Tenants of Moonbloom

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