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Saul's Book
Winner of the First Annual Editors' Book Award. The story of a Times Square hustler called Sinbad the Sailor and Saul, a brilliant, self-destructive, alcoholic, thoroughly dominating character who may be the only love Sindab will ever know. Paul T. Rogers' insight into life and devotion in New York's most infamous district made Saul's Book a literary sensation; the author's tragic demise in that same world made his first and only novel legendary.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 12, 2013
The narrator of _Saul’s Book_ (1983) is Stephen, an introspective Puerto Rican writer,
who is still under the influence of his mentor, Saul, a trickster with voracious appetite for Western
philosophy and young male hustlers. When they met, the narrator was a teenage 42nd street kid.
Saul re-named him Sinbad, became his lover, father-figure, and betrayer, and sent Stephen on an
initiatory journey of identity. Saul is now dead, and Sinbad’s native spontaneity, beauty, pride,
feistiness, and street-toughened survival instinct have been destroyed by his absorption, body,
mind, and soul, in Saul, and by internalizing Saul’s dubious gift to him: introspection. Now a
twilight figure and a stranger to himself, Stephen is no Sinbad. He lives alone and impotent. The
book is Stephen’s revenge on Saul, served icy cold.
who is still under the influence of his mentor, Saul, a trickster with voracious appetite for Western
philosophy and young male hustlers. When they met, the narrator was a teenage 42nd street kid.
Saul re-named him Sinbad, became his lover, father-figure, and betrayer, and sent Stephen on an
initiatory journey of identity. Saul is now dead, and Sinbad’s native spontaneity, beauty, pride,
feistiness, and street-toughened survival instinct have been destroyed by his absorption, body,
mind, and soul, in Saul, and by internalizing Saul’s dubious gift to him: introspection. Now a
twilight figure and a stranger to himself, Stephen is no Sinbad. He lives alone and impotent. The
book is Stephen’s revenge on Saul, served icy cold.
December 20, 2024
"Rogers' ashen novel is the first to win the Editors' Book Award sponsored by Pushcart--for the most distinguished manuscript passed over, for whatever reasons, by the commercial houses. The book is the story of Sinbad (born Steven), a Puerto Rican kid working as a hustler on "the Deuce" (42nd Street); he's into and out of heroin, methadone; and he has a long relationship with Saul--alcoholic, learned, sly, desolate, amoral, and very likely evil. The book's stylistic felicity, in the main, is its cross-cutting between narrator Sinbad's two verbal styles. In the past, he delivers absolutely coin-true street talk: "So now everybody's smiling and yakking and slapping skin all around and Saul peels off three tens which the box really was worth four hundred at least. But nobody's mad since after all we were only keeping the game polished which is what it's all about anyhow and Flacco he may be a dummy, but he knows he gonna smoke up at least a dime of herb for free plus the tab which is at least eight when you can get it so everybody's happy." But in the present there's the retrospective Sinbad--who educated himself during a penitentiary stay, who's now looking back and trying to put things in order in tones of unsophisticated over-eloquence: "Against his scorn I set my intransigence; his infidelities required my endurance; his passions were my temptations and his betrayals, my passions; his mockery compelled dissection of self, while his approval demanded self-justification. . . ." This contrast is wholly credible--with heartbreak in the fact that the change in language can't really positively rearrange Sinbad's sad life. And the bathhouse, gay-bar, and street atmospheres are grittily documentary. (Rogers makes John Rechy's books seem like Readers Digest editions.)..." From the Kirkus Review of 1982.
An absolutely stunning and magnificent novel which deserves, if any novel deserves it, the title 'Lost Classic' (I discovered it thanks to a Wikipedia entry on Tom Cardamore's 'The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered' - I must buy a copy one day as no library near me has a copy). It is a great novel, a great American novel and especially a great New York novel. It is about a vanished New York (I beg everyone to look up Rich Allen's photographs 'Fernando's Story' at https://flashbak.com/fernando-photo-s.... It is about a Puerto Rican boy growing up in the East Village of New York in the 1970's. Saul Rogers could have been describing Fernando when he wrote 'Saul's Book', though I want to make clear Fernando was not a hustler, well not in the way Sinbad was). This is New York dirty, full of the poor and desperate. It is also a love story of extraordinary depth, power and sadness.
