OVER AND OUT

by Norman Rosten ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1972

Norman Rosten is a poet and a playwright and a novelist (Under the Boardwalk) and perhaps even the nameless narrator of this book -- a genuinely fanciful free spirit, as unstable as plutonium, true, freefalling through life which, like his work, seems to have come to a temporary standstill at the beginning of this book. He's living separated from his wife in the same apartment (she'll still cut his hair even if she won't share his bed); he goes to the library to work via the bank (he's not solvent) and the dentist (his teeth aren't too firm either) and his agent and his publisher and he might see the neighborhood paperman on the way who calls him Norman Mailer. He models for a photographer friend on a set-up cancer check-up shot -- the doctor finds he has nodules; he takes home a folk gui-tarist who drinks goat's milk; he decides to go into Commerce via a cousin and sell paper; he returns home to see his parents -- his father will soon die (this is very affecting); and between his nodules and dizzy spells he starts dissolving until in the last scene he's reading some of his poetry -- and connecting -- before a class of students. His daughter is one of them. . . . An affectionate, an affirmative book which has as its own playful rationale the fact that it is so very much alive.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Braziller

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION