The Tenants of Moonbloom

by Edward Lewis Wallant, Dave Eggers (Introduction)

Norman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan. Making his rounds from apartment to apartment, Moonbloom confronts a wildly varied assortment of brilliantly described urban characters, among them a gay jazz musician with a sideline as a gigolo, a Holocaust survivor, and a brilliant young black writer modeled on James Baldwin. Moonbloom hears their cries of outrage and abuse; he learns about their secret sorrows and desires. And as he grows familiar with their stories, he finds that he is drawn, in spite of his best judgment, into a desperate attempt to improve their lives.

Edward Lewis Wallant's astonishing comic tour de force is a neglected masterpiece of 1960s America.

Genres: Fiction, American, The United States Of America, Classics, Literature, 20th Century, New York

264 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Wallant began to write professionally at age twenty nine. He had served in the Second World War as a gunner's mate. He attended the University of Connecticut and graduated from Pratt Institute and studied writing at The New School in New York. While he worked as an advertising art director, Wallant wrote at night.

Wallant died of an aneurysm at the age of 36.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eccentric and unusual novel, not well enough known and wonderful. It takes you to the depths of despair with a redemptive ending.
Norman Moonbloom is in his thirties and very much alone. he has been a student for years and now works for his brother Irwin; a strong character who orders Norman around. Irwin owns a number of delapidated apartment blocks and Norman is employed to collect the rent and in theory to keep them in repair, but has not enough budget to do so.
The novel follows Norman as he visits the residents to collect the rents. The residents are a remarkable collection; a gay black jazz musician who also works as a gigolo, a very old Jewish man (104) who lives in squalor, two sisters and their nephew on whom they dote, an ex child movie star, writers, couples with children, a holocaust survivor and many more. Wallant tells us about their lives and struggles, their hopes, dreams and mostly their despairs. They also complain about the awful state of the buildings and their apartments. Norman isn't a cipher in all this, but feels helpless in the face of all this misery. Norman's journey is described by Wallant;
"He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind."
Wallant died young and left only four novels. He was contemporary with Roth, Mailer, Bellow and the like. Had he lived I suspect he may have been ranked with them or above. The prose is lovely and so well written.
Norman decides to defy his brother and make the apartments habitable. There are still losses and Norman manages to mislay his virginity, but the ending is marvellous. No easy resolutions or neat resolving, but there is hope and great warmth. A deeply humanistic and knowing novel. I would like to have known Mr Wallant.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Succeeding frames had him a reedy adolescent, a toddler, a blanket-sucker of seven. His eyes fixed on the ceiling or on the rumpled cloth of bedclothing, as though any surface could reflect the pale projection. 'Norman Moonbloom,' he said from time to time, animating the machinery of memory. The city went on in its outside time. There were the sounds of the days rising to climax and settling back to half-sleep. Dimly came the footsteps of his neighbors going up and down the stairs and the voice of the endless belt of traffic. 'Norman Moonbloom,' he said in incantation, and he studied hard the pictures of himself, wondering what had taken so long to leave him at this point of virginal terror."

Welcome to the world of Norman Moonbloom, agent for his slumlord older brother, given the job of collecting rent from four Manhattan apartments' worth of tenants. And what weird tenants! Every age, sex, quirk, taste, and emotion you can think of! Norman hates them so much that he falls for them. How can he help NOT falling under their spell? Somehow, despite their numbers, Wallant manages to bring them to life and keep them memorable and individual.

This novel snuck up on me. It was "OK" for awhile, and then I started to care. How Wallant could get me to care about THAT many people, I cannot say, but he pulled it off all right, and when Norman begins his "rebirth," I'm really in. Christ figures (he's Jewish -- check!) in Manhattan collecting rent? The meek shall inherit the safety deposit!

And there's pretty writing, too. Nothing earth-shattering. Just... nice.

"Norman said, 'I think I hear Gaylord coming now.'

Basellecci closed his eyes and posed for his death mask.

They heard a pair of feet clumping up the stairs, stamping on the floor outside the door.

'Gaylord?' Norman called.