If New York ever had its own 'Oliver Twist' then it is in Saul T. Rogers novel, though it will never be made into a musical or film and maybe we should be grateful for that - I think Dicken's might have preferred it if he had never suffered that treatment, I hope the suggestion that the Fagin/Dodger characters and relationship can be compared to Saul/Sinbad upsets someone, its meant to, what do you imagine Fagin and Dodger did when they danced off into the sunset and probably before? (I am perfectly aware that neither Fagin nor Dodger had a happy future in the novel.)
I claim no vast knowledge of American literature but I am always amazed at how prescient Fitzgerald was in saying that 'there are no second acts in American lives' (from 'The Last Tycoon'). Sinbad has no second act but then the poor never do. They have only their youth and that is a currency consumed so rapidly and its passing is so quick, that it is gone before they realise it. 'Saul's Book' is also charting the disappearance of the 'old' New York; near the very end of the novel Sinbad is seen traversing the vanished monuments of his youth with all the desperate sadness and cri de cœur acceptance of the inevitable and its adjacent sadness of George Amberson Minafer at the end of Booth Tarkington's 'The Magnificent Ambersons'. The NY of 'Saul's Book' was dying, it would only be a dozen years before Bruce Benderson would chronicle its absolute demise in 'User'.
The world Saul T. Rogers chronicled is gone, the hustlers, addicts and poor are gone from the streets of NY and other big cities but do you really think that anything has changed? Children like Sinbad, or Fernando in Rich Allen's stunning photographs, are still living lives of desperation, we just don't see them anymore. Pavements are clean, real estate values are protected, as are we from reality.
I can understand why this novel has never been republished it is to good for the hypocrisies we live by to survive.
An absolutely stunning and magnificent novel which deserves, if any novel deserves it, the title 'Lost Classic' (I discovered it thanks to a Wikipedia entry on Tom Cardamore's 'The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered' - I must buy a copy one day as no library near me has a copy). It is a great novel, a great American novel and especially a great New York novel. It is about a vanished New York (I beg everyone to look up Rich Allen's photographs 'Fernando's Story' at https://flashbak.com/fernando-photo-s.... It is about a Puerto Rican boy growing up in the East Village of New York in the 1970's. Saul Rogers could have been describing Fernando when he wrote 'Saul's Book', though I want to make clear Fernando was not a hustler, well not in the way Sinbad was). This is New York dirty, full of the poor and desperate. It is also a love story of extraordinary depth, power and sadness.
If New York ever had its own 'Oliver Twist' then it is in Saul T. Rogers novel, though it will never be made into a musical or film and maybe we should be grateful for that - I think Dicken's might have preferred it if he had never suffered that treatment, I hope the suggestion that the Fagin/Dodger characters and relationship can be compared to Saul/Sinbad upsets someone, its meant to, what do you imagine Fagin and Dodger did when they danced off into the sunset and probably before? (I am perfectly aware that neither Fagin nor Dodger had a happy future in the novel.)
I claim no vast knowledge of American literature but I am always amazed at how prescient Fitzgerald was in saying that 'there are no second acts in American lives' (from 'The Last Tycoon'). Sinbad has no second act but then the poor never do. They have only their youth and that is a currency consumed so rapidly and its passing is so quick, that it is gone before they realise it. 'Saul's Book' is also charting the disappearance of the 'old' New York; near the very end of the novel Sinbad is seen traversing the vanished monuments of his youth with all the desperate sadness and cri de cœur acceptance of the inevitable and its adjacent sadness of George Amberson Minafer at the end of Booth Tarkington's 'The Magnificent Ambersons'. The NY of 'Saul's Book' was dying, it would only be a dozen years before Bruce Benderson would chronicle its absolute demise in 'User'.
The world Saul T. Rogers chronicled is gone, the hustlers, addicts and poor are gone from the streets of NY and other big cities but do you really think that anything has changed? Children like Sinbad, or Fernando in Rich Allen's stunning photographs, are still living lives of desperation, we just don't see them anymore. Pavements are clean, real estate values are protected, as are we from reality.
