Clemency Burtonhill

Fame was the spur

Larry Wyler is a man in conflict. He knows what makes him happy — the St Matthew Passion, sex, a beef sirloin ‘slightly charred on the outside and reddish pink in the middle, nicely peppered, with mustard aioli’. But he has all these things in his little Minnesotan life: he met his wife singing Bach; they have great sex; they eat good steak. It is not enough. Aspiring writer Larry wants more. He wants New York. His dream, in fact, is ‘to work at the New Yorker and go to lunch at the Algonquin with Mr Shawn’.

Well Larry gets his ‘dream’, or something like it, and Love Me is a hilariously moving account of it. Larry is possibly the funniest literary creation of recent years, but locked as he is in a struggle between two selves, his plight also verges on the tragic. One self realises he’s lucky in his own life and anyway doesn’t quite belong in the one he aspires to (pitching up in New York he half-expects ‘some New Yorker to yell, “Hey! You with the hair! You’re from Minnesota!” ’). The other is desperate to live it nonetheless. When Larry badgers his wife about moving to Manhattan after the runaway success of his first novel, Iris asks, ‘What’s wrong with what we’ve got?’ And there’s the rub: nothing is wrong with what they’ve got. But Larry can’t escape a feeling that he should be living ‘a bigger life’. With his decision exacerbated by the fact he recognises its perversity, he packs his bags, purchases a million-dollar apartment, and answers the siren call.

New York is a disaster.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in