'Who you think?' Gaylord answered sullenly, stepping inside. His black head was frosted with snowflakes, which twinkled in the light like tiny chips of glass, and he brought the sweet smell of cold in with him."

Yeah, nice. Like that. Bringing in the sweet smell of the cold so the tiny chips of glass can glint in your hair....

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5)
This book was like a pinwheel - if you stare at it long enough, you'll find many colors and good qualities.

Norman Moonbloom's character goes through a cynical, pessimistic wormhole which is life and with the help of his tenants, comes out on the other side as an optimist. I don't generally care for happy endings and the way this ended wasn't necessarily happy, but one of satisfaction.

NYRB should publish another one of Wallant's out-of print novels. He died very young and has been lost to history mostly; a talent that was lost too soon.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun!

But I felt that the author was keen that it go somewhere.

I was enjoying the ride! That was enough!

Bits:
"the favorite fantasy was only another soporific, one that parted the curtains of sleep for him. Like a boy's night story, it made him smile in the dark. He put himself into the huge form of his father and imagined the world as his playground."

"'By the time I got her to a supine position, I almost didn't care.'
'L'amour,' Norman said, writing out the receipt."

"'I'd appreciate it,' she said. 'A girl kind of depends on the john, you know.'"

"'Here he iss,' [Ilse] said with nasty humour. 'Fire, famine, flood, nutting stops the rent. So constant, my, my.'
'Perhaps it's reassuring?'"

"'The Germans are an immaculate race.'
'Inside they're messy, they're full of filthy fairy-tales.'"

"'How do you know your beau loves you, I mean in such a short time?'
'It doesn't matter whether he does or not, as long as I think he does,' she said, pitying his ignorance with her huge, lovely eyes."

[Doug H · Rating 4 out of 5]

An odd duck, beautifully-feathered. Some of you will hate it, some of you will love it. Almost no plot at all and a cast of thousands. (More than 20, anyhow.) Terrific metaphors, wonderful prose. Sometimes omniscient, sometimes funneled through the rudderless mind of Norman Moonbloom. Existentialist one moment, light and funny the next. Or, somehow simultaneously both at the same time. Utterly original yet also reminiscent of Nathaniel West (“cartoonish” style, eccentric characters), Bernard Malamud and Saul Bellow (realistic depictions of Manhattan apartment life), and James Baldwin (frank subjects/language, a wealth of dialogue). In fact, an obvious nod to James Baldwin appears in the form of a “struggling writer” side character. The dialogue is particularly well done and the borderline stereotypical yet completely believable accents of the many ethnic and minority characters absolutely sing from the page. (Sometimes I actually couldn’t understand what the Russian was saying, but I loved the Italian and other European accents as well as the early “Ebonics” of the black characters and I absolutely lived for the tidbits of gay “dishing”).

I honestly didn’t think about this book very often while away from it, but I very much enjoyed it in the moment during each of the moments I spent with it. It made me half homesick for NYC and half glad as hell that I no longer live in a city apartment.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious and way underappreciated. This is an eccentric cousin of Confederacy of Dunces; you know the type -- myriad partners, straddling the fence as it were, some messy business with a tax-dodge start-up, that one weird holiday when the tequila ghostwrote his version of middle school and what really happened at swimming practice.

Yeah this is that off-shoot and it remains profound and side-splitting.

[david · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humanity, in all of its brutal ugliness, told by a master, using a rental apartment building to reflect our baseness.

[Sanjana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Norman Moonbloom is an over-educated and apathetic rent-collector working for his strict brother. His job is to collect the rents from 3 dilapidated apartment buildings in New York every Friday while also investing NO money in improving the state of any of the apartments.

So once a week he meets each of his tenants - each one weirder then the previous : a 100+ year old Holocaust survivor living in absolute filth, a gay and often naked Jazz musician couple, a Chinese American man who has no qualms diving straight into one-sided conversations about his boho sex life and a James Baldwin-esque gay black writer, etc etc. These characters are unabashedly themselves - each one exposing their lives and hopes to Norman and making several requests with regards to the apartment - my sink won’t stop dripping, the wall in my loo is swollen, the burner is faulty, the elevator has not passed the inspection... In the first half Norman manages to remain very detached from everyone and their requests, making excuses to flee from their apartments as soon as the rent has been pocketed.

“He walked lightly and his face showed no awareness of all the thousands of people around him because he traveled in an eggshell through which came only subdued light and muffled sound.”

“He stepped into his apartment, and his deep, relieving sigh was that of a man to whom hermitage is an ever-present temptation.”

After a fever where “he resided in the vessel of his bed, tied to the shore by the most tenuous mooring of consciousness”, Norman goes through a sort of transformation, a spiritual awakening, slowly starting to care for the tenants, despite himself - the story culminating in a crescendo - the final realisation, his calling. Norman is a sort of Jesus (he is a Jewish virgin!!) : his rebirth bringing about the salvation of the tenants.

Go ahead and read this overlooked piece of art. The last 3 chapters will give you goosebumps.

Edward Lewis Wallant served in WW2 and worked as an art director in an ad agency in NY for several years before taking up writing seriously at the age of 30. To research this book, he lived in a similar set of tenements in downtown NY.
The author has written 4 books, 2 of which (including tenants) were published posthumously. He died of an aneurysm at 36.

Dave Eggers has written an excellent introduction :

“Whatever rage and desperation festers within the millions who share such a city must be contained and mastered, because life otherwise is untenable as would be life without our Moonblooms, soothing us, slightly but meaningfully, with their visitations and repairs.”

[Chuck LoPresti · Rating 5 out of 5]

In lesser hands this depiction of apartment life in NY wouldn't transcend the mundane and pedestrian like it does so consistently. Amidst a motley assortment of very normal people, warts and all, Moonbloom pulls his own pantseat to lift himself out of the misery of his own failure. A desultory academic with a keen ear and just enough tolerance, Moonbloom is not a sick-and-tired-of-it-all man stewing in his own bitterness. He's more like a man that's fouled a few off, down two stikes and still swinging away - he's plucky. Moonbloom doesn't want to take over the world or show all the assholes or anything too "heroic" - he's more like a Harold Lloyd type - filled with ideas and enough motivation to keep it going. And even more like Harold Lloyd - he's very capable of possession by a fevered passion that is joyous to behold. My gaps of knowledge in 20th NY fiction are large enough to leave me with little to compare but fans of Chicagoans Ring Lardner Sr. and James T. Farrell should find much to appreciate here. I really like Wallant's prose and will seek out his other books. He's not too ornate and he's not a slang vernacular writer like Lardner but his words are well chosen and often eerily acute. The characters are the same type of radiant oddballs, losers and a few dreamers thrown in for good measure that you would expect to find in NY apartments in the 1950s. Dispersed throughout the work are the occasional magic sentences with insightful descriptions of fairly mundane conditions. Such as: "So Norman, at the end of his rope and connected to it at his neck, went out into the dark of millions of cold wet touches, tasting snow and reeling under the invisible fallings." Cool stuff. What it's ultimately all about is that we should find solace in each other and when in doubt - get off your ass and get some work done - your actions just might be the grease that makes it all work better. Wallant writes: "A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind." Get something in mind and extend yourself and you're not a failure. Love, Courage and Illusion, Dream or Delusion - that's Wallant's trinity of non-failure. It was also Harold Lloyd's way of thinking and he turned into a fortune. Moonbloom's success is not that he's become a success, it's that he becomes at all.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't remember how this novel landed on my 1963 list. I must have read a review somewhere and ordered a copy. That sounds likely because the edition I have is a New York Review of Books Classics reprint. When it came along on my list I picked it up and read it.

At first and for quite a while actually, it was one of those unprepossessing stories about a sad sack guy named Norman Moonbloom who had drifted mostly downward in life. He works as a rent collector for his brother Irwin, a slumlord in late 1950s Manhattan.

Everything is dark and gloomy and falling apart, both the apartments in subdivided brownstones and their inhabitants. You go through a couple days with Norman as he makes his rounds and meet all the tenants. It all felt very much like an early Saul Bellow or Bernard Malumud novel with eccentric, socially maladjusted characters. The maladjusted tenants all complain to the maladjusted Norman about whatever is broken down in their apartments, from stoves to toilets to cracked flooring, stuck windows and buckling walls. Poverty being barely tolerable, exaggerated by high rents and shoddy management. Ho hum.

Suddenly it turns into the story of a young man, Norman, who has never connected much with life or the people around him, but for no known reason bursts into a guy who cares. A guy who defies his penny pinching brother and goes on a crusade to fix everything in those crumbling buildings. A guy who think he can fix those crumbling people or at least bring some light and comfort into their lives.

At that point I had to go on reading, all the while knowing Norman could not fix anyone, probably not even himself, but fascinated and even laughing at the slapstick of Norman's and his handyman Gaylord's do-it-yourself attempts to fix stuff.

Slow start, sudden change, and a tremendous build to the end. I only cared about Norman Moonbloom but it was him learning to care about his tenants that held my attention. In the end the novel was a feat of storytelling in a setting that would normally only induce despair but instead created a sense of hope for humanity.

I took a chance on a book and it paid off.

[Janice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m really shocked by the 4/5 star reviews on this book. This took me a while to get through despite its brevity (it’s a little over 200 pages) and my endless amount of free time. Wallant is a beautiful writer, but its completely wasted on such a tiresome book. The characters are completely repugnant. The setting is bleak (and I love bleak). The plot is in no way compelling (quick synopsis: Norman Moonbloom is a rental agent for his slum-lord-brother’s tenements in 1950s NYC. He collects the rent and somehow becomes the de facto shrink of the tenants - listening to them complain about their problems with the apartment units somehow (d)evolves into listening to them complain about their lives. Norman finds meaning in his life when he decides to make the repairs in all of the apartments himself). I guess I’m too much of a misanthropic cynic to get into this trite do-gooder shit. The fact that Dave Eggers wrote the introduction probably should have put me on notice that this book is not for me.

So, this took me forever to get through despite its length, as I mentioned above. I kept putting it down, and forgetting about it for days at a time. Then I would spot it on my cluttered nightstand and think, “Oh yeah, I’ve been reading this,” but never actually feel compelled to pick it up again. But I labored through it, because as a formerly nerdy child, (or a neurotic, Type-A “adult”), leaving a book unfinished feels like a personal failure of some sort.

But actually, Wallant failed here. Despite his gorgeous prose, Wallant failed to create a world I wanted to become engrossed in. Or an underlying message that was intellectually engaging. Or characters that were intriguing, relatable, or fleshed-out. Or, at the very least, an entertaining 264 pages - anything to make me care.

[Seth Austin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I must say, I'm a little disappointed that my opinion middled out on The Tenants of Moonbloom, given my previously high expectations.

Make no mistake, it's a wonderfully written novel, coloured throughout with lively, energetic prose. The characters are diverse and it's narrator sympathetic, and yet I struggled to remain engaged with it. Perhaps it's just another instance of set and setting being ill-matched to the work at hand. Or maybe I simply lack the maturity to see eye-to-eye with the worldview of these 'down and out' slum dwellers.

The story is rich with heart and it's ending it gloriously hopeful. Yet I struggle to honestly award anything beyond a "good". Here's hoping time affords me the opportunity to return to it with more favourable eyes.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An American version of Georges Perec's "Life: A User's Manual" set in 1950s NYC, spread across several tenement buildings, distilled down to 250 pages, and written several decades avant la lettre.
4.5 stars

[Oscar · Rating 1 out of 5]

Norman Moonbloom es una persona anodina y triste, cuyo trabajo consiste en administrar varias fincas en el Manhattan de los años 50. Este puesto se lo ha proporcionado Irwin, su hermano y dueño de la empresa inmobiliaria, casi por caridad, para que tenga algo que hacer. Y eso que Norman está "demasiado preparado" para este trabajo, ya que tiene varios títulos en diversas disciplinas.

En general, me gustan estas historias de perdedores, de gente que no encuentra su lugar en la sociedad, y esta novela tiene bastante de eso, sobre todo las partes que se centrar en Norman. Pero posteriormente, el libro se convierte en una historia coral cuyas voces protagonistas son todos esos inquilinos que Norman visita asiduamente para cobrarles el alquiler y escuchar sus quejas. Y esto a mí no me gusta, los cambios constantes de protagonista; las novelas corales me cortan mucho el rollo, salvo algunas excepciones.

