MacArthur Park

by Andrew Durbin, Albert Fuentes (Translator)

Año 2012. El huracán Sandy se acerca a Nueva York; es la mayor amenaza que ha conocido la ciudad desde los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001 y parece el fin del mundo. Nick Fowler, el narrador de esta historia, se refugia en un apartamento con abundantes reservas de comida en lata y las ventanas reforzadas con maderas. Pero a los pocos días, una vez el huracán ha pasado de largo, empieza a desencadenarse otra tormenta, quizá peor, y que tiene que ver con el signo de los tiempos: la crisis económica, el cambio climático, el impasse tecnológico, la pérdida de valores y la transformación social –todos los ingredientes que causaron la zozobra entre el último mandato de Barack Obama y el primero de Donald Trump– suman un cúmulo de incertezas ante las cuales lo único que cabe es mantenerse entretenido hasta que llegue el fin.

Es lo que hace Nick a lo largo de estas páginas, refugiándose en el arte, en los viajes, en los libros y, sobre todo, en clubes nocturnos como el Spectrum de Brooklyn, donde transcurre buena parte del desarrollo de este híbrido entre ensayo y ficción en el que se cuelan brillantes consideraciones sobre el mundo del arte y la literatura, sobre poesía y política, sobre música de vanguardia y los himnos gay de discoteca de Donna Summer (MacArthur Park es también el título de una de las canciones más celebradas de la diva americana). El debut de Andrew Durbin en la novela es una radiografía emocional de nuestra época, que parte de la certeza de que el mundo se hunde y que poco podemos hacer para evitarlo.

Genres: LGBT, Fiction, Queer, Contemporary, American, Gay

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Andrew Durbin is the author of MacArthur Park (2017) and Skyland (2020), both from Nightboat Books. In 2018, MacArthur Park was a finalist for the Believer Book Award. His book about Peter Hujar and Paul Thek, The Wonderful World that Almost Was, is forthcoming from FSG and Granta in April 2026. He is the editor of Jacolby Satterwhite’s How lovely is me being as I am (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2021), Kevin Killian’s Fascination: Memoirs (Semiotexte, 2018), and the chapbook series Say bye to reason and hi to everything (Capricious, 2015). His fiction, criticism, and poetry have appeared in The Believer, BOMB, Boston Review, The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Paris Review, Triple Canopy, and elsewhere. He lives in London and is the editor-in-chief of frieze magazine.

Reviews

[Matthew Gallaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel, which is about literal and metaphorical extremes of weather (it opens with Hurricane Sandy in NYC), could not feel more timely at this juncture, when our country (and maybe the world) seems to be splintering apart (from extremes of weather, however you want to define it). With so many of us/everyone trying to cope with this reality, the book, though not "structured" in any traditional sense, feels like a roadmap through this process, at least for the narrator and, by extension, the reader (or this reader). Parts of the novel are written like a first-person memoir about the narrator, his boyfriend, and two of their other (Brooklyn) friends, while other parts explore, analyze, and digress into the history of cults and California (or both), along with another arc about an artists retreat in upstate New York that may or may not be a cult. There is a very entertaining trip to the Tom of Finland Foundation in L.A. There are descriptions of The Spectrum -- a gay dance club in Brooklyn -- that reminded me (a little, in a good way) of "Dancer from the Dance" (but for a very different generation). There are sections of art/architecture/music (Donna Summer) theory and criticism that are sometimes serious and sometimes funny (or both), but always framed through a gay lens. It's a Big Novel that's written with an unapologetic intelligence and gay/queer sensibility that should appeal to anyone interested in what makes fiction relevant in 2017.

[Gerhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not the first reviewer to point out that Andrew Durbin is reminiscent of Ben Lerner. However, while Lerner makes writers ‘writing about writing’ seem vaguely interesting, Durbin is determined to subject the process to an excruciating autopsy-like, blow-by-blow investigation.

The unfortunate side-effect of this – and it is a big problem I have with a lot of these ‘writerly’ novels – is that the characters seem embalmed as a result. It is difficult to connect with them on an emotional level. Especially when your protagonist is a bit of a prick.

Yes, we get it that writing is a highly difficult process of accretion, exclusion and, perhaps most of all, obfuscation. How do you convey the dynamics of that process to an ordinary reader? There is definite insight here, but I think Durbin expects way too much empathy from his exasperated readers. Well, this one in particular.

E.L James had the right end of the stick: torture your characters, or get them to torture each other. Do not inflict such pain and agony on your poor reader.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those curious situations when a specific quality functions as a book's greatest strength and greatness weakness, which here is a certain sense of constant deferral, & sense of the willfully unresolved. Which, I admit, both intrigued me & exasperated me in turn, sometimes at the same time. But in the end I'm not sure if I would have preferred otherwise? The elusive, somewhat vaporous quality—sliding constantly between journalistic ,essay-ish, & memoir(?)-ish modes—has stuck with me more than I suspect something more unequivocal would have.

"I couldn't quite place this feeling in my catalog of previous melodramas, only that a city-me had been dealt some awful blow and I was struggling, on this makeshift stage of poorly defined grief, to get back up to monologue nobly about my or anyone's resilience. I allowed the luxury of my passing victimhood to take its indefinite, blob-like shape in me.

[Erik · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real beauty of reading "MacArthur Park" comes in the frustration a reader experiences in being left completely unable to classify the book they are reading. At times autobiography, at times nonfiction essay, and still at other times complete fiction, Andrew Durbin leads his readers deep inside his own mind as he considers and critiques the social structures that underly contemporary society - including the act of writing itself.

While this book is at times a failed experiment in rethinking the ways we categorize books (Part 4 in particular tried to be something that just didn't flow with the rest of the structure of the previous 3 parts), at base, what Durbin does in this book is figure out how to think with a reader - a way of writing that I have so rarely encountered over the years. And it is this method, in particular, that makes his book able to think about issues relevant to queer readers in particular. Marginalized identities connecting with their public voices through a sort of imminent reconsideration of themselves.

Durbin's book is a must read for anyone interested in queer literature in the second decade of the 21st century or just interested in what a book must become in order to deal with an increasingly disparate and web-ified society.

[Ray Carroll · Rating 4 out of 5]

A contemporary work that resists classification as a traditional novel the whole way through, but never once misses an opportunity to be beautiful. Durbin's book asks us if we've stopped to think about certain things (weather, the climate, our inability to guard against chaos) enough, and potentially to scold us for thinking about other things (art as a stand in for the self, community for the sake of community rather than collective healing) too much. Perhaps no one would argue that we need another "New York City novel", but MacArthur Park is a welcome modern addition, with Durbin's poignant and physically arresting observations about the city and the lives that unfurl within it sparkling from every page. An absolute gem.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

Durbin's debut shares many attributes with Ben Lerner's 2014 novel 10:04—it begins with Hurricane Sandy, has a neurotic and loosely autobiographical narrator, and is written in a Brooklyn MFA metafiction style. Sadly I just wished I was reading 10:04; for me, MacArthur Park lacked the sharpness, humour, and even the occasional warmth that lets Lerner's narrator get away with being pretentious and self-absorbed. Durbin's characters—fellow Brooklyn writers who don't know what to write about—aren't likeable or even knowledgeable, so it seems like opportunities to dig into possibly interesting ideas around climate change and queer art are missed or skimmed past.

Durbin's more recent work might be better, but MacArthur Park felt disappointingly aimless and cold.

