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Trepleff
And so it was my own fault; I had consciously willed what had happened and I was absolutely responsible. I had arrived at the final logical end of the holy man system. Once you have entered into emotional relations with people, even if it is only to cure them of a disease, there is no place to stop...I was completely committed to what I did next...The narrator of this sad, funny, completely engrossing book is a successful psychiatrist with a lovely wife and family and all the toys that middle-class affluence can buy. He speaks these words just before he performs a deed that irreparably shatters his world. From this moment on, his story is that of a man caught in a haunting, humorous odyssey into the depths of himself. Stripped by the consequences of his act of all his "possessions," encased in a terrible emotional detachment, he travels through Europe in the tow of a disturbed rich widow to whose terrible fate he passively contributes. The motivations of his existence, which makes his narrative a very fascinating mixture of self-mocking humor, suspense, and meaningful commentary, are best indicated by MacDonald Harris's own " I believe that it is possible for a man to want to kill a woman because she threw his shoes out of the window."Closely connected to the idea of Trepleff, Chekhov's pathetic hero in The Sea Gull, the narrator's story offers scope for interpretations on many levels--a brilliant tour de force that propels MacDonald Harris into the company of today's finest fiction writers.
- GenresNovels
256 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1968
20 people want to read
About the author
MacDonald Harris
30 books25 followersPseudonym of Donald Heiney
Donald Heiney was born in South Pasadena in 1921. Seastruck from the time he read Stevenson at the age of twelve, he went to sea in earnest as a merchant marine cadet in 1942, sat for his Third Mate's license in 1943, and spent the rest of the war as a naval officer on a fleet oiler. After the war he earned a B.A. at Redlands and a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Southern California. In 1964 he lived with his wife and son in Salt Lake City where he taught writing and comparative literature.
Taking the pseudonym MacDonald Harris for his fiction, his first story appeared in Esquire in 1947. Since then he has published stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as a number of literary quarterlies. His story "Second Circle" was reprinted in the 1959 O. Henry Collection. Private Demons, his first novel, was published in 1961. Mortal Leap, his second, was finished in the summer of 1963 in Rome.
His novel The Balloonist was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977. He received a 1982 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his entire body of work.
Heiney died in 1993, at age 71, at his home in Newport Beach, California.
Donald Heiney was born in South Pasadena in 1921. Seastruck from the time he read Stevenson at the age of twelve, he went to sea in earnest as a merchant marine cadet in 1942, sat for his Third Mate's license in 1943, and spent the rest of the war as a naval officer on a fleet oiler. After the war he earned a B.A. at Redlands and a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of Southern California. In 1964 he lived with his wife and son in Salt Lake City where he taught writing and comparative literature.
Taking the pseudonym MacDonald Harris for his fiction, his first story appeared in Esquire in 1947. Since then he has published stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and The Saturday Evening Post, as well as a number of literary quarterlies. His story "Second Circle" was reprinted in the 1959 O. Henry Collection. Private Demons, his first novel, was published in 1961. Mortal Leap, his second, was finished in the summer of 1963 in Rome.
His novel The Balloonist was nominated for the National Book Award in 1977. He received a 1982 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his entire body of work.
Heiney died in 1993, at age 71, at his home in Newport Beach, California.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 31, 2015
Mortal Leap flared with psoriatic fervour on GR after Rod’s excellent review, and since that novel is out-of-print-to-the-nth-degree, I happened upon his following—Trepleff, published in 1968 in the UK and the following year in the States. Committed Chekhovians might find more pleasure in this novel’s über-Chekhovian allusions (Treplev is from The Seagull), and the protagonist’s lifelong struggle to escape the influence of his drama teacher forms the plot and psychodrama in the narrative. Having not seen The Seagull, the extent to which the plot mirrors that play is unknown to me, outside the obvious crowbarred references, but this doesn’t keep the novel’s rich erudite description, strange humour, and charming meandering from entertaining and making the reader ponder the Camus-like drift at play on a deeper level.
November 6, 2024
This is a superb psychological novel which takes all the sandcastles of your ego, weighs and measures them, and then lays them out flat on an infinte beach for comparison. Harris's usual beautifully ironic voice presides until the last chapter and a half, when the very gradual landslide of the narrator's degeneration hits its tipping point. Then we get a masterful rendition in the modern-unhinged register of everything that is, and has been for some time, self-deceitful about society/humanity.
The first chapter was published separately as a short story and it shows, but still this is a magnificent novel. Harris dances over issues that betreacle the thighs of others, and he lingers on the things others negligently pass over. A joy to read, a novel as modest (in voice) as it is convincing and self-questioning.
The first chapter was published separately as a short story and it shows, but still this is a magnificent novel. Harris dances over issues that betreacle the thighs of others, and he lingers on the things others negligently pass over. A joy to read, a novel as modest (in voice) as it is convincing and self-questioning.
September 28, 2025
“You love and pity others because you love and pity yourself.”
“A woman’s idea of total and crushing revenge on a man is to lock the bedroom door.”
“I am sick because I forgot how to love, and it is the rule of our existence that we must love one another or die. I mean giving yourself unselfishly and innocently to other human beings because their loneliness resembles your loneliness and we are supposed to keep this apart from lust in our minds but for some reason we cannot and so instead of loving people we screw them, and this confuses us too much so that finally we can neither screw people nor love them.”
“I suppose on whether the finest part of you is something deep inside or whether on the contrary the outside of you is the most attractive part and if you go deep enough you will find something rotten.”
“A woman’s idea of total and crushing revenge on a man is to lock the bedroom door.”
“I am sick because I forgot how to love, and it is the rule of our existence that we must love one another or die. I mean giving yourself unselfishly and innocently to other human beings because their loneliness resembles your loneliness and we are supposed to keep this apart from lust in our minds but for some reason we cannot and so instead of loving people we screw them, and this confuses us too much so that finally we can neither screw people nor love them.”
“I suppose on whether the finest part of you is something deep inside or whether on the contrary the outside of you is the most attractive part and if you go deep enough you will find something rotten.”
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews