Perforated Heart

by Eric Bogosian

Almost forty years after moving to Manhattan, author Richard Morris has achieved if not stratospheric renown then at least the accomplished career and caliber of fame that he envisioned for himself as a younger man. Now financially comfortable and artistically embittered, Richard is at his home upstate recuperating from heart surgery and nursing resentment toward his publisher and his reading public who have found new, more exciting writers and left his star to wane. In his attic, Richard comes across a stack of notebooks, the journals he began keeping when he arrived in New York in the late '70s. He is alternately fascinated and repelled by the young man he meets in these hilariously naïve and egotistically misguided, the younger Richard compulsively absorbs everything around him from art and creativity to sex and drugs. As he reads more about himself, written by himself, Richard discovers that the pivotal moments of self-invention -- and self-realization -- occur far outside the conventional chronology of a lifetime. Perforated Heart explores two wholly different characters -- a young, ambitious artist and his older self, jaded by both success and failure -- and creates an unforgettable portrait of the two men who inhabit the one individual. By turns meditative, deftly observant, and scathingly analytical, Eric Bogosian re-creates the landscape and atmosphere of 1970s New York City with fresh, vivid imagery and reveals a powerful commentary on the dynamic between creativity and commerce in the artistic world. Perforated Heart is his most rewarding and penetrating novel yet, with prose that reflects an equally astonishing range of experience and emotion.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

276 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologuist, novelist, and historian. Descended from Armenian-American immigrants, he grew up in Watertown and Woburn, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Chicago and Oberlin College. His numerous plays include Talk Radio (1987) and subUrbia (1994), which were adapted to film by Oliver Stone and Richard Linklater, respectively, with Bogosian starring in the former.
Bogosian has appeared in plays, films, and television series throughout his career. His television roles include Captain Danny Ross in Law & Order: Criminal Intent (2006–2010), Lawrence Boyd on Billions (2017–2018), and Gil Eavis on Succession (since 2018). He also starred as Arno in the Safdie brothers' film Uncut Gems (2019). He has also been involved in New York City ballet production, and has written several novels as well as the historical nonfiction Operation Nemesis (2015).

Reviews

[Trin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute gut punch. Starts out tricking you into thinking it's one thing -- a relatively sympathetic portrait of a lonely writer looking back on his naive but optimistic past through diaries from the 1970s that he rediscovers -- but gradually, sneakily becomes something else. This is a corruption narrative. It's darkly funny in places, deeply sad, and with some unnervingly resonant passages about memory and artistic integrity and who and what we value on the path up, and the path down. I had to read it slowly because it kept cutting my legs out from under me in different ways.

For anyone else who, like me, is partially here for trashy IWTV reasons: eerily, Bogosian's protagonist here shares a lot in common with Daniel Molloy, drugs, bicuriosity, tape recorder and all. But like, if he were evil and sucked -- and not in a fun vampire way.

It feels weird and fated that Bogosian wrote this back in 2009. But it also stands alone as an absolute wallop of a novel.

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've seen Bogosian as an actor, read subUrbia and watched its cinematic adaptation, for all of that this novel might be the best example and/or use of his talent. Behold a portrait of an artist as a young man and as his older self. Former struggling through the dirtily glamorous dangerous urban wilderness NYC used to be in the 70s, latter as an accomplished wealthy famous author in a much more polished, much more expensive version of the same city. And through it all he manages to remain a thoroughly arrogant, self absorbed, compellingly repulsive (or repulsively compelling) prick. Somewhere along the way he has convinced himself that it is better to be honest than nice, which subsequently doomed any possibility of relationships with any degree of meaning, killing off any semblance of empathy. It's easier to observe his character change in the early years, with age come the riches and accolades that offer a numbing sort of comfort. When a brush with his own mortality makes Richard Morris reexamine his life and revisit his past, there isn't much to like. It makes for an interesting read and quite possibly a certain degree of misanthropy and emotional unavailability creates better authors, examining human condition through the safety glass of the distance of one's ultimate truth/version of authenticity. It certainly doesn't make for a better person, but hey, you're reading about a guy, not dating him. If morally questionable protagonists don't put you off, this is a pretty good behind the scenes look into making of literature and the makers of literature. It's certainly entertaining. Recommended.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