Edward Lewis Wallant fue un talento malogrado, ya que murió a los 36 años de un aneurisma. Iba a ser el nuevo Salinger según muchos. Y es que el libro no es malo, sólo que no he conectado. Hay algún personaje secundario interesante, no cabe duda. La mayoría de ellos son de clase media-baja, con sus problemas, miserias y sinsabores. En realidad, toda la novela destila tedio y melancolía.

[Graham P · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book as much about grasping at identity as it is a grotesque comedy about urban life. Savage and yet tender, Wallant has quickly become a hero of mine. His turn of metaphor touches all the senses, and his characterization populates a cast playing the carnival, both sacred and profane. A genuine, thoughtful, and absurdly touching book.

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an incredibly quirky little gem of a book! I had never heard of this author, but my brother Sam reviewed it (on GoodReads!) so positively that I bought it when I read his review many months ago, and just picked it up recently when I had nothing to read on the commute to work. The very compelling succinct introduction by none other then Dave Eggers hooked me, and then the story itself drew me in with its amusing cast of sweet, sad, gross, pathetic and just weird characters.

Moonbloom is a rent collector for his slum-lord brother, who owns a number of crumbling buildings in 1950s Manhattan. His days consist of going from building to building collecting the rent in cash in person and writing falsified receipts for a motley crew of bizarre tenants, each of whom burdens him with unsolicited information about his/her private life.But that doesn't really matter because Moonbloom is so out of touch with the world that he is essentially sleepwalking through an empty existence. When he starts becoming personally involved and interacts with the tenants is when he starts to come alive.

My only complaint with the book is that it was too short and I wanted to find out more about what continued to happen to each of thesee misfits and outcasts.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just the best book I read all year, but among the best I've ever read. Gorgeous writing, every paragraph and every sentence, so meticulously crafted that I found myself rereading whole paragraphs again and again just to be sure that I milked all the beauty out of them. A powerfully uplifting book about the saddest group of every day people you've ever encountered in fiction.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

The description makes the book sound lame but its actually very cool

[Peter Landau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forgotten member of the postwar Jewish-American writers club—Bellow, Malamud, Mailer and Roth—made his mark with The Pawnbroker. The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant images Christ among the tenements, but with more laughs than the Bible.

[Ralph · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book!
Wallant, who also penned "The Pawnbroker", visits the life of Norman Moonbloom, a Building Agent for his slumlord brother. Moonbloom collects rent weekly from all the tenants of his brother's 4 buildings, thereby becoming a part of their lives, and he takes the brunt of their complaints regarding tenement conditions.
Tenants include:
- Basellecci: The dignified man with the swollen toilet wall
- Jerry Wung: The Asian playboy hipster
- Beeler and his daughter Sheryl: Retired pharmacist who lives for his daughter's purity - though she has other ideas
- Kram: The immaculate hunchback artist who re-touches paintings/photos
- Wade Johnson: The English teacher/poet whose devotion to poetry threatens to carry him and his son away
- Leni Kass: Single Mom and Actress
- JT and Milly Leopold: Sick, old painter and his pushy wife.
- Minna/Eve Bailey and their nephew Lester: They dote on their nephew, and his girl problem may not be good news to him, but might be the best news for his aunts.
- Marvin Schoenbrun: Wants Air Conditioning - but why?
- Stan Katz (Jazz Trumpter) and Sidone (Frequently naked black drummer)
- Carol and Sherman Hauser: The bickering couple with the small boy
- Sarah and Aaron Lublin and their Uncle Hirsh: Concentration camp survivors whose cramped quarters spell hostility, and ultimately, love.
- Jane and Jim Sprague: Expecting their first child
- Karloff: Over 100 years old, living in squalor and filth.
- Sugarman: Sells Candy on Trains out of Grand Central, whose depth is hidden behind his clowning.
- Joe Paxton: Talented, busy, effete, poor, black writer .
- DelRio: Boxer, holding the horrors of his life together through order and cleanliness
- Louie: Uneducated photoprint messenger, who is mocked by his co-workers and who watches television constantly.
- Illse Moeller: Pretty German girl who is overtly hostile to Moonblooom, who seems to be hiding a terrible secret that holds her hostage.

This is a job Moonbloom is well suited for, as he exists in a shell, not daring to dream, existing purely on the surface - a solo act in a crowded New York City.
The Tenants, and their humanity, wear on Moonbloom, and serve to reflect Moonbloom's life back at him. Through this, the author visits the question (and answer) of what makes life worth living. Moonbloom's rebirth is marvelous to behold and contains a spiritual lesson for us all.

The characters are fascinating, the setting wonderful, the story enlightening and uplifting and Wallant's prose is top notch. The book is highly recommended, as is the introduction by Dave Eggers.

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extraordinary novel. Last year, in an idle moment, I just happened to Google the search term "most underrated novels ever" and I was greeted with lists of various books. This book came up on several of those lists. A few months later I was browsing in a second-hand bookshop and saw a copy and bought it. But I never got round to reading it until now...

What did I find? The delirious story (though it's not really a story) of an impractical dreamer who works as a rent collector for his brother. He makes a tour of four properties and finds himself being sucked into the lives of the tenants in each. All these tenants are eccentric and odd: some are nicer than others, some are more crazy, some more talented. There are beatniks and bullies, survivors and losers, musicians and writers, outsiders and cynics. All of them have complaints to make about the lighting, the heating, broken stoves, blocked pipes, bulging walls. Norman Moonbloom, the rent collector, regards them as nuisances, until something happens inside him, and he shakes off the cobwebs of his dreamy nature and suddenly feels inspired to answer their calls, to fix their apartments, to do his inexplicable duty...

The prose is wonderful, highly poetic and with a momentum that accelerates under its own beauty. There are some set pieces here that will remain long in my memory: Moonbloom painting himself into a corner, hitting a decaying wall with a pickaxe and being covered in gunk while high on coffee and liqueurs...

[Nihal Vrana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an interesting literary travel. It has a genius structure where you move around different houses through the eyes of Norman Moonbloom. Your view of the ensemble of the characters is both madly deep and saddeningly superficial. The book makes rounds between the buildings with and without Norman and you just grasp so much on different lives on so little information. Now I finished it, I cannot believe how he managed to fit so much information and emotion into 200 something pages.

It is a gloomy yet highly uplifting book. The depression of Moonbloom mixes with that of his tenants and his helplessness matches theirs. And then, Norman takes the matters in his hand and the matters started to respond to his attitude. The book does not necessarily finish on a high note, but it definitely took me to a high note. Beyond its literary beauty, the book says something very important on how to break the exploitation chains the urban lifestyle puts on us and how by doing so we can get out of our own misery.

It is sad that Wallant only got to write 4 books, but if all of them are of this quality, then he was an exceptional talent.

[Jim Corcoran · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, this is one of the best books I've ever read. It shows us one thing that ties us all together and yet that we all forget: Humans are interesting! We all have stories, pasts, futures we'd like to see realized, disappointments, resentments.

Norman Moonbloom is all of us. He wavers between dedication and stagnation. Moonbloom is a great character, in every way. He's a mystery, yet I felt like I've known him forever.

If the last pages of this book don't make you want to run out of your house and take on the world, then you have a problem. They're such beautiful, inspiring pages.

Happiness, sadness, depression, ambivalence, hedonism: that's the city and it's all in this book. It's criminal that this book isn't more well-known. I'll definitely be reading it again!

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. A quiet and directionless academic, Norman Moonbloom gets stuck being the rent collector for his brother's failing apt building in NYC. The building is falling apart and but's not allowed to spend any of the building's money on repairs. As he goes around to collect rent he gets more and more wrapped up in the lives of his tenants and ends up making their repairs himself. The tenants are a diverse bunch - immigrants, a holocaust survivor, jazz musician, a character based on James Baldwin. As he gets more involved in their lives, his life takes on more purpose. Awww. It has a great ending.