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an exquisitely written, intellectually ambitious book that is difficult to describe without inducing eye-rolls but difficult to read without falling into trance-like absorption (for me at least). A preoccupation with climate change, explicit in the first chapter set during Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath, lingers through the book in a way that is clever and poetic and not too heavy-handed. The many digressions into art theory and history give the book its 'uncategorizable' quality, but they fit into a sort of autofictional rhythm in the story, and are all highly accomplished pieces of writing that sent me into wikipedia holes. The book is less plotless than I'd anticipated, and the last hundred or so pages evolve into a compelling story (/'reveal'?) about an artist residency in upstate New York and the question of whether or not it is a cult. Durbin is interested in spaces and communities, how they form and govern themselves and what they mean in an age of apocalyptic demise. Say what you will about New York novels (millennial ones in particular, and this one has it all - writers struggling to be writers, self-conscious commentary on gentrification, meandering observations of art spaces and parties and hookups), when it's done this well I don't really care.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked it up because the dust cover promised an emotional/intellectual grappling with climate change, but after the first 15 pages or so it loses its focus and gets caught in the usual eddies of auto-fiction: Brooklyn, break-ups, artist colonies, the difficulty of writing. I found the prose a bit insincere, always kind of too cool in that transparently insecure millennial mode, though I did enjoy the ethnographic looks into the queer art world in NYC and Europe. But at least from my perspective the various ideas the novel circles and gestures at never cohere, and Durbin tries too late to create an artistic pose out of this lack of resolution. If this is the future of fiction, as the back cover quotes contend, then I mourn for the days of eg A House for Mr Biswas (apples and oranges, BUT STILL).

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This started out looking like an interesting meditation on climate change, starting with Hurricane Sandy in New York, then flitting about the art and poetry world, concerning itself largely with questions of literary authenticity, cults, history and the romantic life of the gay narrator. It meandered to a close. It was well-written and held my interest, but someone else will have to explain to me what it was all about. It's pretty hard to categorize, and I might have been more forgiving if it were simply called an autobiographical book-length essay, but it seems to want to be a novel.

[Piesito · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un "rara avis" de libro que no estoy seguro haber entendido del todo

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a joy to encounter a novel and find one's own journey so neatly reflected within its pages. Durbin captures the spirit of being alive as a queer person amidst climate collapse, asking questions often obscured by cultural narratives designed to mute our form of critique.

[chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am fond of reminiscing about my youth, under the swirling colored lights of some barely held together dance club, shoveling vast quantities of unknown substances up my nose (and elsewhere), grinding my shirtless body against strangers. It was legendary, I like to tell my younger friends, no other time like it, the late 90s, before gentrification and local ordinances killed the 24-hour party scene, before everyone became too busy staring at their cellphones to talk to anyone, when we could barely scrape together money for rent but somehow afforded $100 entry fees and $30 pills.

Near the end of my circuit party days, I read Dancer from the Dance for the first time and realized it had all been done before. Andrew Holleran and I found not just ourselves but lifelong friends, thrived while others fled or, worse, perished, in chaotic party scenes stretched 20 years apart.

While reading MacArthur Park, I realized for the first time that a generation after me found its own wild setting to abandon care and embrace its hedonism. The cycle continues.

The Spectrum was a real-life underground nightclub in Brooklyn in the 2010s that I'm far too normie to have known about. Nick, the protagonist of MacArthur Park who is probably a stand-in for author Andrew Durbin, frequents The Spectrum, and the story centers around the relationships he forms there. The best parts of MacArthur Park are set inside The Spectrum, and I suspect I'll be randomly texting those passages to friends like I do passages from Dancer from the Dance.

The book veers wildly across its unconventional style that blurbs on Amazon call "truly innovative contemporary American fiction." Many times, the narrative surrounding Nick comes to a screeching halt so Durbin can insert an essay, some of which I found interesting, others tedious (anything to do with Helen Hunley Wright's rural artist colony), but mostly I just wanted to get back to Nick's story. What one finds innovative, I found jarring.