As regular readers know, I'm a particularly big fan of a type of literary trope I call the "anti-villain," which like it sounds means nearly the opposite of the more well-known term "anti-hero;" that is, instead of the main character being someone who seems fairly despicable at first but who we come to root for more and more, an anti-villain is someone who seems pretty decent at first, but who we come to realize more and more is actually an assh-le. But such a thing begs a big question -- where do anti-villains come from, and what makes them be that way in the first place? That's a fascinating question, because it taps into basic philosophical issues that are universal to us all -- of whether humans are born inherently good or inherently bad, of whether it's our environment that most influences our behavior or our conscious choices, or perhaps something uncontrollable like our DNA. Are charming sociopaths destined from a young age to be charming sociopaths, or is it possible for such a person to recognize these tendencies in themselves, and purposely put a stop to them? And perhaps most importantly to readers of this website, is it that anti-villains are just naturally attracted to the arts, which is why it seems that so many artists are such complete d-ckheads? Or is it something about the arts that focuses and enhances the latent assh-lic tendencies of anyone who gets involved, like a bug being slowly burnt to a crisp under a magnifying glass on a sunny day?

These are all subjects addressed by veteran underground artist Eric Bogosian in his brilliant new novel, Perforated Heart; and he does it in a brilliant way too, by examining one of these anti-villains both at middle-age and in his earnest early twenties simultaneously, looking at where it all went right and where it all went wrong in this particular monster's case. And not only this, but Bogosian filters this story through a brilliant timeframe on top of everything else, a timeframe that has recently been begging for a great story; our particular anti-villain happened to have come of age in the proto-punk scene of lower Manhattan in the late 1970s, the New York of CBGB's and Max's Kansas City, a pre-gentrified Soho and an abandoned, squatter-filled Williamsburg. It's not exactly an autobiographical tale, but rather what Bogosian has called in interviews an "alternate universe" one -- a story where he examines how his own life might have turned out, if only a few important events from his past had transpired differently than they did -- which is the key to the book being so great; because a true anti-villain author wouldn't be able to write a novel like this, despite the main character being an anti-villain author, in that an author that clueless himself wouldn't be able to so gently layer in a whole series of hard realizations like Bogosian does, through the behavior not of the main character but rather all the "normals" surrounding him, wouldn't be able to so smartly get across what makes this sociopath tick without the sociopath himself having even a clue. It's a masterful feat of subtle storytelling, one that could never be pulled off by a writer like this one examining their own actual life, but rather by a writer like Bogosian who applies a laser-precise look at the potentials of an edgy life, a future that could've been but ultimately never was.

Because make no mistake, it's impossible to read Perforated Heart and think of anyone else but Bogosian himself; because for those who don't know, Bogosian actually was one of this wave of "performance artists" who were running around lower Manhattan at the same time as all the punk musicians in the late '70s, people like Karen Finley and Lydia Lunch who were creating back then a kind of "theatre that isn't theatre," the forerunner not only of such modern monologuists as Eve Ensler but such tourist-friendly spectacles as Blue Man Group, not to mention the entire phenomenon known as "slam poetry." Bogosian first made a name for himself by creating a series of on-stage character sketches regarding the people surrounding their group at that time in history -- the prostitutes and junkies of pre-'80s lower Manhattan, that is, the losers and criminals who besides the punks were the only ones to inhabit back then the New York south of Houston -- and it was the growing success of such one-man shows that transitioned Bogosian into a more traditional writing career, artistically culminating (one could argue) with his unforgettable Pulitzer-nominated play Talk Radio, eventually made into a popular movie starring Bogosian himself. And that led Bogosian into more and more of a mainstream career, and more and more traditional acting roles (you may remember him as the cackling heavy in the dreadful action pic Under Siege 2: Dark Territory); and thus it is that Bogosian is now in his mid-fifties, fairly rich and fairly successful, happily married for decades now, not exactly a household name but certainly a writer who has sold untold thousands of books by now, and whose work is regularly studied and staged worldwide.

