The Great Pretender

For Grandmother Sophie Janus's funeral in 1968, grandson Ben, a junior at Harvard, misses his last final. Ben's father William used to be a doctor. Then he sold his practice in Evanston and moved with Ben's mother to California. The house in which Ben grew up resembled a Bennington dormitory. It was bursting to the seams with literature. Father and son, Ben and William, sought to become intellectuals. One year William gave Ben the four volume Rene Wellek, HISTORY OF MODERN CRITICISM. This is a coming-of-age novel and the real thing. It is lots of fun. Suburban Chicago in the sixties is a good setting. For a summer job, Ben moves into an apartment with Herbert Lowry and serves as a manuscript reader for POETRY MAGAZINE. Herbert appropriates books and music scores from libraries. In 1968 the scandalous Democratic Convention took place in Chicago. After the convention, Ben returns to Harvard where Ben and his friends are idea-obsessed. At home Ben had not been brought up on Musil's A MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES and Adorno. (Ben's father, even at this point in his life-retirement, is making his way through a reading list Ben has compiled for him.) At Harvard Ben has a seminar with a Robert Lowell-like poet. Later, after graduation, Ben moves to Oxford. He has been granted a fellowship. While Ben waits to hear from the Kansas Review, a friend, Bob, already has a contract with Harper and Row and another, Eleanor, is writing a novel, SHIRETON HALL, a regular Yaddo. Bob visits Eleanor and Ben at Oxford. Finally, the scene shifts to LaJolla, California where Ben's parents live. This is an awfully good book. The settings are familiar, the prose is smooth, the characters are interesting, rounded.

its a nice read. mid-western jewish boy has literary pretensions, not to mention sex on the brain. this book shows you alot about what it's like to be a writer and how lonely the life can be. in a way it's john irving with not so much weirdness. the narrator has relationships and trysts with several women, including a pregnant one who decides not to marry the father,when she doesn't want to settle for less and lusts after a full-figured woman in one chapter. the narrator's best friend is a writer too, who's not that deep and doesn't take poetry as seriously as he should. this book also makes a statement about how little intellectualism is valued in america. i nearly considered moving to chicago a few years ago, because i thought it would be a good town to write in, but i couldn't deal with their winters.too harsh...

In this gripping story of a young Jewish boy's passage into manhood, Atlas takes his reader on an entertaining tour of the suburban 1960's culture that the protagonist (Ben, I believe his name is) is caught up in. Sex and relationships dominate the novel, as well as Ben. Ben eventually goes to Harvard and majors in English or Literature and is something of a poet. The best thing about "The Great Pretender" is Atlas's clear portrayal of the lonely thinker who struggles with his own identity in a culture that is at odds with that of his parents.