[Samuel]

I absolutely love this book. For anyone who has ever lived in a New York Apartment building. Ever.

[Zek · Rating 3 out of 5]

מאד אהבתי את ספרו של ואלאנט ״המשכונאי״ וציפיותיו מהספר הנוכחי היו בהתאם, גם לנוכח מה שקראתי על הסופר עצמו והשוואתו לסופרים יהודיים גדולים בני זמנו כמו סול בלו, פיליפ רות׳ ואחרים.
החלק הראשון של הספר הנוכחי לא בישר טובות ושעמם אותי עד כי חשבתי להפסיק את הקריאה באמצע. למזלי החזקתי מעמד וסייימתי את הקריאה בחיוך רחב. הסיפור נסוב על נורמן מונבלום, בחור יהודי כבן 35 ועדיין בתול (עד סוף הספר יספיק לשנות סטטוס זה..) שכילה את ירושתו על מימון לימודים חסרי תוחלת ומאז הוא משמש כמנהל האחזקות וגובה דמי השכירות השבועיים של דיירי 4 בניינים להשכרה שבבעלות אחיו מרווין. רוב פרקי הספר נסובים על מערכת הגומלין בין מונבלום לדיירים שמורכבים מטיפוסים שונים שכל אחד ואחת מהם מתנים בפניו את צרתם... זה לא בדיוק תורם לאמינות של הספר כיוון שבחיים האמיתיים גובה שכר הדירה שלך הוא לא בדיוק התחליף לפסיכולוג שלך... ברוב המקרים הסיפורים לא מתרוממים לכדי עניין למעט מספר מקרים שבחלקם חייכתי ובחלקם הקטן יותר נקרעתי מצחוק (ע״ע איבוד הבתולין הבלתי נשכח).

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The tenants of Moonbloom Realty Corp are the poor, the dissolute, the forgotten and the forgetting. Several have blue numbers tattooed on their forearms. Norman Moonbloom, "New York's most educated rent-collector" now works for his slum landlord brother, Irwin, after decades spent as a feckless student, hopping from discipline to discipline. Norman, small, thin, with a " gambler-white face", wears a suit and oversized fedora which make him look like a child dressed as a gangster, and spends his days traipsing between the four Moonbloom tenements, gathering complaints, collecting rent and prioritising the repairs which Irwin will never finance. Irwin rants at Norman on the phone, dishing out demands which Norman hears as "You've got to rannana rannana rannana and rannana. Responsibility rannana rannana. I am rannana rannana constantly". Irwin is never seen by the reader and his imminent arrival ends the novel and will terminate the leases of the miserable Moonbloom tenants.

Norman is "an outsider by vocation". "He walked lightly and his face showed no awareness of the all the thousands of people around him because he traveled in an eggshell through which came only subdued light and muffled sound". A tenant tells him,"I get the impression that you're sleeping". Another tells him that he is " unwholesome", "heedless", "essentially humourless and unalive". However, Norman is not totally unaware. "When he washed the pot and the dish, he had an image of himself, thin, dark, idiotically placid, sealed into a hermetic globe whose thinness gave him only the flickering colours of the outside." He feels an internal "stretching"; "pain seemed imminent". Like C.S. Lewis in "Shadowlands", Norman has tried unsuccessfully to eschew real life and its risks for the safety of the cloister. "By lifelong habit, he heard but did not listen, just as he saw but did not look. Like a cautious mouse in an electrified maze, he remembered his few tentative sorties toward things, his few brief adventures into the barest hint of pain. He kept to a small circumference now, having experienced nothing that compensated for the discomfort of sensation." Like Lewis, Norman is bewildered by the emotional demands on him and, like Lewis, he wakes up to the world of grief and joy and other people.

Wallace's prose is limpid, concise and expressive. He surprises and confounds. He can be very funny (witness the drunken scene late in the book in which Norman is "reborn" in a welter of filth). He has a deft turn of phrase:-

"Norman said nothing and she heard him", and
"She led him into the living room, which was papered in ancient brown stripes. There was a glass-shaded lamp, circa 1911. Norman vaguely recalled seeing such lamps used cleverly in pictures of modern rooms. But here, surrounded by massive, clubfooted tables and highboys, it was being played straight, and the reds and blues of the lamp shade were part of the consistent picture from a dusty, old, commonplace album"..... (Note that - it was being played straight.)

