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The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee
Michael Upchurch called The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee "a work of great charm, playful paranoia, and exquisite obsession." It is now available from Grove Press in its definitive, revised edition with an introduction by Michael Cunningham. Adrift in a glittering city of high culture and constant crime, an earnest young historian named Nicholas Dee finds his life being taken over by a mysterious dwarf and the curiously gifted illiterate boy he is charged with teaching.
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 30, 2026
Plot summary (with all due acknowlgements to Wikipedia:
'Nicholas Dee, a young, anxiety-ridden history professor, lives in an unnamed American city battered by winter storms, plagued by crime, and patrolled by police in choppers and riot gear. Haunted by memories of his brilliant father and by the fear of loss, Nicholas takes shelter in his research: a history of the practice of insurance. One night, after a chance encounter with the police, he is made the guardian of a beautiful teenage delinquent, Oscar Vega. But the boy is a part of a scheme to ensnare Nicholas, the tool of a mysterious female dwarf named Amelia Weathered, once the lover of Nicholas' father. Made an outlaw, Nicholas flees with Amelia, her young son Francis, and Oscar to the half-drowned country of Holland, where the boundaries between his historical research, his fantasies, and Amelia's schemes all begin to blend together.
'Scattered throughout the novel are passages from Nicholas Dee's scholarly writing, chronicle of a seventeenth century Dutch opera-house, which was built in a coastal swamp on the advice of a fortune-teller and housed a single performance before being swept out to sea in a storm. The chronicle is intended by Dee to serve as a case study within his history of insurance. But by the end of the book, a personal narrative has emerged from Dee's impersonal history, the story of a man's friendship with a boy soprano.
'Interpenetrating and linking the inner text by Nicholas Dee and the outer one by Matthew Stadler are snatches of music - extracts from the score of The Tempest, Henry Purcell's operatic setting of Shakespeare's play.'
Praise (from: https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-di...)
“To me, Nicholas Dee‘s literary grandfather is Kafka’s The Trial. Its parents are Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Delillo’s White Noise, and it does not particularly favor one parent over the other. Like any work of art, however, it is more than anything itself, as is any individual produced by parents and grandparents. Matthew Stadler’s career, still in its relatively early stages, is cause for hope among those who might be prone to despair about what can and cannot happen to writers who aspire to give us something other than more of what we’ve already got.” –from the introduction by Michael Cunningham
“The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee renders Matthew Stadler the best gay writer of our time.” –Robert Drake, The Gay Cannon
“If this apocalyptic and darkly humorous work is any indication . . . Stadler looks to be a Pynchon-in-the-making.” –Elaine Krout-Hasegawa, The L.A.
I have provided all of the above because I am in awe of Matthew Stadler as a writer, not a gay writer but as a writer. Between 1990 and 2000 published four incredible novels (this was his second) and the, others in order of appearance were 'Landscape and Memory', 'The Sex Offender' and 'Allan Stein'. I have read all those novels previously and this was is just as extraordinary and challenging (I should point out that I have read the original version not the final Grove Park edition which is certainly longer but I don't think it alters the story line). It is challenging so don't read this as your first Stadler novel but if you do read any of his other novels and loved - you are either going to love or hate it - then you will have to read this one as well.
'Nicholas Dee, a young, anxiety-ridden history professor, lives in an unnamed American city battered by winter storms, plagued by crime, and patrolled by police in choppers and riot gear. Haunted by memories of his brilliant father and by the fear of loss, Nicholas takes shelter in his research: a history of the practice of insurance. One night, after a chance encounter with the police, he is made the guardian of a beautiful teenage delinquent, Oscar Vega. But the boy is a part of a scheme to ensnare Nicholas, the tool of a mysterious female dwarf named Amelia Weathered, once the lover of Nicholas' father. Made an outlaw, Nicholas flees with Amelia, her young son Francis, and Oscar to the half-drowned country of Holland, where the boundaries between his historical research, his fantasies, and Amelia's schemes all begin to blend together.
'Scattered throughout the novel are passages from Nicholas Dee's scholarly writing, chronicle of a seventeenth century Dutch opera-house, which was built in a coastal swamp on the advice of a fortune-teller and housed a single performance before being swept out to sea in a storm. The chronicle is intended by Dee to serve as a case study within his history of insurance. But by the end of the book, a personal narrative has emerged from Dee's impersonal history, the story of a man's friendship with a boy soprano.
'Interpenetrating and linking the inner text by Nicholas Dee and the outer one by Matthew Stadler are snatches of music - extracts from the score of The Tempest, Henry Purcell's operatic setting of Shakespeare's play.'
Praise (from: https://groveatlantic.com/book/the-di...)
“To me, Nicholas Dee‘s literary grandfather is Kafka’s The Trial. Its parents are Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Delillo’s White Noise, and it does not particularly favor one parent over the other. Like any work of art, however, it is more than anything itself, as is any individual produced by parents and grandparents. Matthew Stadler’s career, still in its relatively early stages, is cause for hope among those who might be prone to despair about what can and cannot happen to writers who aspire to give us something other than more of what we’ve already got.” –from the introduction by Michael Cunningham
“The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee renders Matthew Stadler the best gay writer of our time.” –Robert Drake, The Gay Cannon
“If this apocalyptic and darkly humorous work is any indication . . . Stadler looks to be a Pynchon-in-the-making.” –Elaine Krout-Hasegawa, The L.A.
I have provided all of the above because I am in awe of Matthew Stadler as a writer, not a gay writer but as a writer. Between 1990 and 2000 published four incredible novels (this was his second) and the, others in order of appearance were 'Landscape and Memory', 'The Sex Offender' and 'Allan Stein'. I have read all those novels previously and this was is just as extraordinary and challenging (I should point out that I have read the original version not the final Grove Park edition which is certainly longer but I don't think it alters the story line). It is challenging so don't read this as your first Stadler novel but if you do read any of his other novels and loved - you are either going to love or hate it - then you will have to read this one as well.
January 24, 2008
Surreal and strange and thoroughly Stadler. There was something Brazil-esque about it, and yet it was unlike anything I've ever read before. The apartment renovation will remain in my mind as I go through my first house remodel...
May 22, 2009
This little novel starts slowly and quietly, then all of a sudden it riveted my attention with a twist. The locale changes but there was not enough resolution at the end for me. Regardless of the title theme, I found the ending unsatisfactory and somewhat disappointing.
July 7, 2007
Beautifully poetic novel- a good straight-through read on a foggy, melancholy kind of day.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews