{"id":5239,"date":"2016-01-28T07:30:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T12:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5239"},"modified":"2016-04-07T08:39:01","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T12:39:01","slug":"sons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=5239","title":{"rendered":"****& Sons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ampersand\"

(photo: Leo Reynolds, creative commons license)<\/p><\/div>\n

By David Gilbert<\/a> \u2013 This 2014 novel was named a \u201cbest book of the year\u201d by many reviewers, and it\u2019s full of richness on every page. A literary novel in every sense, it\u2019s about an aging Manhattan author and notorious recluse, A.N.Dyer, whose failing faculties compel him to call his sons to him and in other ways try to straighten out the tangle he\u2019s made of his life.<\/p>\n

His two older sons are estranged both from him and each other. Jamie is a filmmakers living on the East Coast who\u2019s just completed a dubious project documenting, perhaps too rigorously, life\u2019s final decay. Richard is a struggling Los Angeles-based screenwriter, who has the prospect of long-awaited success dangled in front of him if only<\/em> he can deliver the impossible-to-get film rights to his father\u2019s first and most important novel, Ampersand<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The third, much younger son, is 17-year-old Andy. (You\u2019ll have noticed A.N.D<\/strong>yer, Andy, Ampersand<\/em>, and the book\u2019s title). Andy is ostensibly the product of a liaison between Dyer and a Swedish nanny. The arrival in the household of baby Andy and the story of his conception ended Dyer\u2019s marriage. But the real story of Andy\u2019s origins are more significant than anyone but Dyer knows, and he\u2019s summoned Jamie and Richard to New York to tell it. And to enlist them in ensuring to Andy\u2019s future welfare, should he die.<\/p>\n

Throughout, as a sort of shambling Greek chorus is Philip Topping, son of Dyer\u2019s oldest friend, Charlie, whose funeral opens the book. Philip is the same age as the two older sons, and they\u2019ve obviously never had much use for him and still don\u2019t, even though he\u2019s ensconced in Dyer\u2019s East 70th Street apartment, the flotsam washed ashore from a foundering marriage. Topping is a \u201cMr. Cellophane\u201d; they look right through him and never know he\u2019s there. Or, as Philip himself says, \u201cI\u2019m guilty of easily falling in love, of confusing the abstract with the concrete, hoping those words might cast me as a caring individual and dispel my notions of a sinister center. I believe in love at first sight so that I might be seen.\u201d But the Dyers don\u2019t see him, even when it\u2019s necessary they should.<\/p>\n

Dyer\u2019s clean-up of his affairs includes selling his papers to the Morgan Library, and they, like the Hollywood manipulators, are interested in Ampersand<\/em>. They will sweeten their offer considerably if he includes a draft of it. Alas, he destroyed all the drafts years before, so is pushed into the insupportable position of having to retype the whole manuscript, inserting awkward phrases and misdirected text, which he crosses out to arrive at the version in the published book.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very New York book, with apt references not just to places and events but to the way the city and its citizens go about their business. All this seems sly and perfectly grounded. Here are a few sentences from the Morgan Library rep\u2019s pitch to Dyer:<\/p>\n

In my biased view, we are the intellectual heart of this city. A visitor from another planet would do well to visit here first in order to understand our human narrative. We also have a tremendous gift shop.<\/p>\n

Dyer\u2019s agent then suggests they\u2019ve been approached by the University of Texas\u2019s Harry Ransom Center with a much more generous offer, and receives this response, which manages to insult everyone:<\/em><\/p>\n

If money\u2019s the bottom line, we can\u2019t possibly compete. Ransom and their ilk will always win. And they are a fine institution and Austin is a fine central Texas town. But if you want to maximize profits, may I suggest breaking up the archive and selling the pieces in lots. But if respect, sensitivity, geo . . .<\/p>\n

Philip Topping is everywhere and nowhere in the book, as its part-time narrator. It also includes excerpts (freshly typed!) from Ampersand<\/em>\u2014a vicious tale indeed\u2014correspondence between Dyer and Topping, senior, from childhood on, and texts between Andy and a young woman he\u2019s hoping to seduce. Full of humor, human foibles, and beautiful writing\u2014\u201cseductive and ripe with both comedy and heartbreak,\u201d as NPR reviewer Mary Pols<\/a> said\u2014it\u2019s a book that flew under my radar, but which I\u2019m glad I finally found.<\/p>\n

Bonus: A History of the 27th Letter! The Ampersand!<\/a>
\n