarts) to its inhabitants, is also under threat. Since its endowment a quarter-century ago by the august Canterbury Institute of Technology, the “Bozarts” has had a frequently glorious, always rambunctious, character-rich history. Lately, mysteriously, it has been dwindling toward extinction.
Stanley (who may or may not be paranoid) fears the reason for this is either that the Institute wants its building back for more profitable use, or that George W. Bush has declared an end to Art and Thought in America—or both of the above.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Blaisdell Street Artists Cooperative, carved out of an old Massachusetts college lab building in 1979 and "styled" after the Hotel des Beaux-Arts (or "Bozarts" for short) is petering out. Middle-aged playwright and resident schlemiel Stanley Noseworthy, whose most successful play was written 20 years before the book's present of 2004, has lived there since its inception and narrates. Stanley's romantic MO is to seek out arty 28-year-olds and stay with them "till the Bioclock d us part": current partner Nina's clock has just gone off, just as young painter Rose Gately arrives at Bozarts. Intercut with Stan's gently annoying first person is a series of articles in the local paper, "The Day the Bozarts Died," detailing the history of the group and comically undermining Stan's perspective. Other than the "will-he-ever-learn?" aspect of Stan's romantic travails, the book lacks a central plot, but Duberstein (The Marriage Hearse) presents an entertaining tableaux of fractious minor artists (painter Monk Barrett, sculptor Arnie Cloud and installation artist Carla Freemantle, among others) trying do their work while managing the demands of conventional life. Correction: The title of Pam Jenoff's A Fine Crack of Light (Reviews, Aug. 7) has been changed to The Kommandant's Girl and the month of publication to March 2007.
