Shimmer

by Sarah Schulman

Set against the backdrop of post-World War II New York City, three people--Sylvia Golubowsky, an aspiring reporter waiting for her big break; Austin Van Cleeve, a gossip columnist who wields a wicked pen; and Cal Byfield, a cook who is determined to create a Negro theater on Broadway--cross paths in the most unexpected ways.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Feminism, Queer Lit

273 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 1998

About the author

Sarah Schulman is a longtime AIDS and queer activist, and a cofounder of the MIX Festival and the ACT UP Oral History Project. She is a playwright and the author of seventeen books, including the novels The Mere Future, Shimmer, Rat Bohemia, After Delores, and People in Trouble, as well as nonfiction works such as The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, and Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America. She is Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at The City University of New York, College of Staten Island.

Reviews

[Morgan M. Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me several tries to get into this historical novel, but I finally cracked it and I'm so glad that I did. Sarah often says this is the book she wishes people would return to, and the current conservative political nightmare we're living out is an excellent time for that revisit. In Shimmer, Sarah takes on McCarthyism and, more importantly, it's fundamental themes of betrayal, false loyalty systems, and the maddening ways in which systems of oppression cheat the marginalized out of what they deserve while glorifying the mediocre who stand closer to power. This book is a further testament to Sarah's status as one of the most insightful political novelists of our time.

[Dana Jerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Shimmer” refers to a state of pure aliveness. Absolute pinnacle of personal expression and a feeling of uncompromising clarity of certainty.
This book is magnificent and you feel smarter and more emotionally intelligent for having read it.
All of my favorite stinging and beautiful quotes do not even fit here. Pg 160 top to bottom is sheer genius.
If there were 6 stars available this novel would get them all. Please read this woman’s informed and challenging fiction. She is a national treasure.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But was my whole life going to be a process of making peace with defeat? That’s what they always try to get you to do, accept the ways that you’ve been cheated."

[Jenn]

I made it about a third of the way into this book and gave it up as a bad job. It doesn't make any damn sense; I couldn't make heads or tails of what was happening or how the characters were supposed to come together and honestly the writing style was so weird that I found I didn't WANT to know any more. Zero stars.

[juice]

expected more, unfortunately

[Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

The historical perspective was interesting. The politics were not.

[Candace · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I could never be what I wanted to be, because what I wanted to be could not exist in that historic moment. I understood very clearly that if the historic moment is larger than one person's will, even if they have a will of steel, that is a fact that person needs to know. And accept."

[Larry-bob Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shimmer is set in the McCarthy era. There are three main characters who don't interact much directly with each other, but influence each other through secondary characters. Sylvia Golubowsky is a newspaper secretary who hopes to become a reporter. Austin Van Cleve is a gossip columnist for a different newspaper, and has a rivalry with Sylvia's boss. Cal Byfield, whose parents are Jamaican, is an aspiring playwright, and his wife becomes a friend of Sylvia. Byfield's granddaughter injects a modern voice, as she researches Cal's life. Van Cleve personifies the evil of the era. The lack of support Golubowsky receives from her family echoes one of the themes of Schulman's previous novel, Rat Bohemia. Sylvia learns through the course of the book why she feels a difference from others. Shimmer is a detailed evocation of an era when individuals struggled alone against powerful institutions to reach their goals, much as we do now. Both then and now, collective movements were and are at a low ebb. There are lessons here, parallels that can be seen more clearly through a historical, fictional lens.

I wonder if this book is an experiment in applying the formulas articulated in Schulman's book "StagestruckS about what the rules for fake public homosexuality are. For instance "Straight audiences must not be expected to universalize to a gay or lesbian protagonist unless they have already built a relationship with that character, thinking they were straight." This seems to describe the situation of Sylvia. The (straight or closeted) white male is a major viewpoint character of the book, and while such characters have appeared in Schulman's writing before, this is the first time one has been granted the priviledge of speaking in the first person. Perhaps this is meant as a bribe to the straight reader, though the character is so evil it is doubtful that anyone could identify with him. Cal's frustration with the theatre world parallels Schulman's experiences with "Rent." He, like Schulman is concerned with issues of representation, and turns down the "opportunity" to write for Amos and Andy, a cultural product of the majority culture which reinforces stereotypes rather than breaking them down.

[Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fast and lazy reader. I think what I have always liked most about reading is the journey to another place or reality and the quicker, faster, and more viscerally I can get there the better. The result is that I just love easy-to-read, rich, and character-driven prose. I certainly have a love of language too--I love well constructed language. However, I am not a fan of really dense, overly textured works of fiction.

Shimmer was bad for me because it is so well written and so rich at the plot level while also containing multitudes of thematic ideas. The result is that i read this fast and probably missed a lot of stuff, but luckily I would have no problem coming back.

The basic plot is simple: Schulman uses two primary first person narrators (and two more less prolific narrators) to describe the intersecting lives of a blue-blooded gossips columnist, the self-made, immigrant owner of his paper, his wife, a stenographer, lesbian, writer, her brother, her neighbor, her husband and his future grandaughter.

The book is set in the late 40s and early 50s and deals with McCarthyism, race and gender identity politics, and eventually queer politics in post-war New York.

The plot itself meanders at times, and the ending epilogue seems to violate Schulmans' textual claim that happy endings are an invention of white racists, but all in all, it was great.

Schulman has a prescient voice. It envelops and reassures the reader that her rendering of reality is accurate. In that context though, Schulman's use of various narrators gets her in trouble sometimes as some of their voices seem more full than others.

All in all though a good text for plane/beach reading and/or historic context on the immediate post-ware period and/or deep thoughts on big topics.

[Jest · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books grows bigger in the mind after the last page is turned and the covers are closed.

The story follows several characters living in NYC in the 1950's. Schulman is very successful in her use of alternating POV. Normally when a writer tries that I end up skipping over characters that I find boring or reading way ahead on the parts that are narrated by the character I find most interesting. With this book, each part seemed to follow naturally from with the one preceding it.

I think the thing that has impressed me most is the way Schulman evokes the McCarthy era. I've read history books describing the social climate people lived in during that period but this is the only book that has ever stirred my imagination into a sense of what it must have felt like.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sarah Schulman is obviously an excellent writer and life in post-war, mccarthy era manhattan is a pretty thorny subject but this book just didn't come together for me. None of the characters are (at least at first) particularly likeable and the prose is so bitter and vitriolic that's really rough going--hard to get a hook into. also it seemed as if just when something would start to happen in one story line, she would jump to another one and when she did come back to the line where something was happening it had already happened and you missed it. About halfway through things started to pick up and i really liked the last seventy pages but by then i was like....come on already. Still want to read RAT BOHEMIA and her style reminds me of a cross b/w Michael Cunningham and Gore Vidal, but this one just didn't work for me.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A re-read but it was so long ago that I didn't remember most of it so it sort of felt new to me.

It's kind of a "skipping a stone across a pond" type of book. It touches on several points in a linear way and it takes skill to do well. I was surprised that it felt like a short book but it has a lot of nuance about race, gender and sexuality to it.

[Raymond J · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book of hers, it does great things with interweaving storylines from different characters and periods of time.

[Lollo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the story and the aspects of society that it covered. It had an adolescent quality to the writing but was enjoyable nonetheless.

[Joan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult to follow because of constantly changing time periods

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite!

[Arianna Rivera · Rating 2 out of 5]

pretty boring to me didn’t really care for the time period or characters

[Corinne Blackmer]

to-read