Who Sleeps with Katz?

by Todd McEwen

Book Overview

The doctor delivers bad news. What's a man to do, with the life he has left to live? He can cry, he can wonder which particular cigarette did it. Or (and as well) he can call the friend he loves in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1862076138
• ISBN13: 9781862076136
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Granta Books (Uk)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

masterpiece

This book is a masterpiece, I think. It is a love song not just to the city (and NYC has had some great ones, but this is one of the finest) but also to a certain kind of male friendship. I lost my copy and am here to buy another one -- can't believe it doesn't have reams of raves, that kills me. I guess it's not the kind of thing you'd read to kill time or just for plot -- the plot is a guy who has had some very bad news walking the length of Manhattan to see his best friend. There, I have spoiled it for you. You should read it anyway.

If you do not know where the title comes from...

...then this book is probably not for you. Just to get it out of the way, the answer is "Mrs. Katz, and sometimes Mrs. Goldberg". McEwen writes a book for the active reader, in keeping with the call-and-response title. This is not for passive summer reading; it is not an easy read. The book is full of real New Yorkers in the great tradition of New York writing that is all about the real people, not Steinbrenner, Bloomberg, Trump or others of that ilk. It is a novel in plot only, of which there is none to be had; it needs no plot. The book is about truth, that to be seen as you wander through history and on foot today, and that of the frenetic meditations of this new world Kafka. In the role of Sancho Panza is Isadore, whose real name is hidden in the book, as are so many other goodies. Iz is the Yid-Zen master also, a wise foil for the crazed, dying MacK. This book is also a compendium of unexplained sources of other truths, for what my most difficult teachers always couched as "for the careful reader". I will reveal only one of these, and only because it is relevant to my exile in Utah, the land of the New York envious, and only because the answer to the riddle is mentioned. There are references to "The Hour", which loosely refers to what is now commonly called "Happy Hour", another source of Utah shame. This is a book by de Voto, extolling the virtue of American spirits, rather than Scotch. He and Harold Ross, later to found "Stars and Stripes" and "The New Yorker" both had a Utah diaspora. The Martini is the drink of honor in this book. New York is the city, but all urban dwellers will know their own analogues and find the sensibility to have charm and the ring of truth.

A Fond Remembrance 0f Manhattan

The unusual narrative structure might put some readers off, however the discontinuities harmonize with the ostensible walk through the city and its abrupt changes of neighborhood and sudden shifts of memory. A quirky but fond look at both Manhattan and its dwellars, the nostalgia is as much for our possibilities as it is our achievements. Definitely worth the read, especially if you want something beyond the usual "story".