I can understand why this novel has never been republished it is to good for the hypocrisies we live by to survive.
November 22, 2016
I love a gritty NYC based novel, and I'd venture that this is undoubtedly the grittiest that I've ever read.
The narrator, a onetime hustler on Times Square, tells of his complex relationship with Saul, who he first meets as a client, in flashbacks that sometimes venture into a stream of consciousness but generally convey a vivid, warts n all portrayal of the underbelly of NY life of the 70s and 80s.
The book does lose its way a bit towards the end, and really is extremely close to the bone at times, but for someone who has such an interest in the city, it's a title that's well worth reading.
The narrator, a onetime hustler on Times Square, tells of his complex relationship with Saul, who he first meets as a client, in flashbacks that sometimes venture into a stream of consciousness but generally convey a vivid, warts n all portrayal of the underbelly of NY life of the 70s and 80s.
The book does lose its way a bit towards the end, and really is extremely close to the bone at times, but for someone who has such an interest in the city, it's a title that's well worth reading.
May 29, 2011
Brutal in places, but a real page-turner. This is a savage love story, in which love works out precisely to the extent that it is doomed to fail. It's a mystery to me why this deservedly prize-winning book appears to be out of print, but fortunately there are currently several second-hand copies available from online book stores.
September 29, 2022
Disturbing, don't let the kids read it
January 6, 2024
I stumbled across this book in one of those take-one-leave-one boxes when I was 16. It was missing the sleeve, and I had no idea what it was about. Brought it home and stayed up for a few nights reading as much as I could and hiding it, knowing my mom would not approve of the material. Honest and unflinching narrative of a troubled young boy and the people he meets and situations he gets into as a male child prostitute. Many parts of the book contain graphic depictions of abuse. It's written well and uniquely IMO. Do recommend.
January 18, 2013
This is a very fine book. I have over the year's formed a private mythology of this period in New York's post 'Valeries shooting of you know who' and the personalities and artist's that were part of and emerged from this amphetamine pre AIDS culture.These pages stories correspond very well with my image of this culturally fascinating time and place.
I read it years ago and haven't been able to find out anything about the man or writer, the exception's being that he was Jewish and became a teacher/professor and was murdered by his disabled son?
Do any of my cyber friend's and associates
have any information?
Gordon.
I read it years ago and haven't been able to find out anything about the man or writer, the exception's being that he was Jewish and became a teacher/professor and was murdered by his disabled son?
Do any of my cyber friend's and associates
have any information?
Gordon.
June 27, 2016
In my top three, ever.
It's a difficult read. Very confrontational but any book dealing with street life in any place or time has to be that or untruthful. it could only have been written by a person who lived the life described, in this case pre-AIDS New York City, in the area around 42nd Street and 8th Avenue which the characters referred to always as "The Deuce".
It's eloquent, it's poetic. It raises questions but supplies few answers, leaving those to be supplied by the reader.
Very highly recommended.
It's a difficult read. Very confrontational but any book dealing with street life in any place or time has to be that or untruthful. it could only have been written by a person who lived the life described, in this case pre-AIDS New York City, in the area around 42nd Street and 8th Avenue which the characters referred to always as "The Deuce".
It's eloquent, it's poetic. It raises questions but supplies few answers, leaving those to be supplied by the reader.
Very highly recommended.
August 27, 2014
It's hard to write characters that a reader can sympathize with even though they're pretty awful, and that's a major accomplishment of this book. Another is its maintenance of two distinct voices throughout. Bravo Mr. Rogers, rest in peace.
March 28, 2021
Utterly repulsive and incredibly good.
July 21, 2025
Picked this book up the first time in 1986. It has always stayed with me. It's not a book easily reviewed but I identified with Sinbad, the main character, enough to want to become a male hustler junkie in NYC, a goal I never pursued. :(
April 5, 2023
Not sure why I read this!
July 24, 2011
an extremelly raw well written book about life in the undergrounds of the ciy,places we rarely see.Told to us by the main character Sinbad, a street hustler, the author does a tremendoous job showibg us that even in brutal situations like the one Sinbad lives in, you can find love, as seen with his love/hate relationship with his mentor Saul.
December 12, 2019
5 stars. fucked up but i loved it
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews