Description
“A clever send-up of Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Richard Ford.” –GQ
An ambitious set in the literary world of 1970s New York, following a washed-up writer in an errant quest to pick up the pieces of his life.
One of Esquire's Best books of the year (So Far), The Millions’ Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of the year, and BuzzFeed’s Exciting New Books You Need To Read This Summer, nominated for the PEN Open Book Award
The year is 1973, and Alan Eastman, a public intellectual, accidental cultural critic, washed-up war journalist, husband, and philanderer; finds himself alone on the floor of his study in an existential crisis. His wife has taken their kids and left him to live with her mother in New Jersey, and his best work feels as though it is years behind him. In the depths of despair, he receives an unexpected and unwelcome phone call from his old rival dating back to his days on the Harvard literary journal, offering him the chance to go to Vietnam to write the definitive account of the end of America's longest war. Seeing his opportunity to regain his wife’s love and admiration while reclaiming his former literary glory, he sets out for Vietnam. But instead of the return to form as a pioneering war correspondent that he had hoped for, he finds himself in Saigon, grappling with the same problems he thought he'd left back in New York.
Following his widely acclaimed debut, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, Alex Gilvarry employs the same thoughtful, yet dark sense of humor in Eastman Was Here to capture one irredeemable man's search for meaning in the face of advancing age, fading love, and a rapidly-changing world.
“With his second book, Gilvarry establishes himself as a writer who defies expectation, convention and categorization. Eastman Was Here is a dark, riotously funny and audacious exploration of the sacred and the profane—and pretty much everything in between.” —Téa Obreht, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife
About the Author
Alex Gilvarry was born in Staten Island, New York, in 1981. He is the author of From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, winner of the Hornblower Award for First Fiction (from the New York Society Library), Best New Voice by Bookspan, and selected by the New York Times as an Editor’s Choice. He’s a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 nominee and he has received fellowships from the Harry Ransom Center and the Normal Mailer Center. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Boston Globe, NPR’s All Things Considered, and many other publications. His second novel, Eastman Was Here, was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award. He is a professor of creative writing at Monmouth University where he teaches fiction.
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