So like I said, it's no surprise that in Perforated Heart, our main character Richard Morris has led a nearly identical life, only with a few important differences -- for example, instead of ending up with the legitimately good-for-him failed-painter character Katie (clearly a stand-in for Bogosian's real wife), he coldly dumps her for a crazed, dysfunctional marriage with a Sigourney-Weaver-type famous brainy actress from the period, a terrible relationship that sputters along for years and eventually ends in disaster. And it's this plus other factors I'll let remain a surprise that leads Richard to the place in 2006 where we find him at the beginning of the book -- a dumpy-looking has-been whose glory years are long behind him, angrily pissing on the world from the safety of his upper-class converted farmhouse in rural Connecticut, still constantly in and out of a whole series of empty sexual relationships with good-looking girls in their twenties (only now with them thinking of him as a daddy figure to be "tended to" rather than desired), alienated from nearly every single person who used to be part of his life, reduced to curse-filled rants against the "godd-mned litbloggers who just don't get" his latest forgettable navel-gazing crap, a widely derided book called A Gentle Death which weeks after its release has still only sold a few hundred copies nationwide. And thus it is that in the midst of such a milieu, Richard ends up having emergency heart surgery, which keeps him laid up for weeks in his isolated Martha Stewart fortress with no diversions; and thus it is that on a lark, Richard digs out of the attic all his old journals from his artistic start in New York in the late '70s, entries from which make up every other chapter of the novel you and I are reading about it all.

It's a simple yet effective framing device, and Bogosian makes great use of it here; because as we read more and more of the novel, it comes to appear that "Twenties Richard" and "Fifties Richard" are in fact two completely different people, and one of the main pleasures of the book is in examining both the told and untold history that makes these two personas seem so fractured in the first place. That seems to be one of Bogosian's main points, in fact, that the actual behavior of Richard doesn't actually change that much from his twenties to his fifties, but rather the way that the people around him react to this behavior; because let's face it, the young Richard as portrayed in this novel is actually quite a charmer, despite being just as clueless and dicklike as he is later in life, because in his youth these things are balanced by his optimism and naivety about the world, his eagerness to embrace life as fully as he can. As anyone's who's spent time with a dicklike 25-year-old artist (or has actually been a dicklike 25-year-old artist) can tell you, it's these very traits that can many times make these people irresistible, these traits that help such artists become big successes in the first place; because when such traits are tempered by youth and humor and good looks, such arrogance and narcissism can often come across as smart and sexy, and is often what attracts that artist's first big audience to begin with (along with that artist's first set of lovers, first set of patrons, etc).

But as any middle-ager can tell you, this rosy optimism of youth never lasts; as our thirties progress into our forties and then fifties, we experience the kind of truly traumatic pain we can only guess at in our twenties, divorces and deaths and profound betrayals, a growing complexity over our understanding of the world and the evil that exists within it, and what a true miracle it is that we humans have anything even approaching a "civilized society" in the first place. And as Bogosian so wonderfully shows us through the fates of all the other characters in the book (who Richard ends up hunting down one by one as the manuscript continues), most grown-ups learn how to successfully enfold this kind of darkness into their adult day-to-day lives, learn how to balance the failed dreams and crushed optimism of youth with the kinds of deeper, more profound, more satisfying successes that come with age and maturity -- children, love, a better understanding of what makes them truly happy, a better understanding of what they were truly meant to do with their life (just to cite one excellent example, how the aforementioned failed painter Katie ends up by her own fifties becoming not only a happy wife and mom but an award-winning "outdoor lighting sculptor," now hired on a regular basis for such high-profile commissions as corporate headquarters and sports stadiums).

It's not so much that we change our fundamental personality as we get older, Bogosian seems to be arguing, but rather that most of us learn to understand it better, learn to channel its real-world manifestations more and more into activities that are ultimately good for us, learn to drop more and more of the things that we come to understand are bad for us. And this is the ultimate curse that Richard is saddled with, a fatal combination of two very basic problems -- of never coming to these understandings himself, combined with the riches and fame he received as a youth precisely for this infant-terrible behavior. Since he never bothered creating long-lasting friendships or a more meaningful life when younger, he now has nothing to fall back on in his fifties besides his usual misogynistic six-week relationships and abyss-teetering self-absorption; and since it was these precise things that used to net him bestselling novels and Oscar-winning girlfriends, he now has the perfect justification for continuing this behavior ("This is what an artist does; an artist is supposed to be an uncomfortably truthful agent of chaos"), and to easily avoid even the tiniest bit of honest self-reflection over what a trainwreck his life has actually become. And in the meanwhile, as mentioned, no analysis of Perforated Heart is complete without a look at the pitch-perfect, instantly nostalgic setting Bogosian uses for these youthful reminisces; because the fact is that Bogosian utterly transports us here to punk-era New York within these old journal entries (apparently based on his actual journals from this period, again according to interviews he's given), and utterly makes us understand why all these formerly suburban white kids would want to hang out in the post-apocalyptic wasteland of '70s lower Manhattan in the first place, amidst all the pimps and pushers and post-traumatic Vietnam vets that used to populate the area.

