Eastman Was Here

by Alex Gilvarry Narrated by Bronson Pinchot

Overview

“Absorbing...Eastman is a riveting...presence who demands to be loved and remembered.” -The Boston Globe

An ambitious new novel 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 2017 (So Far), The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2017, and BuzzFeed's*Exciting New Books You Need To Read This Summer

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

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2017 - AudioFile

Narrator Bronson Pinchot brings a healthy dose of bravado and vulnerability to Alex Gilvarry's disarming new novel. The book is a study of the kind of bushy cold war masculinity that dominates America's past and is notably less venerated in contemporary times. Pinchot is careful to treat the protagonist/narrator with enough humor and puerility to balance Eastman's veneer of trumpeting masculinity and quiet underbelly of corrosive self-doubt. The female characters, who are pivotal in the novel, are portrayed in disappointingly similar tones at times, but then again, in a narrative that is knowingly wound around its misogynistic antihero, this proves a complementary approach. Crucially, Pinchot never overstates his characterization, leaving it to the listener to cast judgment on the complex figure of Eastman. Z.S. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

07/03/2017
At the center of Gilvarry’s excellent second novel (after From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant) is Alan Eastman, a fading author on a mission to reestablish his literary and personal reputations. It’s 1973 when antihero Eastman is introduced. He’s in his 50s and in the middle of a crisis, having learned that his second wife, Penny, has left him, possibly for another man. Not quite a model, loyal husband, Eastman wastes no time before letting his suspicions and insecurities get the best of him. As part of a plan to win his wife back and keep his family intact, Eastman—though apprehensive—accepts an assignment to cover the tail end of the Vietnam war as a correspondent for the International Herald. The latter half of the book transports Eastman from his home in New York to Saigon, where he takes interest in Anne Channing, an ambitious reporter in her 30s who’s researching for a book project that will collect the personal narratives of local subjects. It’s in this relationship that the book’s greatest sources of tension reside; Channing attracts Eastman while challenging his ego, and one begins to root for her despite Eastman’s acts of condescension and professional sabotage. Gilvarry is skilled at highlighting the humor of hypocrisy, jealousy, exaggeration, and foolishness through scenes that crackle with amusing dialogue. The supporting characters come alive and animate every page, and play well off of Eastman, who, though volatile, petulant, and infuriating, still somehow comes across as endearing. Gilvarry succeeds in drawing Eastman as a convincing and recognizable composite of the breed of male figureheads who dominated American letters in the middle of the 20th century, only to realize the tides were slowly but surely beginning to turn against them. (Aug.)

From the Publisher

"Absorbing...Gilvarry has given us a portrait of toxic masculinity—one that feels as if it both belongs to a certain time and is still familiar. His Eastman is a riveting, loathsome presence who demands to be loved and remembered." –The Boston Globe

“A lampoonish send-up of the fragile male ego…. This may be one of the sadder books you read this summer, but it may also be the funniest." –The Paris Review

“Inappropriate, egotistical, (very funny)…[A] satirical novel about the type of macho public intellectual, journalist, and cultural critic that one hopes is a relic of the past.” –Esquire, The Best Books of 2017

"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

"Eastman Was Here has it both ways, beautifully, both a hilarious send-up of certain Gen Greatest literary icons and their self-aggrandizing, self-crippling conceptions of manhood, as well as a moving tale of existential crisis. Gilvarry’s comedy is sharp, but just as impressive is the way he gives his characters a captivating richness and an ability to surprise. There is so much artistic and intellectual delight in this book, all of it suffused with real feeling." –Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

“A clever send-up of Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Richard Ford.” –GQ

"Eastman is a selfish, narcissistic, womanizing blowhard—Mailer minus the charm and the literary genius.  Gilvarry’s success at creating such a delightfully disagreeable anti-hero is an entertaining rebuttal to the notion that the protagonist of a novel ought to be likable." —The Millions

“A perfect send-up of repugnant men and the unicorns they love.” –Nylon Magazine

“[A] delicious, biting, xenomorph-blood-acidic satire” –Paste

"Eastman Was Here crackles with vibrant period detail, and raises powerful yet humorous questions about the role of the author in the larger worlds of culture and entertainment." —Brooklyn Rail

"Engrossing...Gilvarry punchy prose, fashioned after the writer’s own trademarks, that give the book a certain liveliness atypically found in contemporary literature...Eastman Was Here crackles throughout with acuity and wit." –The Culture Trip

"Rendered in a…direct prose style reminiscent of Paula Fox, Saul Bellow, or John Cheever...In focusing on the interior life of a man in crisis, Gilvarry is able to speak to not just the plight of white intellectualism in the 60s, but to the beauty that can be found at the end of an existential crisis, at the end of middle age. His protagonist shines." –Ploughshares

