Sylvia [Paperback]

Like another reviewer, I learned about Leonard Michaels just a few weeks ago from the NY Times review of his collected stories. The review piqued my interest; I read the editor's note in the bookstore, which said Michaels would incessantly edit his work for lyrical quality. That's when I knew this was my guy. Constantly searching the plethora of writing available for writers I can learn from, who care about the rhythm of the sounds of their words on the page, I was pleasantly surprised to find the full oeuvre of Leonard Michaels republished and ready for consumption. SYLVIA seemed like a good place to start. It was short; it was venerated. I finished the book in a few days.

SYLVIA is about the relationship between the narrator and Sylvia, a young college girl the narrator meets in NYC, a few months after he drops out of a literature graduate program. The writing is a fictional memoir, and the narrator's background excuses him for the magic in his prose. For example, a simple look out of his Manhattan apartment window produces writing like this: "Trucks, cars, and trains flashed through the grid of cables, crossing the East River to and from Brooklyn. Freighters progressed slowly, as if in a dream, to and from the ocean. In the sky, squadrons of pigeons made grand loops, and soaring gulls made line drawings...All day and night, from every direction, came the hum of the tremendum."

The narrator turns out to have certain mild psychiatric issues; his new lover has major issues never diagnosed. The combined problems, mixed with the cultural mores of the 60's and the familial and Jewish guilt of the era, converge to create problems for the narrator. The end is unexpected but not unlikely.

SYLVIA, which reads sort of like an autobiographical novella, (this opinion is based on the obituaries I've read of Michaels -- obits that I dug up after perusing his stories and needing to know more about this lost talent), one can understand that this book could have been written as a closure to his first marriage.

I'm looking forward to reading his collected stories. I will most certainly read THE MEN'S CLUB. Leonard Michaels is what today they would call a "writer's writer."

Here is an quote from an essay Michaels wrote for The Partisan Review. If this quote doesn't make you want to go out and read Michaels, then nothing will: "Basic elements of writing -- diction, grammar, tone, imagery, the patterns of sound made by your sentences -- will say a good deal about you (whether you are conscious of it or not) so that it is possible for you to be writing about yourself before you even know you are writing about yourself. Regardless of your subject, these basic elements, as well as countless and immeasurable qualities of mind, are at play in your writing and will make your presence felt to a reader as palpably as your handwriting. You virtually write your name, as it were, before you literally sign your name, every time you write."

These ideas of Michaels' resonate all over SYLVIA. If you're a writer, read this book and then study it. Then go out and read the rest of Michaels' work. It's not a lot of volume, but it's a lot of quality.

I found this book because I was obsessed with The Antler's album Hospice and after reading several interviews with the singer I discovered that he wrote it about an emotionally abusive relationship he was in and because he connected deeply with this novel. Emotionally disastrous relationships? How could I not read it?

The novel ended up being really fascinating and well-written. The relationship between the couple was not as insane as I excepted, but their hopeless need and hate for each other really drew me into their depraved world. Michaels is certainly an accomplished writer, and ever word in this book is very simply to the heart of the matter--this matter being something that has seemed to have haunted him for years. I think a lot of people can relate to the tragic emotions and turmoil of this novel.

Nevertheless, the writing is strong and well-crafted, and the story is very powerful and moving. I found much painful truth in this short book, and it reminded me of some events in my own life, although I'm thankful that I've never experienced anything this extreme. However, I feel that many readers will be able to relate to these scenes of inexplicable conflict between couples, even if their experiences will probably be milder than what the author describes in this fictionalized memoir. Sylvia makes an interesting companion piece to another book that takes place in the early 60s, Revolutionary Road, although Sylvia was more minimalistic, flinty, and poetic, and its characters made the couple in Revolutionary Road look very very bourgeois.

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