Tuesday Nights in 1980 (Prentiss)

Tuesday Nights in 1980 
Molly Prentiss, 2016
Gallery/Scout Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501121043


Summary
An intoxicating and transcendent debut novel that follows a critic, an artist, and a desirous, determined young woman as they find their way—and ultimately collide—amid the ever-evolving New York City art scene of the 1980s.

Welcome to SoHo at the onset of the eighties: a gritty, not-yet-gentrified playground for artists and writers looking to make it in the big city.

Among them: James Bennett, a synesthetic art critic for the New York Times whose unlikely condition enables him to describe art in profound, magical ways, and Raul Engales, an exiled Argentinian painter running from his past and the Dirty War that has enveloped his country.

As the two men ascend in the downtown arts scene, dual tragedies strike, and each is faced with a loss that acutely affects his relationship to life and to art. It is not until they are inadvertently brought together by Lucy Olliason—a small town beauty and Raul’s muse—and a young orphan boy sent mysteriously from Buenos Aires, that James and Raul are able to rediscover some semblance of what they’ve lost.

As inventive as Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad and as sweeping as Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, Tuesday Nights in 1980 boldly renders a complex moment when the meaning and nature of art is being all but upended, and New York City as a whole is reinventing itself.

In risk-taking prose that is as powerful as it is playful, Molly Prentiss deftly explores the need for beauty, community, creation, and love in an ever-changing urban landscape. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1984
• Where—Santa Cruz, California, USA
• Education—M.F.A., California College of the Arts
• Currently—lives in Brooklyn, New York City, New York


Molly Prentiss was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California. She was a Writer in Residence at Workspace at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Vermont Studio Center and was chosen as an Emerging Writer Fellow by the Aspen Writers Foundation.

She holds an MFA in creative writing from the California College of the Arts. She lives in Brooklyn. (From the publisher.)

Book Reviews
Molly Prentiss sets an almost impertinently high bar for herself. She's determined to write a love letter in polychrome to a bygone Manhattan; to recreate the squalid exuberance of Jean-Michel Basquiat's and Keith Haring's art scene; to explore all the important, hairy themes—love, creativity, losing your innocence in one cruel swoop. That she mostly pulls it off is impressive, thrilling.
Jennifer Senior - New York Times Book Review


The gritty New York art scene of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s pulsed with creative energy, and so does this engaging novel… It portrays an intoxicating world and its raw, ungentrified backdrop—both about to be transformed by greed.
People


[Prentiss’s] sensual linguistic flourishes exquisitely evoke the passions we can feel for people and places we’ve known or are discovering…again and again, the temptation is to underline passages…there are riveting plots and subplots… still the book’s magnificence remains in its shadings, descriptive and emotional… toward the end you’ll find yourself turning the pages slowly, sorry to realize you’re almost finished.
Oprah Magazine


It's 1980 in SoHo, and in this thrilling, vibrant debut, a synesthetic art critic could make or break [an artist named] Raul. And so could a girl named Lucy. Oh, and his own recklessness, too.
Marie Claire


Innovative to the max, this debut novel from Molly Prentiss is a book that I've been raving about to everyone I know…. Prentiss will leave you breathless as she plays with form and description in astounding new ways.
Bustle


[Prentiss'] writing is as vivid and sensitive as the pensées of her synesthetic art-critic protagonist...[her] descriptions of the eighties art world ring true on both the texture of the work and its go-go capitalist corruption.
Vulture


Prentiss vividly conjures a colorful love triangle set in the gritty, art-soaked world of downtown New York in 1980.... One yearns for more time spent on the women artists who are minor characters.... Nevertheless, this is a bold and auspicious debut.
Publishers Weekly


We are luckily introduced to three individuals who bravely take the stage, ready to conquer SoHo by storm. Their trek amongst the bright lights is captivating, and readers will be hanging on the edge of their seats.
Romance Times Book Reviews


(Starred review.) A...seductive writer, Prentiss combines exquisite sensitivity with unabashed melodrama to create an operatic tale of ambition and delusion, success and loss, mystery and crassness.... [A] vital, sensuous, edgy, and suspenseful tale of longing, rage, fear, compulsion, and love.
Booklist


(Starred review.) Prentiss' characters...[are] rich, nuanced, satisfyingly complicated.... [T]he novel is elegantly infused with an ambient sense of impending loss...[but] miraculously manages to dodge the trap of easy nostalgia, thanks in large part to Prentiss' wry humor. As affecting as it is absorbing. A thrilling debut.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. Discuss the 1980 "portrait of Manhattan" offered here. How does New York City act as its own of character throughout the novel? How does it change and grow? How would you describe a portrait of your own home, in 2015?

2. James’s first journalism teacher claims that there is "influence in oddity." How do we find ways to absorb difference into our identity? Discuss James’s complex relationship to his synesthesia.

3. Like James, we all have a "Running List of Worries." What do think would be on Lucy’s or Raul’s list? Marge’s or Arlene’s? Why do you think it is so much easier to internalize our regrets over our accomplishments?

4. There is a perverse comfort afforded to those who share tragedy, like Franca’s resistance group or John Lennon’s mourners, that is inaccessible to those who suffer in solitude, like Raul. Where and how do you think Raul finally finds a similar kind of recognition?

5. Discuss James’s relationship to art commercialization as it swarms up around him. Why does his black-and-white stance on separating art from currency fade to gray?

6. For these characters, there is often a wide gap between perception and reality. Do you think Manhattan culture perpetuates this gap? Why or why not?

7. When Raul paints Franca, she asks him not to paint the "bad parts," but Raul becomes fixated on the flaws that surround him. Discuss how these fragments can make up a beautiful whole, or even act as a whole themselves. How does this resonate throughout the novel?

8. Discuss the role of fate and timing in the story, especially as it relates to Winona’s New Year’s Eve party. How much agency do these characters really have?

9. Raul’s father plays him a scratched recording of "Little Child" by the Beatles before professing that "the scratches are what make a life." Do you agree? Why do you think the author chose "Little Child" for this moment?

10. When she moves to New York, Lucy wants a life of momentum, change, and propulsion. Do you think she feels the same at the end? Do you agree with Raul that she doesn’t yet know how to "need herself"? What does that mean?

11. After breaking up with Lucy, Raul realizes that "memories of sweet times now felt sour." In the novel, how does memory shift to reflect shame and regret, and how does that extend to Raul and Franca’s siblinghood? James and Marge’s marriage?

12. James insists that every work of art must be a journey, filled with associative power, while Raul wonders if it is possible to begin with a complete idea already in hand. What do you think, and why?

13. Discuss the symbolism of James’s white suit. What does the black stain mean?

14. Lucy often compartmentalizes herself, neatly splitting her identity between her girlhood in Idaho and her womanhood in the city. Discuss the inherent disconnect here. In the end, how do these character learn to reconcile each part of themselves?

(Questions issued by Gallery/Scout Press at Simon & Schuster.)

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