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    Thomas Murphy: A Novel
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    Thomas Murphy: A Novel
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    Thomas Murphy: A Novel
    Ebook182 pages3 hours

    Thomas Murphy: A Novel

    By Roger Rosenblatt

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The acclaimed, award-winning essayist and memoirist returns to fiction with this reflective, bittersweet tale that introduces the irrepressible aging poet Thomas Murphy—a paean to the mystery, tragedy and wonder of life.

    Trying his best to weasel out of an appointment with the neurologist his only child, Máire, has cornered him into, the poet Thomas Murphy—singer of the oldies, friend of the down-and-out, card sharp, raconteur, piano bar player, bon vivant, tough and honest and all-around good guy—contemplates his sunset years. Máire worries that Murph is losing his memory. Murph wonders what to do with the rest of his life. The older mind is at issue, and Murph’s jumps from fact to memory to fancy, conjuring the islands that have shaped him—Inishmaan, a rocky gumdrop off the Irish coast where he was born, and New York, his longtime home. He muses on the living, his daughter and precocious grandson William, and on the dead, his dear wife Oona, and Greenberg, his best friend. Now, into Murphy’s world comes the lovely Sarah, a blind woman less than half his age, who sees into his heart, as he sees into hers. Brought together under the most unlikely circumstance, Murph and Sarah begin in friendship and wind up in impossible possible love.

    An Irishman, a dreamer, a poet, Murph, like Whitman, sings lustily of himself and of everyone. Through his often-extravagant behavior and observations, both hilarious and profound, we see the world in all its strange glory, equally beautiful and ridiculous. With memory at the center of his thoughts, he contemplates its power and accuracy and meaning. Our life begins in dreams, but does not stay with them, Murph reminds us. What use shall we make of the past? Ultimately, he asks, are relationships our noblest reason for living?

    Behold the charming, wistful, vibrant, aging Thomas Murphy, whose story celebrates the ageless confusion that is this dreadful, gorgeous life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 19, 2016
    ISBN9780062394583
    Author

    Roger Rosenblatt

    Roger Rosenblatt  is the author of six off-Broadway plays and eighteen books, including Lapham Rising, Making Toast, Kayak Morning and The Boy Detective. He is the recipient of the 2015 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

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    Reviews for Thomas Murphy

