Ancient History: A Paraphase by Joseph McElroy
Requirements: ePUB reader, 393 KB
Overview: The setting is one evening, circa 1970.
Cy had intended to talk to the famous social scientist/writer/activist Dom (or Don, Cy isn’t sure) who lives in the same Manhattan building as Cy. But upon arriving on Dom’s floor of the building, he finds the police are removing Dom’s body, reportedly a suicide. Cy enters the apartment, locks the door but leaves the chain off, and proceeds to commit in writing, with Dom’s own paper and pen, all the things Cy had intended to say to Dom, and then some. The resulting manuscript is the sole content of the novel.
Cy tells the rambling story of his own life, his friendships since childhood with Al (on vacations in the country) and with Bob (his neighbor in Brooklyn Heights), his marriage to Ev and their daughter Emma, her ex-husband Doug, later a suicide which Cy feels partly responsible for, his stepson Ted. He makes a major issue of the fact that Al and Bob have never met by his own connivance, but are about to. He confesses to stealing Dom’s mail. He also writes a great deal about Dom’s life and theories, and expresses concern that Dom’s suicide might be Cy’s fault.
Halfway through, the narrative breaks off mid-sentence. As we learn in the resumption of Cy’s writing, Dom’s son-in-law and a police officer entered the apartment and looked around. Cy was hidden behind a curtain, but he had left the just-written manuscript on Dom’s desk. The officer wasn’t sure if he should treat the apartment as a crime scene: he was suspicious of the son-in-law’s removal of Cy’s manuscript, but let it go. When the two leave, Cy sees that his writing was taken. Cy then resumes his writing, even more frantic.
Genre: Fiction > Literary
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