Jonathan Ascher, an acclaimed 1960s radical writer and cultural hero, has been dead for thirty years.
When a would-be biographer approaches Ascher’s widow Martha, she delves for the first time into her husband’s papers and all the secrets that come tumbling out of them. She finds journals that begin as a wisecracking chronicle of life at the fringes of the New York literary scene, then recount Ascher’s sexual adventures in the pre-Stonewall gay underground and the social upheavals that led to his famous book “ JD.” As Martha reads on, she finds herself in a long-distance conversation with her dead husband, fighting with him again about their rocky marriage and learning about the unseen tragedy in her own apartment that ended with the destruction of their son, Mickey. Mickey comes to life in the space between Jonathan and Martha’s conflicting portraits of him, while Martha and the biographer tangle over the continued relevance of Jonathan’s politics and his unfulfilled vision of a nation remade. Martha learns about herself, finally, through her confrontation with a man who will not let her go, even in death.
Quote: Jonathan Ascher was a radical writer from the 1960s, who over the years has been largely forgotten. When Philip Marks inquires about access to Ascher's papers, it sets his widow Martha on a journey of discovery where she finds the husband she hardly knew.
Having simply sent all of her husbands papers to an archive after his death, she had no idea what might be found there. Combining large excerpts from Jonathan's journals from the 60s and 70s with Martha's present-day reactions, Merlis weaves a complex family drama in which she discovers her husband's bisexuality and realizes that she really knew nothing of his relationship with their son.
The novel is set in the 1960s literary scene of New York. In an interview with Lambda Literary, Merlis acknowledges that he has used actual writers from the time as jumping off points for some of the characters of the novel, but is quick to point out that they are literally that - jumping off points, not biographical sketches of the actual people. The source for Jonathan Ascher is Paul Goodman. Gore Vidal was immediately obvious in the character of Edgar Villard - no doubt a nod to Edgar Box, Vidal's 1950s literary pseudonym used during his exile for having published The City and Pillar.