    3.5/5

    24 ratings6 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Have I told you about this? I read it quickly and enjoyed it but not sure how much of it will remain with me. We'll see.
    • 4/5
      Thomas Murphy has thoughts and opinions on many things, many, many things. Though he has lived in Manhattan for a long time he is originally from Ireland. He thinks of himself as a sentimental Irishman turned old frat as he is now seventy. His best friend is his young grandson William and he mourns the death of his wife and best friend. He is a poet, a singer and a teller of some awesome stories.Quiet, introspective, tender and funny, Murphy's thoughts, meanderings and opinions are a wonder to behold. When he misses his wife the most, he talks and tells stories about the furniture they had bought together. He is quite a character and his only child, daughter Marai thinks he might be in the beginning stages of Alzheimer disease. Some of the funniest parts are when she gets him to go to the doctor and he is given a take home test. His answers are brilliant and spot on, many times wished I had the nerve to answer my doctors questions in this way. Also loved how the novel begins and ends with the question, "Have I told you this before?"ARC from publisher.
    • 5/5
      Roger Rosenblatt authored one of my favorite “academic setting” novels, Beet. His latest novel, Thomas Murphy, is an entirely different sort of story. Roger was born in 1940. He was a long-time essayist for Time and the PBS News Hour. He has held several teaching positions at Harvard, but he is currently the Distinguished Professor of English and Writing at Stony Brook University. He has also received seven honorary doctorates.Thomas Murphy is the story of a respected but aging poet dealing with a cancer diagnosis. He also recently suffered the loss of his wife, Oona. Murphy was born in Ireland, and lived mostly in a seaside town of Inishmaan. He now lives in the US. His daughter Máire believes he is losing his memory. This fear of the loss of memory is the thread that runs through the novel. Ironically, the cancer diagnosis is mentioned early on, and forgotten until near the end of the novel. But the really interesting parts focus on his poetry.Rosenblatt writes, “They really aren’t difficult, my poems, no matter what the good Dr. Spector says. Greenberg got ‘em readily enough. Oh, I’ll toss in a wild word from time to time, to keep the reader on his toes, the way Heaney does, and Paul Muldoon. But neither of those great fellas is hard to understand, and I’m not either. Most of the poets of my race are not hard to understand. We just play hard to get” (37). Spector is his surgeon and Greenberg is an old friend. These patches of memory are sprinkled throughout the novel, and make me wonder about the loss of memory. When given a quiz by the doctor, he makes every answer a barb with his caustic wit.Murphy also writes about writing poetry. “The whole process of writing a poem is mystical, to me at least, mystical and beyond my reach. Have I told you about this? I begin a poem with an image out of nowhere (where did that come from?), and at once suspect I am part of a plan, and the poem I’ve begun is part of a plan. The process of writing then, is the progression toward someone else’s design” (156). This closely parallels what happens to me when I have a spark of inspiration.An interesting episode occurs when Thomas is alone in a bar. A stranger recognizes him, and they strike up a conversation. Eventually, the stranger admits he wants Thomas to tell his wife he is dying. He reluctantly agrees, and the results are comedy and tragedy mixed together. Thomas befriends the man’s wife, and when her husband leaves her, Thomas begins to date her.The story itself is rather poetic. Thomas recalls an event in his childhood, “How slick the petals of the ocean as they bloom again. How fierce, how businesslike the term in its hieroglyphics. The Earth grinds on its axis, the strident wind goes slack, and the stars are steady as my gaze. I would travel now if I could. I would walk across the ocean, past the startled fish and dreaming whales until I reached some shore of thought and language. Not this night, though. On this night I am content with a ripple of warm air and the horizon’s ambiguity” (155).I found myself a bit confused at first. The writing seemed something akin to stream of consciousness, but I think Murphy was obsessing over his loss of memory, which loss is never apparent in the story. But, overall, Thomas Murphy is a pleasant little novel of a shade over 200 pages, which satisfied me well enough. 5 stars--Chiron, 3/10/16
    • 4/5
      I picked this book up at Carmichael Books in Louisville Kentucky. It was on the front impulse purchase table, and this was exactly why I bought it. I was aware of Roger Rosenblatt's reputation as a writer but I hadn't read his work, so I decided to give it a try.As I started the book, I was not at all impressed. It is kind of a different book, more of an extended short story, a novella rather than a novel. The book is an extended conversation that Thomas Murphy, an older and famous poet, has with himself. He recounts his life in a way that he wanted to recount, he describes the people in his life the same way. We get some details about his present as well. The stories and poems are interesting but not spellbinding, and that is exactly its charm: this is not a pulse raising action novel, it is not a hot and steamy romance. It is a slow and gentle walk through Thomas Murphy's head as he walks through, slowly, and gently, his memories of his life.It isn't for everyone, but it became quite charming and relaxing once I got off the roller coaster of modern life and decided to read it in my small and relaxed moments. I had to work to get relaxed before I read it, it won't relax you. But once I was able to slow myself down it was wonderful.
    • 5/5
      Despite confusing opening which I finally sorted out after three readings, THOMAS MURPHY quietly soared and only rarely dived.It offers a great, funny, and cathartic exploration of "Murph's" character as he gradually declines into mild dementia "in the final stages of ambling."There are many indelible images, from the initial dropping of the turf through counting with the brain scan doctor to Arthur the Bear.Over the top parts also are frequent, from REGRETS to "Souls" and the ingratiating Sarah, who both Murphy and readerscould have done without. Her betrayal is the only place, along with his daughter deserting him, where the plot falters and feels forced.(The by now requisite animal cruelty is a page I folded over - why does nearly every modern novelist feel compelled to include another horrifying incident, along with clapboard houses and First Light...? Enough.)It will be a rare reader who does not head to the computer to peruse "cathaoir SYNGE."
    • 4/5
      While this book is not typical of what I would normally read, I'm glad I picked it up. It's quite beautiful, and also strange at times, when you're reading about imaginary musings. Enjoyable and peaceful.