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Elbowing the seducer: A novel
First edition. Compulsively womanizing editor discovers, or is discovered by eccentric, would-be writer. Not exactly the usual New-Author-Succeeds story. viii , 306, 2 pages. quarter cloth, boards, dust jacket.. small 8vo..
306 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
June 3, 2022
"Elbowing the Seducer" felt like a book for adults without having to be moralizing or dour about its pleasures. I could speculate that that is because of the time that it was written but I also believe that it's because it was written by a woman. And not only a woman, but a woman who was obviously drawing heavily from her own experiences. ES was a story about what happened to a few people during a part of their lives where they intersected. There was sex, deceit, guilt, pleasure, career-advancement, career-sabotage, divorce, love, sadness, and all the rest of adulthood but Gertler didn't present all of it as if we should learn a lesson and that was refreshing
I loved her creation of Howard. He was something new to me. He was almost a Roth character but he wasn't insecure or overly disgusting or bafflingly charming or more charming than any person with his standing would be. Instead, he was just a man with a little bit too much freedom to indulge in his desires who used well the confidence that provided him with to seduce women. All of the characters were slightly less successful but still worked (except for Larry who was perfect in his abhorrent, entitled, childish, and reprehensible behavior - I had to take a breath every time he was on the page so I could focus and make sure I was really hating him with the vehemence he deserved)
I LOVE first novels - I love them for their imperfections and obvious enthusiasm but usually not for their technical skill or polish. With Gertler, it's different. I loved all of the normal things that I love about first novels but her multiplicity of styles, bravery, precision, and sheer talent shone through as well. The differences in style from the first half of the book to the second half felt almost as if she had written them years apart but still wasn't "wrong" or distracting. Not to mention her descriptions and sentences simply sang:
"...an affair runs its course, like a fever or a mass delusion. We're having a mutual delusion"
"...he caught the flash of disappointment on Newman's face and wished emotions could be bronzed like baby shoes; he would keep that one on his desk for a paperweight"
Such a shame we haven't gotten another novel from this talented writer yet g:
I loved her creation of Howard. He was something new to me. He was almost a Roth character but he wasn't insecure or overly disgusting or bafflingly charming or more charming than any person with his standing would be. Instead, he was just a man with a little bit too much freedom to indulge in his desires who used well the confidence that provided him with to seduce women. All of the characters were slightly less successful but still worked (except for Larry who was perfect in his abhorrent, entitled, childish, and reprehensible behavior - I had to take a breath every time he was on the page so I could focus and make sure I was really hating him with the vehemence he deserved)
I LOVE first novels - I love them for their imperfections and obvious enthusiasm but usually not for their technical skill or polish. With Gertler, it's different. I loved all of the normal things that I love about first novels but her multiplicity of styles, bravery, precision, and sheer talent shone through as well. The differences in style from the first half of the book to the second half felt almost as if she had written them years apart but still wasn't "wrong" or distracting. Not to mention her descriptions and sentences simply sang:
"...an affair runs its course, like a fever or a mass delusion. We're having a mutual delusion"
"...he caught the flash of disappointment on Newman's face and wished emotions could be bronzed like baby shoes; he would keep that one on his desk for a paperweight"
Such a shame we haven't gotten another novel from this talented writer yet g:
November 14, 2017
I work in a bookstore. One reason customers return books is that they take them home, start reading them, and then realize that they’d already read them a few years ago. I myself have books lying around that I’m not sure I’ve read or not. (It's part of the reason I'm on this site, which I recommend to my customers for the same reason.) Not remembering whether or not you've read a book doesn’t say much good about the book—it’s literally forgettable.
That was never true with T. Gerler’s Elbowing the Seducer. I read it in 1987, three years after it was published (it takes place in New York City, in 1980), and even now, three decades later, remembered whole sentences, at times with complete accuracy, and I am not the type who does that. I just finished rereading it. I was a little wary of doing so. My memory of it was so positive. Did I want to risk that and find that it was shallow and dumb, a relic from that decade?
I took the risk and reread it. The prose holds up. T. Gertler (the T is for Trudy) writes with such insight and wit that the novel, which is in part about writing and what we should expect from authors, brims with genius and is often hilarious. If you ever plan to write fiction or poetry, you must read pages 48 - 52.
This is a book to read slowly, to savor the sentences. You can open any page and find a passage with details that put you in the same Manhattan location as its characters. You’re in an office, on a city street, in a bookstore, a bedroom, a dinner table eating dessert after an awkward meal:
You're also often in a bed or, once, a shower, having sex. Most sex scenes in books are awful and tell you little about the characters. That’s not the case here.
From Michiko Kakutani’s review in the New York Times of May 7, 1984:
That was never true with T. Gerler’s Elbowing the Seducer. I read it in 1987, three years after it was published (it takes place in New York City, in 1980), and even now, three decades later, remembered whole sentences, at times with complete accuracy, and I am not the type who does that. I just finished rereading it. I was a little wary of doing so. My memory of it was so positive. Did I want to risk that and find that it was shallow and dumb, a relic from that decade?
I took the risk and reread it. The prose holds up. T. Gertler (the T is for Trudy) writes with such insight and wit that the novel, which is in part about writing and what we should expect from authors, brims with genius and is often hilarious. If you ever plan to write fiction or poetry, you must read pages 48 - 52.
This is a book to read slowly, to savor the sentences. You can open any page and find a passage with details that put you in the same Manhattan location as its characters. You’re in an office, on a city street, in a bookstore, a bedroom, a dinner table eating dessert after an awkward meal:
The goblet set before Howard held a puddle of beige ice cream in which slivers of chocolate and almonds floated. His dessert spoon, someone else’s heirloom acquired at a country auction, rested in this mire, beaming someone else’s initial like a distress signal.
You're also often in a bed or, once, a shower, having sex. Most sex scenes in books are awful and tell you little about the characters. That’s not the case here.
From Michiko Kakutani’s review in the New York Times of May 7, 1984:
[T]his first novel represents the debut of an enormously gifted writer, a writer who possesses an assured and distinctive voice, as well as a finely honed ability to delineate the sexual and literary politics of the New York writing community with both humor and verve. Miss Gertler seems to notice everything, from the balding velvet on a young artist's jacket cuffs to the German shepherd swimming, amid miniature aircraft carriers, in the boat pond in Central Park. In addition, she demonstrates an unerring ear for gently satirizing the commingled syllables of High Art and street savvy that pass for conversation in certain Manhattan circles.
The smug, insular world of this literary community, of course, has been documented in the past, and the two central male characters in ''Elbowing'' - Howard, the philandering editor, and his friend and rival, the critic Newman Sykes - may also seem familiar to us from such novels as Philip Roth's ''My Life as a Man'' and John Updike's ''Bech Is Back.'' Certainly their type is easily recognizable - men who pledge their hearts to the goddess of literature and their bodies to less lofty pursuits, men who find it amusing to sign the hotel register ''V. and V. Nabokov'' while conducting an adulterous affair.
What distinguishes ''Elbowing'' is that it is told from the point of view of a ''spectator'' ''at the literary circus,'' who happens to be a woman. And in the course of the book, Dina Reeve matures from a wide-eyed apprentice, vulnerable to the literary and sexual judgments of her mentors, into a determined novelist, fully capable of avenging herself in print. While it becomes clear that her former lovers - the hapless critic and editor - will never be more than midwives to literature, she stands poised on the brink of becoming an artist.
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September 19, 2025“I am a witness, he thought as the woman talked and he answered her. He saw the spread of his fingertips, dark on a woman's pale behind; he grasped, he took. The women. Time stirred, measured by women. Calendar girls weren't decorations; they were time itself, everything revealed and, by that openness, everything shrouded. Here it is. What is it? Come, bite my ass, three-quarters of an apple. The other quarter, the one not there where is it? […]The other quarter skimmed over green trees, that slice, the triangle rounded and with dimension, shape given flesh. Weary of women, he still yearned for something beyond himself.” pg 164-65
These evocative, lush moments of reflective sensuousness are peppered all over the book. So often abstracted, jazzy (in the improvisational sense) language doesn’t grab me. Somehow though T. Gertler sticks the landing almost every time she makes these artful attempts at taking the boilerplate philandering novel and making it an affective vehicle for showing how sex is at the core of vitality, actuality, and existence (in a way that I have really only seen in queer lit). It’s for that reason as well as the fact that it is genuinely well written, funny, and sexy that I recommend you find the time to read this book.
These evocative, lush moments of reflective sensuousness are peppered all over the book. So often abstracted, jazzy (in the improvisational sense) language doesn’t grab me. Somehow though T. Gertler sticks the landing almost every time she makes these artful attempts at taking the boilerplate philandering novel and making it an affective vehicle for showing how sex is at the core of vitality, actuality, and existence (in a way that I have really only seen in queer lit). It’s for that reason as well as the fact that it is genuinely well written, funny, and sexy that I recommend you find the time to read this book.
December 30, 2024
Sex scenes in books are rarely good, these are! I had been wanting to read this out of print book for so long and finally a copy became available for a reasonable price. T Gertler is one of those writers who went largely unsung but is excellent. Unfortunately, Suzanne becomes ridiculous and Dina, despite being the main character, feels less fleshed out as a character than Howard or Larry. It’s not the biggest problem in the world, the writing is a master class in how to conjure a scene without getting bogged down and the dialogue is pitch perfect.
July 10, 2017
For me this had a post-modernish feel to it. There were a lot of details that didn't add significantly to the story and seemed indulgent. I think DeLillo's White Noise and The Nix both suffered the same problem, only more so.
I don't enjoy this type of writing because I don't think it's that funny or entertaining and mostly, because I don't feel sucked in. There is no heart, in my opinon. It's like talking to people who make jokes all the time as a way to avoid being close.
I don't enjoy this type of writing because I don't think it's that funny or entertaining and mostly, because I don't feel sucked in. There is no heart, in my opinon. It's like talking to people who make jokes all the time as a way to avoid being close.
November 15, 2017
I read this book thanks to Dwight Garner and his New York Times occasional feature, "Books of the Times" (a nice play on words, to be sure). I read novels of every age and subject with great interest; how literary styles and interests have changed over the years! That was certainly the case for reading T. Gertler's well written, engaging at times for its painful romantic aspects, seemingly roman a clef 1984 novel, "Elbowing the Seducer."
Perhaps its most interesting aspect is that it's about literary people - their work, their lives. The leading male character is Howard, editor of "Rosemary," a literary journal, and a serial womanizer. Dina, the leading female character is a writer whose short story he publishes in "Rosemary" and whom he inspires, directly and indirectly, to write a novel - which leads us to suspect this work may be a roman a clef. Gertler provides several titillating bedroom scenes between various characters which are reminiscent of Garner's "times" - this being the promiscuous, sometimes lascivious, pre-AIDS-aware early '80s. IMO, the sex scenes can best be appreciated for their satirical aspects, similar in, ah, spirit to J.P. Donleavy, Henry Miller or Anais Nin. Or, if one wanted to think about it more glibly and philosophically, one might recall Johnny Lee's 1980 hit C/W song, "Lookin' For Love" (in all the wrong places).
But what I appreciated most was Gertler's crafting. Her choice of words, her highly attuned and sensitive turns of phrase, her literarily-elegant manner of building scenes and situations, made this novel a pleasure to read.
"Elbowing the Seducer" (what a great title) has been out of print for ages, but you can get a Kindle copy.
Perhaps its most interesting aspect is that it's about literary people - their work, their lives. The leading male character is Howard, editor of "Rosemary," a literary journal, and a serial womanizer. Dina, the leading female character is a writer whose short story he publishes in "Rosemary" and whom he inspires, directly and indirectly, to write a novel - which leads us to suspect this work may be a roman a clef. Gertler provides several titillating bedroom scenes between various characters which are reminiscent of Garner's "times" - this being the promiscuous, sometimes lascivious, pre-AIDS-aware early '80s. IMO, the sex scenes can best be appreciated for their satirical aspects, similar in, ah, spirit to J.P. Donleavy, Henry Miller or Anais Nin. Or, if one wanted to think about it more glibly and philosophically, one might recall Johnny Lee's 1980 hit C/W song, "Lookin' For Love" (in all the wrong places).
But what I appreciated most was Gertler's crafting. Her choice of words, her highly attuned and sensitive turns of phrase, her literarily-elegant manner of building scenes and situations, made this novel a pleasure to read.
"Elbowing the Seducer" (what a great title) has been out of print for ages, but you can get a Kindle copy.
August 10, 2021
His book was written in the 1980s and felt like it -- in both good and bad ways. Follows two men (both in the writing/critic world) and Dina, an aspiring (married) writer who submits her story to Howard. Howard sleeps with a lot of women, despite being married, and comes onto Dina, who becomes slightly obsessed and very interested in him. She leaves her husband, Howard backs off, and she starts sleeping with Newman Sykes, a critic she meets through Howard. Dina writes a book about her escapades with Howard & Newman - which makes both of them worried and angry. Howard’s wife, Suzanne, finds out about Dina and near the very end, lights a fire to the bookstore, above which Dina lives. Dina moves out with Vincent Bask, another writer who previously slept with Suzanne and showed an interest in Dina throughout the book.
On the one hand, I thought the writing was wonderful and strange. (“It needed red. The room’s denial of red threatened her with red. It needed a red pillow or a picture of a ripe tomato. It needed blood splattered on the walls.”) -- in response to room being too white. Lots of sex scenes that aren’t rife with emotion or larger meaning. On the other hand, parts of it felt outdated (e.g. women are much less successful generally/flatter than male characters -- although Dina becomes successful in the end, while Howard is suffering at the expense of his wife;, the male “womanizers”). It reminded me, somehow of “Heartburn” with Meryl Streep. Aesthetically pleasing and gratifying, but outdated? In the end, not sure what i am left with, but I was engrossed and enjoyed it the whole way through.
On the one hand, I thought the writing was wonderful and strange. (“It needed red. The room’s denial of red threatened her with red. It needed a red pillow or a picture of a ripe tomato. It needed blood splattered on the walls.”) -- in response to room being too white. Lots of sex scenes that aren’t rife with emotion or larger meaning. On the other hand, parts of it felt outdated (e.g. women are much less successful generally/flatter than male characters -- although Dina becomes successful in the end, while Howard is suffering at the expense of his wife;, the male “womanizers”). It reminded me, somehow of “Heartburn” with Meryl Streep. Aesthetically pleasing and gratifying, but outdated? In the end, not sure what i am left with, but I was engrossed and enjoyed it the whole way through.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2017
I enjoyed this book. I Came to this book based on NY times feature American Beauties by Dwight Garner. Luckily I could find a used copy (probably the only copy available online in India). Sometimes one gets lucky. So thanks to nytimes, Amazon, Dwight and the green earth books, Kolkata.
Book is based in NYC's literary/publishing circle. Chief trouble maker is Howard Ritchie, Editor of a once obscure literary magazine Rosemary which has now become well established and reputed under the able stewardship of Howard.
The editor has peculiar charms and talents which combined with the literary platform of the magazine have worked well for both the editor and the magazine.
Howard is a great editor due to his talent for identify the good writing though he himself is incapable of writing. Another more earthly passion of Howard is sex. Infact his afternoons are mostly spent in bed with one beautiful woman or sometimes two.
Then there is Newman Sykes the critic whose spare flat is sometimes used by Howard for his afternoon sessions.
In this circle arrives Dina a struggling writer desperate for getting published. Dina is stuck in a dull marriage with Larry, a struggling painter who sometimes works unhappily at a flower store to make money and at other times happy to live off Dina. Marriage has been mostly disappointing for her so far.
Book is based in NYC's literary/publishing circle. Chief trouble maker is Howard Ritchie, Editor of a once obscure literary magazine Rosemary which has now become well established and reputed under the able stewardship of Howard.
The editor has peculiar charms and talents which combined with the literary platform of the magazine have worked well for both the editor and the magazine.
Howard is a great editor due to his talent for identify the good writing though he himself is incapable of writing. Another more earthly passion of Howard is sex. Infact his afternoons are mostly spent in bed with one beautiful woman or sometimes two.
Then there is Newman Sykes the critic whose spare flat is sometimes used by Howard for his afternoon sessions.
In this circle arrives Dina a struggling writer desperate for getting published. Dina is stuck in a dull marriage with Larry, a struggling painter who sometimes works unhappily at a flower store to make money and at other times happy to live off Dina. Marriage has been mostly disappointing for her so far.
March 17, 2025
just totally delightful.
why oh why is this book out of print? I read it as a pdf but would kill for a physical copy (if anyone has one for under $100 pls hit me up). t gertler is observant and hilarious, and knows how to write a really hot book, and this book is hot. this and its sense of humor are the book's main draw.
a great comedy filled with misadventures, though i can't say i adored the very very end. in books like these i typically want the protagonist to end up single (picking herself over any of these mid ass guys) and the man she ends up picking feels like quite a random choice.
also message to t gertler: i'm sorry honey but anyone reading this book could tell it was written by a woman. change your name to high heaven, you still know what the girls want. no need to hate your own femaleness this much queen.
why oh why is this book out of print? I read it as a pdf but would kill for a physical copy (if anyone has one for under $100 pls hit me up). t gertler is observant and hilarious, and knows how to write a really hot book, and this book is hot. this and its sense of humor are the book's main draw.
a great comedy filled with misadventures, though i can't say i adored the very very end. in books like these i typically want the protagonist to end up single (picking herself over any of these mid ass guys) and the man she ends up picking feels like quite a random choice.
also message to t gertler: i'm sorry honey but anyone reading this book could tell it was written by a woman. change your name to high heaven, you still know what the girls want. no need to hate your own femaleness this much queen.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 19, 2021
This book was a superb read. It was a surprisingly frank and funny book about the sexual shenanigans in the publishing industry circa 1980 as it was published in 1984. The author has a very unique style of syntax and the positioning of descriptive non sequiturs which makes for very funny prose that must be read carefully to savor it. I am sorry that this woman has never written another book but this one would be hard to surpass. I found a cheap copy on Amazon and it is available on kindle for $4.99.
February 24, 2024
A thoroughly captivating novel. It is so well written and so engaging that is proof you don’t have to like the characters in a book to like the book. Each of the main characters has at least one, and usually just one, redeeming quality to enjoy watching their bad behavior. The author’s gender neutral first initial worked as I couldn’t tell if the author is male or female and it doesn’t really matter. This is a difficult book to get a copy of — check out the price of a hardback— so if you see a copy relatively inexpensive buy it. I doubt anyone will republish it since it would offend the cancel culture dictatorship.
June 12, 2023
best publishing book i’ve ever read tbh
August 7, 2019
The T stands for Trudy, but Gertler did not want to use her first name because she feared, doubtless correctly, that her book would be perceived as somehow lesser because it was written by a woman. While the fear was justifiable, the premise is daft. This is a terrific book of manners and mores in New York towards the end of the 20th Century. The saddest thing about this endeavor is that despite good reviews, Gertler never wrote another novel! And "Elbowing" has gone out of print. I could not even find it in the massive Boston Public Library system, so I had to track down a used copy.
From Michiko Kakutani’s review in the New York Times of May 7, 1984:
"[T]his first novel represents the debut of an enormously gifted writer, a writer who possesses an assured and distinctive voice, as well as a finely honed ability to delineate the sexual and literary politics of the New York writing community with both humor and verve. Gertler seems to notice everything, from the balding velvet on a young artist's jacket cuffs to the German shepherd swimming, amid miniature aircraft carriers, in the boat pond in Central Park. In addition, she demonstrates an unerring ear for gently satirizing the commingled syllables of High Art and street savvy that pass for conversation in certain Manhattan circles.
"The smug, insular world of this literary community, of course, has been documented in the past, and the two central male characters in "Elbowing" - Howard, the philandering editor, and his friend and rival, the critic Newman Sykes - may also seem familiar to us from such novels as Philip Roth's "My Life as a Man" and John Updike's "Bech Is Back." Certainly their type is easily recognizable - men who pledge their hearts to the goddess of literature and their bodies to less lofty pursuits, men who find it amusing to sign the hotel register "V. and V. Nabokov" while conducting an adulterous affair.
"What distinguishes "Elbowing" is that it is told from the point of view of a "spectator at the literary circus" who happens to be a woman. And in the course of the book, Dina Reeve matures from a wide-eyed apprentice, vulnerable to the literary and sexual judgments of her mentors, into a determined novelist, fully capable of avenging herself in print. While it becomes clear that her former lovers - the hapless critic and editor - will never be more than midwives to literature, she stands poised on the brink of becoming an artist."
From Michiko Kakutani’s review in the New York Times of May 7, 1984:
"[T]his first novel represents the debut of an enormously gifted writer, a writer who possesses an assured and distinctive voice, as well as a finely honed ability to delineate the sexual and literary politics of the New York writing community with both humor and verve. Gertler seems to notice everything, from the balding velvet on a young artist's jacket cuffs to the German shepherd swimming, amid miniature aircraft carriers, in the boat pond in Central Park. In addition, she demonstrates an unerring ear for gently satirizing the commingled syllables of High Art and street savvy that pass for conversation in certain Manhattan circles.
"The smug, insular world of this literary community, of course, has been documented in the past, and the two central male characters in "Elbowing" - Howard, the philandering editor, and his friend and rival, the critic Newman Sykes - may also seem familiar to us from such novels as Philip Roth's "My Life as a Man" and John Updike's "Bech Is Back." Certainly their type is easily recognizable - men who pledge their hearts to the goddess of literature and their bodies to less lofty pursuits, men who find it amusing to sign the hotel register "V. and V. Nabokov" while conducting an adulterous affair.
"What distinguishes "Elbowing" is that it is told from the point of view of a "spectator at the literary circus" who happens to be a woman. And in the course of the book, Dina Reeve matures from a wide-eyed apprentice, vulnerable to the literary and sexual judgments of her mentors, into a determined novelist, fully capable of avenging herself in print. While it becomes clear that her former lovers - the hapless critic and editor - will never be more than midwives to literature, she stands poised on the brink of becoming an artist."
December 27, 2018
06.16.2017 NY Times Book Review; written in 1984; now it is reportedly out of print; at EKU Library locally; none at Madison Co. Public Libraries...might be this classic I won't get read...12.27.2018: read while in S. Korea visiting son; what a huge disappointment; had I not been on vacation, there is no way I would have finished it...nary a character had a positive attribute, all very self-centered; should remain out of print is all I'm sayin'; kindle edition
November 13, 2011
I enjoyed this one. It took me a little while to get into it but was worth it in the end. This is a story of affairs and how they can affect the lives of everyone around you...
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