The approximately 35 tenants are roundly, compassionately realised, but there are too many for these delicate 245 pages and they are difficult to differentiate. The point is of course that Norman is overwhelmed, his egg is cracked and he starts to see and to hear. Their plight, the dark hallways, unsafe elevator, loose window panes and - most grotesquely - a swollen toilet wall - bring on his pain and his stretching. Norman takes it on his shoulders. Tenants die, attempt suicide and get arrested. Norman faces it all with a dodgy electrician, a moaning handyman and a hired truck. Norman's burden is his salvation. These people "get into" Norman and he can't get them out. He starts to wake up, he "grows a face" and a purpose.

This is a marvellous work. Peculiar, lucid and meaningful. Norman Moonbloom will get into your head and you won't want to get him out.

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

A satisfying entry in the NYRB catalogue. There isn't much plot as such, but as the pun in the title becomes clearer the narrative gathers momentum. After spending many a long year in college studying various disciplines without graduating, Norman Moonbloom has accepted to become his brother's agent and collects rent in 4 semi-derelict tenements. Norman is a very fastidious guy who was permanently put off sex when a girl he fancied in school farted loudly. As a result he is still a virgin and has, in fact retreated into his shell and pretty much given up on life. His brother's tenants variously pity him, bully him, threaten him without eliciting much response, until he has an epiphany and decides to do all the repairs they keep begging for, on his own time, and eventually with his own savings when the rent money runs out. The last phase of this renovation work takes place during a snowy winter, and the grand finale has him fix the toilet in the apartment of an Italian immigrant who has at last accepted that he has cancer and knows he won't benefit from Norman's efforts for very long. But no matter, Norman wants to restore some beauty and order in the world and in himself more than to redress any specific wrong to the tenants. This isn't a story about slumlords, but the personal odyssey of a guy who decides to reclaim his life by doing some good to people he feels responsible for without having any illusions about them. The quality of the style holds this rather slight tale together and gives depth to Norman who is neither a true hero nor an antihero.

[lanius_minor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Když se sejde větší společnost, necítím se ve své kůži. Vím přesně, čím to je a proč dávám přednost setkáním mezi čtyřma očima. Takže když jsem s Normanem Moonbloomem vyrazila vybírat činži, jména a starosti hned několika desítek obyvatel čtyř domů, jichž byl správcem, mě poněkud vyděsily. Stejně jako chudák Norman jsem se ale jejich náporu postavila čelem a dala některým z těch rázovitých postaviček (se samotným protagonistou v čele) šanci vepsat se mi do čtenářského srdce. Kniha, kterou pro české čtenáře před zapomenutím svým výborným překladem zachránil Miroslav Jindra, stojí určitě za přečtení. Krom toho, že by mohla sloužit jako výborná učebnice vykreslení charakterů postav, je taková příjemně neuchopitelná: Co ještě myslel autor vážně a co už jako nadsázku? Co je ještě příběh a co alegorie? Umím si představit, že rozebírat Nájemníky pana Moonblooma na literárním semináři by mohlo být požitkem. Má troška do mlýna interpretací a úvah by se začala odvíjet od konce, od ztrácejícího se písmene v Normanově jméně, od písmene pozbývajícího své tahy v nepřímé úměře k tomu, jak jeho nositel naopak své pravé rysy nachází... Nájemníci pana Moonblooma jsou opravdu příkladnou ukázkou beletrie - belles lettres.

[Eunice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and this book are like companion pieces; the city's din, the grime and the vibrant characters dance off the pages of each book and both authors have this strong sense of humanity, profound respect for the lives they are depicting.

but where the characters Orwell meets effuse love and rage and seem to pass through like the quirky travel story you tell as a lark, Moonbloom's tenants have a fragile vulnerability that aches for something better than the decrepit building they all currently waste away in. you feel their hurt.

i was a bit disappointed at the ending, but the rest of the book leading up to it more than makes up for it.