Ultimately I can give this novel no higher a compliment than this: that reading it made me understand my own life better, and helped me come to a resolution regarding elements of my own past as a former assh-lic artist who has paid a certain price for that in middle age. This is the entire point of professional storytelling, after all, is to help us as readers understand the world a little better than we did before, to help us navigate the infinitely complex thing we call a human life; and anytime an artist can do this successfully, especially in the nuanced way Bogosian does here, that's another reason to celebrate. It's not what Richard himself says in Perforated Heart that makes the book so revelatory, but rather what all the people around him say, and more importantly what they often don't say, a hard thing for a writer to pull off without making the main character under examination seem either too clueless or too falsely self-aware; it's what makes this novel in my opinion the first true masterpiece of Bogosian's career*, even more noteworthy when you consider that he already has a handful of bestsellers and a Pulitzer nomination under his belt, and is now at an age when most artists start either coasting on their laurels or retiring from new work altogether. It's one of the best strictly character-oriented dramas I've read in years, and it comes today highly recommended to all parts of CCLaP's audience, whether or not you're a middle-aged sociopathic assh-le yourself.

Out of 10: 9.3

*And to make it clear, I've been a close follower of Bogosian's career since the '80s myself, and have read nearly everything he's ever written (including, yes, his notoriously awful middle-aged-crisis play subUrbia, itself made into a notorious Hollywood flop), which is why I'm comfortable judging this particular title against the rest of his ouevre. In fact, it was such "performance artists" of the '80s that mainly inspired me to get involved with the arts myself, as an undergraduate in Missouri in those same years; and it was the fact that they all used to perform at the infamous "Club Lower Links" in Chicago back then that helped convince me to move here myself in the early '90s, and to get involved with the poetry slam back then too. Ah, Sweet Dumb Youth, how I adore your glorious stench when sniffed from a safe distance!

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems like many people who read Eric Bogosian's work come away with the wrong assessment of the man himself, and of his work. Oftentimes the point of what he's written goes right over their heads. This book is no exception.

Richard Morris is a pig. Plain and simple. He says so on the very first page of this book. Many of Bogosian's characters are pigs. That's the point. It doesn't mean Bogosian himself is a pig—far from it. For almost his entire career, Eric Bogosian has laid out Americans' (and particularly American men's) prejudices for all to see, with no sugar coating. He shows us how we think, or, at least, how some of us think, and he asks us, "Do you really want to think like that? Do you want to associate with people who think like that?"

With Morris, Bogosian presents readers with an older, privileged white American man who has all the typical prejudices someone like him could possibly have. He doesn't promote Morris's ideas; in fact, he shows us all the ways Morris has, forgive my French, majorly fucked up, and how poorly his life is going because of how poorly he treats the people in his life. Morris complains and blames others; he makes women think he loves them, when really, he just thinks of them as sex objects; and he treats everyone who isn't like him like they're beneath him. As a result, he is utterly alone in life.

There are, of course, moments when he makes Morris an almost sympathetic character. He makes him human, because even bigots are human. Bogosian shows us that Morris can feel sadness and pain, he can be on the right side of a political argument, and he can occasionally treat people with compassion. There are moments where you almost feel for him, where you almost go, "Well, maybe he's not so bad." But then, in the end, you realize that, no, really, he is. And that's the point. Morris doesn't change. He doesn't improve. He doesn't have any real character development. And that's because Eric Bogosian is, in my opinion, a realist. His point with this book, I think, is that people don't change. Sometimes they'll act like they want to when things aren't going their way. But in the end, a bigot is a bigot, and the bigot is not going to have a change of heart the moment his aunt dies or he goes through a health crisis or his father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. As soon as things are back to normal, the bigot will continue to be a bigot.

I liked this book. I don't know that I completely agree with Bogosian's apparent message, but the book was very well written and well paced. The only reason I haven't given it five stars is because the ending made me mad, but really, it probably does deserve the full five.

[Leyre · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yo creo que esto debería ser 3'5, pero Goodreads y sus estrellas son una cosaTM en la que no me voy a meter.

Me gusta mucho la forma de narrar de Bogosian, la voz que tiene y que le hace sentirse diferente de otros autores, reconocible de inmediato. Vaya por delante que no soy la mayor fan de este hombre, pero sí he visto ya lo bastante para saber más o menos qué esperarme e él, y esto se lee 100% como me imagino a él contándolo. Además, y aquí no me puedo ni me quiero engañar, hay mucho de este libro que se siente como Daniel Molloy si fuera aún peor, y sólo por eso ya lo aprecio un poco más.

Diré, eso sí, que el protagonista de este libro es absolutamente insufrible, y aunque tiene mérito lo bien hecho que está, también es mi principal obstáculo para darle más nota. No me sirve de nada que este libro tenga un planteamiento interesante si el protagonista y narrrador cansa, que es justo lo que sucede aquí, así que por eso no doy más nota.

[Lena Groth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every time it starts to loose you it drags you back in. The first half dragged a bit as Richard’s book sales stagnate, but towards the end it is a thrilling read, especially getting to meet all the people young Richard wrote about, 30 years after, was quite exciting and it just goes to show what an unreliable narrator both young and old Richard are. Worth a read, if you love Bogosian.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m so sorry Eric your misspent youth is really interesting but I set this down when I was three-quarters of the way through maybe a month ago and I just couldn’t bring myself to pick it back up…

[bru]

jocular manliness.

[David Lentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Morris is a writer who prides himself deeply in his own personal honesty. Like Hemingway he believes that his job as a writer is to write one true sentence after another. Like Norman Mailer he believes that he must guide himself toward madness, to glimpse into the abyss and then write about what he sees resident there. Unfortunately, Norman Mailer chose to become a social clown existentially acting-up to promote his books and both writers may have been better served to understand Hemingway's engagement more deeply. As a young man Morris devotes his life to becoming immersed into the hippie life of New York City. He catches glimpses of the Andy Warhol crowd of the 70's and chases endlessly after beautiful, young models. He suffers for his art and I give him great credit for this: but every respectable literary novelist pays his or her dues. Morris takes large quantities of alcohol and diverse street drugs in this quest for pure, artistic honesty. But how honest is the writing of someone on drugs and alcohol? We love Fitzgerald's novels despite his alcoholism for the pure, sober, lyric clarity of his work in spite of it. Morris name-drops a card catalogue of novelists: Joyce, Mailer, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky, Gaddis, Roth and TC Boyle. But Morris really doesn't add much value in his narrative about them beyond the names. As an older man in his 50's Morris comes to grip with his mortality after recovering from a heart attack much in the same way as Yambo recovers from a stroke in The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco. Morris gains wealth and seeks more fame after his latest novel is initially received lukewarmly by critics and the public. Morris performs radically unethical acts, which he writes off cavalierly as honesty. The women of his life are beautiful, but shallow creatures, ultimately fixated like Morris on wealth, fame and epic self-interest. Essentially, Richard Morris is a narcissist and is the sun in his urban solar system. It's credible to view Morris as the personification of New York City. No narrative voice is so singularly vain as the first-person singular. As a result despite his vast social network and audience, he remains totally alone with far fewer days ahead than behind him and unloved with death physically attacking his heart. The writing here is engaging but could have been better served with closer editing as Bogosian seeks to shock us with the gritty reality of his recognitions and articulated truth. Richard Morris does not yet seem fully to recognize that cruel and brutal honesty often serves no useful purpose except to hurt and alienate other people. Vastly more important than his evangelism of cruel honesty is good faith and real love, which are more central to artistic integrity than the vanity of subjective honesty. Does the successful writer have a duty to a worthy protégé? Richard Morris has no duty to anyone, except himself. I understand that he wants the protégé to suffer for his art as the mature artist has done in his youth within the crucible of urban hardship. Richard Morris is essentially compelled to dwell in the hell of his own self-indulgence. He is incapable of any semblance of humanity, except in the treatment of his family, and betrays every soul whom he befriends. Isn't the real job of great writers to inspire humanity? Morris serves to make the world more harsh, bitter and cruel by having focused his artistic integrity upon the easily discerned ugliness of life in the name of brutal honesty. Let's be honest: why can't Morris discern the real beauty of life? Perhaps, his blindness to real, honest beauty is the greatest tragic flaw of Morris.

