Set For Life by Andrew Ewell

August 27, 2024 5:33 AM

A creative writing professor at a third-tier college in upstate New York is on his way home from a summer fellowship in France, where he’s spent the last three months loafing around Bordeaux, tasting the many varieties of French wine at his disposal, and doing just about anything but actually working on his long overdue novel. A stopover in Brooklyn to see his and his wife’s closest friends—John, a jaded poet-turned-lawyer with a dubious moral compass, and Sophie, a once-promising fiction writer with a complicated past and a mysterious allure—causes further trouble when he and Sophie wind up sleeping together while John is out serenading Brooklyn coeds with poems instead of preparing legal briefs. But instead of succumbing to his failures as a teacher, writer, and husband, an odd freedom begins to bubble up. Could a love affair be the answer he’s been searching for? Could it offer the escape he needs from the department chair, Chet Bland, who’s been breathing down his neck? Relief from the gossip of colleagues and generational tension with students? Respite from embarrassment with his wife, Debra Crawford, and her meteoric rise as a novelist? His escapades might even make the perfect raw material for an absolutely devastating novel, which would earn him tenure, wealth, and celebrity—everything he needs to be set for life. If only he could be the one to write it. A brilliant case of art imitating life, Andrew Ewell’s “sharp, witty” (Richard Russo, author of Straight Man) debut is a poignant tour de force that asks who owns whose story, skewers the fictions created from our lives and others’, and brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “publish or perish.” [Publisher's Blurb]
posted by chavenet (2 comments total)

I read this and the one right before, after reading and posting this article.

Quick conclusions:

Pittard's book is better, and Ewell really really really doesn't like being outdone by his wife/ex-wife.
Both "novels" do an extraordinary amount of straight reportage / quoting of real people.
Knowing the whole backstory gives the pair of books added interest, but isn't really necessary.

Ewell's book is a variant of the "sad boner confessional," while Pittard's is more creative, incisive & probably hurtful to the object of its poison pen.
posted by chavenet at 5:41 AM on August 27 [1 favorite]

The post made it sound like an OTT send-up of the Sad Boner Confessional. If you'll excuse me, I'mma set up a pitch meeting . . .
posted by whuppy at 9:33 AM on August 27 [2 favorites]