Perforated Heart

Almost forty years after moving to Manhattan author Richard Morris hasachieved if not stratospheric renown then at least the accomplished career andcaliber of f... » 

Almost forty years after moving to Manhattan author Richard Morris hasachieved if not stratospheric renown then at least the accomplished career andcaliber of fame that he envisioned for himself as a younger man. Nowfinancially comfortable and artistically embittered Richard is at his homeupstate recuperating from heart surgery and nursing resentment toward hispublisher and his reading public who have found new more exciting writers andleft his star to wane.In his attic Richard comes across a stack ofnotebooks the journals he began keeping when he arrived in New York in thelate 70s. He is alternately fascinated and repelled by the young man he meetsin these pages hilariously naive and egotistically misguided the youngerRichard compulsively absorbs everything around him from art and creativity tosex and drugs. As he reads more about himself written by himself Richarddiscovers that the pivotal moments of selfinvention and selfrealization occur far outside the conventional chronology of a lifetime.PerforatedHeart explores two wholly different characters a young ambitious artistand his older self jaded by both success and failure and creates anunforgettable portrait of the two men who inhabit the one individual. By turnsmeditative deftly observant and scathingly analytical Eric Bogosian recreates the landscape and atmosphere of 1970s New York City with fresh vividimagery and reveals a powerful commentary on the dynamic between creativity andcommerce in the artistic world. Perforated Heart is his most rewarding andpenetrating novel yet with prose that reflects an equally astonishing range ofexperience and emotion. «