I'm also not a fan of Durbin's endless run-on sentences packed full of colorful phrases separated only by commas, which left the reader, me, scrambling to keep up. Near the end of the book, Durban abandons Nick in Europe, and the point-of-view switches to minor characters (ugh, Helen) I haven't any reason to care about. Like the essays, I found myself skimming those parts and hoping to re-enter The Spectrum.

Those scenes inside the club are far too infrequent to put MacArthur Park on the same pedestal as Dancer from the Dance, but I appreciate the peak it gave me inside a similar world as the one I once inhabited, and the delicate acknowledgement that no matter how the world moves on, the legendary children, those vast resources of energy and creativity, will always find a way.

[Sarah Swedberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

My work life and general exhaustion meant that I read this over a period of almost a week. Every morning, when I would chat with my sweetie over our breakfast smoothies, I would say, "I don't really know what to make of this book." I thought the first chapter was an introduction in Durbin's voice about what this book was, and then I was mightily confused when all of a sudden I was in fiction land with Nick.

The two epigraphs helped, one from Gary Indiana's *Depraved Indifference* about a woman inside a story but also "outside this 'I' the story seemed to be about." The other from Renee Gladman's *Calamities*: "For a while, I hadn't actually been writing but doing a transcription that fell in the deep space between drawing and landscaping."

Here's what I knew all along: I was glad that I was reading it. I also knew I could recommend it to be read by others because it is engaging and thought provoking.

It's fiction. Part of it is a novel about Nick and his friends and his trying to figure things out. Parts of it read like really smart art essays. Parts of it read like semi-boring academic prose. (I skimmed those last parts.) Throughout all of it Nick is working on a book. When people ask him what it is about, he tells them it is about the weather.

Then I reached page 227. Nick is in London for a reading and has met up with his friend Phillip. Phillip asks what Nick is working on and Nick tells him he's writing a book. "What's it about?" Phillip asks.

"You know, I still don't know. But I think I've nearly finished it. It's about the weather, on the one hand, because its genesis was the piece I wrote about Hurricane Sandy. But then it's also about belief, I think, just the idea that, that we sort of live on the cusp of disaster. I thought a lot about the kind of communities that form around disaster."

"Is it a novel?"

"I don't know. I guess so. then again no. It's like an essay that looks like a novel."

And there it was. Andrew Durbin, the author, told me what I kept asking about the book, but not until almost at the end. By that time, I had mostly figured out. "Postmodern" is the shortcut description, that gaze, always that gaze, always that blurring, always that playing with the reader and playing with dimensions.

[Joey Qu · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's a sincerely pathetic attempt at a novel, and as a gay writer I loved it. Don't get me confused though, this was genuinely insufferable, and made me feel pretty homophobic to be honest. I only finished the book because it was fun to edit it as I read.
Basically, a pretentious douchebag travels around "researching" "queerness" for his "novel" about "weather" and "disaster". Instead of crafting a memorable queer novel, Durbin borrows from notorious queer history by interjecting the story with bloated, nonfictional analyses on the subject, none of which fuel the story or relate in any meaningful way to the narrative. It required a lot of imaginative effort for me to understand what Durbin was trying to do here.
The book is completely lost - literally - carting the reader from Brooklyn to Miami to Fire Island to Los Angeles to Upstate NY to London and finally to Austria, on a desperate quest to apply meaning to the story. Temporally too, the book is completely disoriented, often flipping far forward and backward in time without regard to the narrative or structure. The book passes through characters with no real sympathy or relation to them, as the narrator is too narcissistic and grandiose to do so. Sections are often shaped by Durbin's snarky political and cultural assumptions, enforcing a worldview that can only be inferred, as it's hardly explained or justified. The writing is often extravagant, in a way that comes out of a thesaurus, not consciousness. I think this whole "novel" would have been more impactful as a 4,000 word substack post.
Because why the fuck am I at the end of the book and Durbin is still musing about how his book has no arc or memorable story as if it's self aware or interesting to do so? Shut the fuck up and write something meaningful 😭

[JR · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

“There are moments, brief but nevertheless powerful, where art carries me off from myself, from my body, temporarily relegating me to an alien subject position in the back of the room, a place from where I might observe, or at least begin to observe, a representation that seems impossibly far from my experience of the world and yet one that I nevertheless find myself contained within: the drawing (a blond man in the throes of some romantic passion with a boyfriend, say), but also the relations the drawing establishes within the room, between it and me, the others milling about, the security guard if there is a security guard present, and each subject—camera, spotlight, frame, press release, whatever—that confers upon that drawing its status as art, and therefore my status as viewer, the super-charge of those conditions that reaches a low, if intolerable, vibration of histories that ultimately repels us farther away as it recedes in time”

[Brian Grover · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reminded me a lot of Ben Lerner's semi-autobiographical novels, which I love. Following a twenty-something author in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy as he tries to cobble both a book and his life together, the writing is honest and warm, and you can't help rooting for this guy to muddle through. Less relatable for me than Lerner, but of course I'm a lot older and straighter than the characters here. Three and a half stars; I'll gladly come back to Durbin and see what he's writing about a few years from now.

[Chris Stewart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Durbin's at the brink of a real career. This prose was contemporary at best, mixing the self with the fiction and all of the lovely autobiographical tendencies in between. Durbin is a thinker and he's got more to do, more to think, he's working and I'm happy to listen. I find him entertaining, which is not a critique.

[Taylor Napolsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is damn good. Really impressive meditation on modern times, the climate (changing), the weather, the turbulence of navigating relationships and figuring out what one is really trying to do here (with life).

I’d put this in the same vein as Knausgaard and Ben Lerner, so if you’re into them then check this out.

[Allan van der Heiden · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and long winded

The book was read in a recommendation from a well known author, however I found the book very boring and long winded. There is no real storyline and just follows the protagonist rambling thoughts and bad decisions. The book also leave on a unfinished ending.

[t · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking fantastic.

[Zane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gay

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt the author was at his best in this book when he was writing directly about art. The section on Greer Lankton's dolls was notably astute and elegant.

[Dec · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little too smart for its own good, but I did like it. The views into the New York art and lgbtq scenes were very well constructed, the stilted prose less so. Probably 3.5

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the experimentation of this text is admirable. I just wish the final product had felt more meaningful.

2.5/5

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and flawed. I wonder if the ideas would have come out more if a little less had been said.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

some parts of this book were really good! but ultimately, even as this book digresses that it doesn’t know what it is (a book about the weather, a poem, an epistolary novel) it becomes none of these instead of all of them. located nowhere, aimlessly wandering in subject matter, and failing to establish a unified theme, this book will largely be remembered I think for its candid and honest depictions of gay life. I feel as if the editor is more at blame than the author: filled with compelling subject matter, it was not properly ordered into a suitable form

[Sarah Evilsizor]

https://www.artinamericamagazine.com/...

[Jacob Wren]

Andrew Durbin writes:


I was jealous, since, in my writing, the slippery subject often got away from me, became swamped with concerns of the contemporary, and slipped out of sight, into my own spiraling digressions. My own work was about the circles I ran around whatever it was I wanted to write about.


and:


The art world is an unregulated economy that borrows from other economies - theory, poetry, and scientific research, in this case, to continually update its relationship to the world and, in acting as a conduit for other (and all) disciplines, strives to become the clearest image of the world in which we may better see ourselves. By this I mean art tries to be everything for everyone at once, all of it contained within salable products that can be exchanged between artists, galleries, individuals and institutions, across media, in a “conversation” about what now means, and what that now once meant and will someday come to mean. This isn’t necessarily cynical, though much of the art world is cynical, it just means that it reaches out, with many hands, to grab what it can and mash it into its ever-widening category. Everyone wants to be an artist because everyone wants to speak about the now.



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