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Central Park West Trilogy #1
The Nihilesthete
"Only when something is dead can we possess it. Only when it's dead can we really control it." Haberman is a social worker in Harlem. It's an appalling job with brutal paperwork, a nit-picking boss, and clients whose lives are relentlessly depressing. He is deeply entrenched in his resentment of anyone who aspires to be something more, who creates and gives and believes in life. Then one day he meets his destiny: a limbless, mentally deficient man named Brodski who appears to have a spark of appreciation for art. A relationship begins, an emotionally intimate relationship in which Haberman travels out to the borders of his sanity and beyond, and Brodski desperately grows and changes and reaches for Beauty--all without words, in a bleak endgame that Samuel Beckett might've imagined.
- GenresHorrorFictionLiterature
155 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1987
126 people want to read
About the author
Richard Kalich
9 books8 followersRichard Kalich was born in New York and grew up on the Upper West Side. He's the author of The Nihilesthete (1987), Charlie P (2005), and Penthouse F (2010), published in 2014 in a single volume as Central Park West Trilogy, which encapsulates Kalich’s uncompromising examination of the state of modern life, as well as his metafictional experimentations with form and language. His later works include The Assisted Living Facility Library (2019) and A Man Made Long Ago (2021). He has been nominated for the National Book Award and for a Pulitzer Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
June 5, 2022
“That’s when God must have known he was God. Not when he made the world but when he destroyed it. Massacred it. When he told us we were going to die. When he made us conscious of that. That’s why he kills us in the end. He becomes immortal when we die. He lives forever only when we cease to be. If it were up to me, I’d exterminate all the artists in the world.”
In Robert Haberman, Richard Kalich has created a villain who is part of an anti-paragon pantheon that includes Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert and Gass’ William Kohler. Rather than a learned man of letters like the latter two antagonistic protagonists, Haberman is a shell of a man, a social worker bereft of the arts in terms of both creation and appreciation and thus bereft of a spirit too. His is a brain of empty bookshelves if any shelves at all. To fill such a vast void, he makes a plaything of Brodski, a dumb and limbless figure in a wheelchair...
Read the full review here, including 3 other Kalich titles: https://thecollidescope.com/2022/05/2...
In Robert Haberman, Richard Kalich has created a villain who is part of an anti-paragon pantheon that includes Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert and Gass’ William Kohler. Rather than a learned man of letters like the latter two antagonistic protagonists, Haberman is a shell of a man, a social worker bereft of the arts in terms of both creation and appreciation and thus bereft of a spirit too. His is a brain of empty bookshelves if any shelves at all. To fill such a vast void, he makes a plaything of Brodski, a dumb and limbless figure in a wheelchair...
Read the full review here, including 3 other Kalich titles: https://thecollidescope.com/2022/05/2...
February 25, 2020
Sometimes one doesn't have to profit tangibly. To be thought of as a God, or even as a benevolent despot, is enough.
This was a very strange read, even for me. The plot follows a New York City caseworker named Haberman who inserts himself into the life of a quadriplegic named Brodski who cannot speak, and then takes him into his home. He discovers that although Brodski is of low intelligence, he's a great artist. Haberman engages in cruel experiments on him, to become his God and degrade him as much as possible.
The narrator is a middle aged man who lives a life of bland misery in his non-existent, lonely personal life, and the soul-killing office bureaucracy he works in. There's also a sense of the blighted, seedy New York of the 80's. The story is permeated by a weird unease, and a queasy grossness and ultimately ends in a very dark, and yes, nihilistic place.
I think where this novel shines is with the fevered narration. There's a sense of obsession and cruel sadism, he sees Brodski as a science experiment -- almost a clean slate, to which he exposes to beauty, ugliness and pain to coldly observe the reaction. I also enjoyed the descriptions of office life, in all its blandness and pettiness. Unfortunately I thought the plot dragged a lot, especially toward the start.
This was a very strange read, even for me. The plot follows a New York City caseworker named Haberman who inserts himself into the life of a quadriplegic named Brodski who cannot speak, and then takes him into his home. He discovers that although Brodski is of low intelligence, he's a great artist. Haberman engages in cruel experiments on him, to become his God and degrade him as much as possible.
The narrator is a middle aged man who lives a life of bland misery in his non-existent, lonely personal life, and the soul-killing office bureaucracy he works in. There's also a sense of the blighted, seedy New York of the 80's. The story is permeated by a weird unease, and a queasy grossness and ultimately ends in a very dark, and yes, nihilistic place.
I think where this novel shines is with the fevered narration. There's a sense of obsession and cruel sadism, he sees Brodski as a science experiment -- almost a clean slate, to which he exposes to beauty, ugliness and pain to coldly observe the reaction. I also enjoyed the descriptions of office life, in all its blandness and pettiness. Unfortunately I thought the plot dragged a lot, especially toward the start.
May 11, 2022
Wicked good fun!
February 7, 2022
Really well written! Although the ending doesn't live up to the tension which had been build. Still, the theme, characters, and the idea Kalich explores are well worth the read. It's was a refreshing (though gnarly) change to dis-identify with the main character most of the time. There's also a strong Freudian vibe, if that's your thing you'll enjoy this for sure, as I did. Want to give 4.5 but 4 is best I can give.
February 3, 2020
The narrator is horrid enough that it’s tough to keep reading, but it is beautiful and interesting. The central question of whether there is a point to life is of course interesting, and it’s a very novel take on approaching that question, but I can’t say I was generally compelled to keep reading.
October 22, 2015
Fun, but nothing more than a short, single-idea novel.
July 31, 2017
This book is very well written. A moral fiction that is disturbing. A writing of lost souls. There would only be a few of my reading friends that would enjoy this book.
January 13, 2021
I hated Haberman so much. It's a short read, but it literally broke my heart one page at a time and it took me weeks to finish. Was it well written? Sure. Worth it? Not to me. It was just too cruel.
September 25, 2022
this was weird if not almost perverted at times. I have all 3 of this series but am not sure I even want to start the others
January 13, 2025
Horrifying depiction of life— loved when he painted with his own excrement
“When creating, his appreciation and interest in other men’s work is null and void”
“When creating, his appreciation and interest in other men’s work is null and void”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 10, 2026
Haberman is an unusual social worker, one that's unemotional and probably sociopathic. He presumes himself empathetically, but better would be to describe him as passionate. The first page introduces his subject, Brodski, with a dumbfounded fascination for his form. Quadriplegic and mute, he has spent his life inside under the care of Mrs. Rivera. Without opportunity to experience, or create, Haberman must show him the world. Slowly taking over his life, he observes the life and death of an artist. There are hints at disgusting Freudian happenings behind the scenes, the audience is further burried in the psych of the narrator. The book unpleasantly reveals itself, slowly, we reach a point of torture, and all hope is lost.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 30, 2015
Yes, this story involves the dark & creepy extreme of human nature, and a machinistic, sytematic dismantling of a helpless person, but it's *about* the victim and a triumph over the title character so complete that it makes the denoument of a Stephen King novel look tame.
August 29, 2013
This story, about a caseworker who becomes obsessed with torturing one of his clients, is more appalling than horrifying.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews