Who Sleeps With Katz

by Todd McEwen

When the doctor delivers bad news, what is a man to do with the life he has left to live? He can cry, and he can wonder which particular cigarette did him in. Or he can call the friend he loves in the city he adores, and travel the streets and avenues of New York to meet him. Every corner, every block has a memory?women, food, drinks, friendship, the comedy of office life and of sexual success and failure. It's as though the buildings of Manhattan are a shelf of books, each to be opened and read, as if for the last time. This tender, funny novel is a salute to a great city's enchantment and the sweet, frustrating mysteries of life.

Genres: Fiction, Novels

279 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Todd McEwen (b.1953) is an American writer. A graduate of Columbia University, he has been a resident of Scotland since 1981 and is married to novelist Lucy Ellmann. He has published four novels: Fisher's Hornpipe (1983), McX: A Romance of the Dour (1990), Arithmetic (1998) and Who Sleeps with Katz (2003). He has also written for Granta magazine and contributed book reviews to The Guardian and other newspapers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Kent.

Reviews

[Nora Rawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book swept me away when it came out while I was sin college; it's funny how out of steps it seems with most other fiction now, and I appreciate that it's a post-9/11 NYC novel blissfully unconcerned with 9/11. A paen to the city, to male friendship, a roundabout meditation on loss and death, a mid life novel about nostalgia for one's youth and love of one's places and quirks; I think it hit me less intensely this time, but I still have the urge to lend it out to specific friends I think would love it.

[Katherine Catmull · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think McEwen's best book, and I am a huge fan of his. Love story to New York City and male friendship. Brilliantly witty and dark and sad and funny.

[Ian Cann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fabulous paean to male friendship and New York City, quirky fast paced writing style, will definitely read more by Mr McEwen.

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful, one-of-a-kind New York novel — psychogeography animated by a constant comic inventiveness. A great book.

[Olaf · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable urban provincialism. I like NYC and I like other works by Todd McEwen. But this was tedious, self-indulgent, and utterly uninteresting all the way through.

[🐴 🍖]

this is something really special. the premise as outlined on the jacket (mac k's odyssey from the uws downtown) doesn't quite hold -- 1st and last 20 pages notwithstanding the book sorta deliquesces into a series of vignettes about his and isidor's life in the city -- but man oh man, stuff like the squabble at thanksgiving over the meaning of "epicurean" and isidor confronting the tobacconist and the bad martinis they weather and the fish restaurant, it's fully realized and funny and adventurous in its language, which is basically all i ask, but then ON TOP OF THAT has been helping me process some complicated feelings about living in this wonderful fascinating hellhole and makes me wanna be a better friend and sets my brainmeats to coursing with nyc memories of my own. read it already willya

[Chris Chapman]

Paramilitarism in Costa del burger