"Alex Gilvarry has not so much reimagined Norman Mailer as he has channeled him. Eastman Was Here is a wildly entertaining book, intoxicatingly written and deceptively profound in its insights into the nature of celebrity, country, marriage, war and the pitfalls of being a writer. If Mailer had lived to read this novel, he’d have been jealous." —Said Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will Be Free

"What if a down-but-not-dead literary lion went to war? Eastman Was Here seeks out that question and so much more. Part tribute and part throwback, it howls with dark comic energy and brings real vibrancy to two staples of the American imagination, 1970s New York and the Vietnam War. In Alex Gilvarry's masterful hands, the character of Eastman will both delight and horrify readers, something his real-life inspirations would no doubt appreciate. This is a wild joyride of a book and one of 2017's best novels." —Matt Gallagher, author of Youngblood

"Eastman Was Here is a wry throwback of a novel that, though it's set in the past, feels relevant and new. In the tradition of satirists like John Kennedy O'Toole and Kurt Vonnegut, Alex Gilvarry sends up the "bad old days" of '70s-era hypermasculinity and misogyny, paints a vivid picture of Saigon during the War, and introduces us to an unforgettable anti-hero: the enraging, absurd, hilarious Eastman. Despite its satirical tone, there is real heart in this book, and I found myself incredibly moved by its final act." —Liz Moore, author of Heft and The Unseen World

"I can't imagine anything smarter or more exuberant than this novel. You want to smack Eastman on the head every couple of pages, but you never want to part with him!" —Lara Vapnyar, author of Still Here and There are Jews in My House

“Brilliant…Being privy to the thought-cocktail of paranoia, regret, depression, and lust that powers Eastman’s doomed quest is an absolute delight …That we feel for this bloated, womanizing dinosaur—despite all he has done to merit his comeuppance—is a testament to Gilvarry’s skill as a novelist.” —LitHub

“Excellent…Gilvarry is skilled at highlighting the humor of hypocrisy, jealousy, exaggeration, and foolishness through scenes that crackle with amusing dialogue.” –Publishers Weekly

“With an unforgettable protagonist, this fascinating, often-hilarious novel vividly evokes a tumultuous period in American history.” –Booklist 

Praise for From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant

"The deepest intelligence is poetic, incisive, and inordinately funny. Heads up, folks. Alex Gilvarry just walked through the door." —Colum McCann

"It's rare for a novel to tread so fearlessly into the political and yet to emerge so deeply funny and humane." —Gary Shteyngart

"Lively...hilarious...Gilvarry's whirligig of a book...draws some striking parallels between the way we mythologize stars and the way we look at terrorists." —John Freeman, The Boston Globe

“Delicious . . . A left-handed love letter to America.” —Daniel Asa Rose, The New York Times Book Review

“Original, smart, and incisive . . . Part manifesto, part immigrant love story, part satire, part tragedy . . . [and] eminently readable.” —Roxane Gay, The Rumpus

Library Journal

03/15/2017
Gilvarry debuted brilliantly with From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, a Bookspan Best New Voice and Barnes & Noble Discover pick that saw him named one of the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35. He returns with the story of Alan Eastman, a has-been war journalist regretting the indiscretions that drove away his wife. In 1973, an invitation to return to Vietnam and chronicle the ending of the war thrills him with the promise of renewed glory, but he just brings his problems with him.

Kirkus Reviews

2017-06-06
A middle-aged literary lion heads to Vietnam to revive his respectability as a writer and husband.It's 1973, and Alan Eastman, the hero of Gilvarry's second novel (From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant, 2012), has come to recognize that his reputation is fading. Though he's remained in the public eye as a reporter, essayist, and pugnacious critic of women's rights and American foreign policy, his Pulitzer-finalist magnum opus on World War II is two decades behind him. And on the home front, his second wife, Penny, has just left him, prompting him to engage in unseemly stalker-ish behavior. Desperate for some emotional breathing room and a peg for a new book, he takes an offer to head to Vietnam and report on the United States' incipient extraction from the war there. But his enthusiasm for combat reporting is behind him; he's more comfortable staying in his Saigon hotel, where he mansplains journalism to a female colleague who's more industrious than he is and attempts to rekindle a relationship with an old flame. Gilvarry is plainly unsympathetic to Alan's self-inflicted plights; his preening recalls Norman Mailer during his most macho know-it-all moments. (A rival's wife gives Alan what-for when he dismisses women writers: "To you they are all girls, aren't they? Waiting for a man like yourself, a pig of a man.") But because Gilvarry is inclined neither to lionize nor openly satirize his protagonist, the novel has a flat affect, delivering a straightforward brand of realism that puts Alan's misogyny and sense of entitlement in the context of their time but does less to dive deep into their psychological roots or their consequences. There are signs of comeuppance in the closing pages, but of a wan sort, and Alan is a hard man to root for throughout, even in a hate-read sort of way. A persuasive glimpse of the world of early-1970s publishing and journalism, but it lacks much of a message to deliver about it.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169123005
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	08/22/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

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