Finished Fr 10/6/23
This is one of my ancient paperbacks that I bought at The Book House on Sa 9/11/93 and first finished on We 11/24/93.
The story of Chub Fuller. His nickname is not because he is overweight, but when he was an infant he had 'chubby cheeks' and the name stuck. I'm old enough to remember doing research without the internet and it seems nearly impossible, but everyone did it.
The story is of a young man who is trying to be a writer. He gets sidetracked as a 'researcher' and this becomes his prime source of income for a time.
He has a a good friend called 'Two Brew' Kitchel. His nickname came from a drinking game. You must drink 60 shots of beer in 60 minutes. He stopped after two shot glasses and his name stuck. The book seems to say that this is impossible, but I think this is very doable. Five twelve ounce beers in an hour doesn't seem that difficult and I know I've probably come close.
From the book's page at Kirkus Reviews:
"Goldman, a first-class entertainer (Marathon Man, Magic), used to write slick, earnest, oddly false psychological novels; and this new book, about the ups and downs of young writer ""Chub"" Fuller, is an uneven return to that earlier style. In the novel's first third, Chub is an undergrad at Oberlin--discovering how to turn his troubled past (alcoholic father, unstable mother) into short stories, finding a mentor in crippled, flamboyantly brilliant classmate ""Two-Brew"" Kitchel. And since Two Brew's father just happens to be a top N.Y. publisher, Chub's stories soon appear in book form, with critical acclaim and paperback-bestsellerdom. But then, while working on a novel about his father, ever-bland Chub loses his creative energy, starts Manhattan drinking, tries Ohio teaching, makes money as a N.Y. researcher. He finds super-sex, love, and wedlock with his old dream-girl, divorcÉe B. J. Peacock--but B. J. is jealous of Chub's love for her little daughter Jesse, who dies in a feeble burst of deus-ex-melodrama. (Some material from The Thing of lt Is and Father's Day is recycled here.) Now 30-ish, Chub is on the verge of breakdown, surviving through a mutual support-system with aging, oddball super-model Bonita Kraus, a.k.a. ""The Bone."" Next, however, he finds super-super-sex with strange young Sandy, a TV addict who seems to have been involved with a psycho claiming to be the real Chub Fuller. So, for unpersuasive reasons, Chub now rediscovers his muse (""He was--stand back, world--writing again""), especially after Sandy commits suicide. . . or was it murder? As always, Goldman offers crisp details and dialogue, along with a few vivid episodes. (Chub's run-in with a psychotic, plagiarizing student; his research exploits.) Also, even if Chub's literary efforts sound more gimmicky than profound, some readers may enjoy the romanticized dramatization of life-material-into-fiction. Overall, however, Chub's soul-journey is superficial and murky, while the supporting cast is defined largely by quirks and nicknames; and, though there's enough cuteness and professional gloss to engage an audience at the start, this ends up as a mildly pretentious, very sentimental, unsatisfying rehash of familiar Goldman themes--from malebonding and childhood psychology to the-writer-as-hero/victim."
In the book the author Irwin Shaw is seen as a hack writer and Chub defends his work. I found two books by Shaw on the shelves and I'm going to read them.
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