[Crow]

I've been thinking about this one since I finished it and will probably continue to think about it for a long time.

When you start this book, you think that Richard's dissatisfaction with his own life + the death of his beloved aunt + the rediscovery of his young adult journals will propel him to make some sort of major change in his life, repairing his personal relationships with his ex-wife and father and reigniting his true creative spirit. But the longer the novel goes on and the more you learn about young Richard, the more you start to realize that Richard has never had a creative spirit and is eternally trapped in a cycle of treating people like garbage and refusing to learn from it. He will never learn and he will never change. He continues to steal material from other people's lives for his "art" and will be rewarded for it. He continues to treat women like shit and refuse to face the impact his actions really have.

As he tracks down friends and acquaintances from his misspent youth, they coldly deny him the forgiveness and growth he desires. No one likes him and no one misses him. No one is going to tell him they want to still be friends and that he made their young adulthood better. The one person who does want to reconnect with him is suffering from a mix of psychosis and dementia, further cutting Richard off from any sense of catharsis. He finally slept with that untouchable girl he wanted when he was twenty, and guess what? It sucked. Off Richard goes to the next distraction. It is horrible yet fascinating to watch.

But it is funny that Richard is anti-Israel. Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point

[Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

I know this was supposed to tell me something about artists and misogyny etc etc but I was too busy gasping in horror and saying “ew!” out loud to notice it. There wasn’t really a plot. There was no character development- Richard never changed. He was sexist and rapey from page 1 to page 271. At one point he even says that every beautiful and smart woman wants to find someone she matches with intellectually, but that it’s not possible because beauty is too distracting for men and therefore no man will ever be able to view her as intellectually equal. He also says that every woman’s fertile womb craves children, whether or not they know it. Every woman is described first by the size of their breasts, then by their level of interest in him. So on and so forth.

If he had anything important to say, I was simply too disgusted to listen. Maybe if he had learned from his behavior, or if the author had given us any clue that this isn’t autobiographical, I might have liked it. But frankly, I just feel dirty. I’m going to go take a shower and forget I ever read this one.

[columbosunday · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

"My duty in my life is to exist as an unsolvable problem. Because I am an artist and that is the artists job. It's not an easy job, but if the artist doesn't do it, who will?"

I really enjoyed this, even will a protagonist who is so absolutely detestable. The story kept luring me into the feeling something about him would change, that soon there would be some kind of relevation about his behavior, and sometimes it would come. But it would never stick. Lovely to read if you have been obsessed with the myth of the mid-century New York artist, the tortured soul.

[Ezra · Rating 4 out of 5]

the portrait of the author through a dark mirror. love the idea of a character created from the rough sketch of one's life but distilled through the indulgence of the id to the point of total loneliness. richard insists that the reason no one ever sticks around is because he is representative of the ugly truths of life but the longer we spend with him the more clear it becomes that he is alone because he's intolerable to be around and too far up his own ass to see it.

[Alyssa Parkhurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting for a lot of reasons. Cool NY 70s stuff but woah is this like… how most men think of women? Like that’s frightening. Hoping it’s a character moment but like woah, they aren’t even human to him. Glad to know Eric Bogosian did heroin and had gay sex in 1975. It makes me sad bc I’m like depressed 50 year old already I guess I’ll never have a crazy era where I feel like I’m having fun

[Morspin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read like a fantasy of how a mid-list writer wishes his career turned out. And then the end rang a familiar bell. I looked here, and this really is a good place for logging your reads, because there was Russell Banks's Foregone in my "read" pile, and it had the same kind of conclusion, albeit with a different journey to get there.

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book can best be summed up as: fuck a certain type of smug, arrogant man who are so self-absorbed they never learn anything, but still somehow wind up on top. Fuck them.

And the book is really comped and hard to but down even though I was writing in the margins that I hoped the main character died.

[Ruve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never experienced anything like reading this book.

Richard is an unapologetic, intelligent, charismatic, brutally honest PIG. His commentary is entertaining, perverted and funny and just when you get used to the self-flagellation, you're slapped in the face with moments of intense vulnerability and deep existential explorations of the human condition.

[Marija · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story with unsympathetic protagonist. An aging writer explores his old journals.
Book structure is interesting and never boring with constant back and forth between the main character’s younger self and older self.

[max · Rating 2 out of 5]

fascinating look at a mediocre white man who brings absolutely nothing to the table lmao

[Chloe Pope]

Soft dnf page 78

Honestly I could come back to this in the new year but I don’t have the urge to read this rn

[Julia :] · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think sexism is bad. I also think this was boring and doesn’t have too much to offer so I can’t be bothered to talk about it. I enjoyed some of his other works but this one’s a miss

[olli v · Rating 4 out of 5]

my favorite book by the twice pulitzer prize-winning writer daniel molloy

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Eric Bogosian book I’ve read. An extremely cynical exploration of a successful male writer’s psyche. I liked the constant back and forth between the main character’s younger self (understood through journal entries) and older self (set in present day). I got a real sense of his youthful optimism, feeling unstoppable in his 20s, which slowly deteriorated into bitterness and egomania. Also loved his descriptions of being drunk/high at parties. I’ve never read a more accurate description of having unfocused, steam-of-consciousness ideas that become harder and harder to track as the night goes on.

[Georgia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked the line “all memory is a form of fiction, but all fiction is a form of reality”

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Perforated Heart, Eric Bogosian offers a cautionary tale about life, death, love, and art (though not in that order). Perforated Heart is the story of two Richard Morrises: one, a successful fiction writer in 2006 who, after heart surgery, goes to recuperate at his country home in Connecticut, where he rediscovers his journals from 30 years earlier; and the second is the young Richard, circa 1976, just beginning as a writer and resident of New York City.

Bogosian is back in his element with this first person narrative (his last two novels were in the third person) which is more the style of his monologues. Structured as a journal (like his Notes from Underground), Perforated Heart lets the character tell the story, and Bogosian succeeds at creating two distinct voices for young Richard and old Richard. Young Richard is brash but passionate; old Richard is refined but cynical. Old Richard bears a striking resemblance to David Blau, from Bogosian's Red Angel, while young Richard is more reminiscent of Barry Champlain from Talk Radio.

The elder Richard is a bit of a recluse, but in his earlier life he was surrounded by a colorful cast of characters. The apartment he shared with a man named Haim and a woman named Dagmara could have come from the pages of Sartre's No Exit: Haim loves Dagmara, Dagmara is in love with Richard, and Richard is in love with himself. Richard's acquaintances are rendered somewhat 2-dimensionally in his journals, serving mainly as his companions on a series of crazy party and nightlife adventures. The most memorable of these characters is Big John, the mysterious, stuttering, little-known-history spouting drug dealer (I kept waiting for John to say, "And these are my dogs, Harley and Davidson.")

Richard seeks out new experiences and altered states of consciousness, seemingly as field research for his writing. What is he researching? Life--human existence. His transition from wild child to successful writer provides the main crux of the story (although I imagine the path to sobriety is more difficult than Richard, or Bogosian, lets on).

But is all of his sexual and chemically induced "experience" supposed to convince us that Richard is a great writer? Here Bogosian stumbles somewhat with the story-within-the-story trap. There is occasional talk of Richard's new novel, "A Gentle Death," but we're just supposed to take it on faith that the book is really good. While it was easy for me to buy the fact that Reba in Wasted Beauty was model gorgeous after Bogosian described her appearance, I didn't like simply being told that Richard's book is good. Don't tell me his book is good; show me, and I'll be the judge. Granted, Richard's journals are coherent, which would suggest that he's a competent writer, but with respect to "A Gentle Death"--there's no "there" there.

Despite his achievements and professional success, Richard's personal life is a disaster, but he has only himself to blame. He revisits some of his old friends and discovers a 3rd dimension to them, but it only seems to stoke the fires of his self-loathing (or his loathing of his younger self, anyway). The climax is somewhat anticlimactic, but perhaps that's the point? That in our youth obsessed culture we tend to shoot our proverbial wad earlier than we'd like.

The Fan, a character from Bogosian's Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead, shows up toward the end of the book, which gives old Richard a chance to say what he might have said to his younger self. Tragically, however, Richard always wants what he can't have and rejects those who love (or might love) him.

[mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

PERFORATED HEART (2009) by Eric Bogosian is a fascinating study in obsession for pussy, money, and fame. In this instance that obsession revolves around the life of a middle-aged, successful, American Jew writer in New York who reflects back on his path via his journal from the mid 70’s, as he struggles in the present (2006-7) to reclaim his place atop the literary field. This is an intensely honest story and I could identify with it completely. I agree with most all of the positions the main character, Richard Morris, takes on the human condition and what it takes to succeed. I can relate to his methodology, and the relationship problems that ensue from it. He is single-minded, selfish, and driven completely by his obsessions. He attempts to defend them as unchangeable facets of his genetic make-up, or “fate,” as he calls it. He posits that he is an artist and must be faithful only to his craft/art – a seeker, recorder, actor, and teller of truth -- and damn the consequences. Is his self-image accurate? Others disagree—friends and lovers. (eg. pgs. 204-212. Was it consensual sex or rape?) There is scene after scene that Bogosian writes about that I found myself saying, “damn – perfect! I’ve been there.” Be those scenes back in the 70’s or present day. “Big John?” I know him, and in fact just tried to find him. “Zim?” Know him, too, and in fact had just that same confrontation (pg. 214-217) last month. “Elizabeth?” Yep. And so on through all the characters and their interactions. Eerie. Probably, that’s because (apparently) the author and I are the same age. But, we are not the same person. We have our different “fates,’ locales, and traits; i.e. personalities and interactions. The character, Richard Morris, has a fixation on beauty, female beauty; and was born on March 6, 1950, “The Day Of The Beauty Lovers” (according to “The Secret language of Birthdays.”) Eerie. I am going to purchase this book for my library, and maybe a few more for some “friends.” Is this book autobiographical? I don’t know, don’t know the author. But, I know it’s good, very good, and honest and true. I can’t, however, give it five stars because of the ending. Endings in novels are so hard …

[Marsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Morris has just had recent heart surgery. It was very mild but it has led him on an introspective journey about his life as a writer. Digging through his attic, he comes across diaries that he wrote as a young man. While the diaries show a pretentious naïveté that makes him cringe, they are very much indicative of the man he will become. Urgent, incisive, brutally almost painfully honest and yet aching with desperate loneliness, this latest work by Eric Bogosian shows the author and playwright at the height of his powers. At once brimming with youthful, manic energy and mature weariness, Perforated Heart is a worthy addition to any shelf housing his earlier works. The path set by writings like subUrbia, Talk Radio and Wasted Beauty has led him to this current epistolary novel about a man caught on the rack of his own indifference, self-pity and yearning for fame.

[Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminded me a lot of the works of Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInery in that the lead protagonist is largely unsympathetic as a result of being a self-centered, egotistical, former drug and booze addled writer who burns through friends like there's no tomorrow. At times he comes off sympathetic, but ultimately he's self-serving. Despite this (or in spite of this), he's a mesmerizing individual and I found myself often reading several chapters ahead of where I was because I got so wrapped up in what was happening. It's also an interesting meditation on fame, the writing process, and growing old, not to mention the accruement and depletion of friends/friendships, as well as how every story has at least two sides and every friendship, lost or enduring, has different perspectives.

[Glenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well crafted book. An aging successful writer retreats to his CT summer home to recuperate from heart surgery and brings his 30 year old journals to read. The rest of the book is alternating journal entries from the young and old writer, as he wrestles with his craft, fame, women, and mortality. It's the same Bogosian character from his monologues--the hard drinking New York street intellectual, but here you see the guy looking back at himself with amazement wondering how could have ever been like that. And yet the reader hears the same mix of arrogance and laziness in the older version of the character as well.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book I read mostly because of senator eavis/daniel molloy (oop), I really liked it!

The narration is a rhythmic flow-of-consciousness style of writing, Bogosian handles desire, drugs and sex in a clearly self-aware character study. Additionally, the arc of this character as someone who ultimately only sees desires/relationships as transactions to feed his ambition is fleshed out in the forms of his 70s and 2006 self, and reaches a self-dooming end. Artistic integrity, facing mortality, career versus family. I really liked his cynical musings on fame and authorship, revelling in his hypocrisy, and obvs all the drug trips.

I'll probably read more of his books.