Imatge de l'autor

Michael Zadoorian

Autor/a de The Leisure Seeker

5+ obres 723 Membres 81 Ressenyes 2 preferits

Sobre l'autor

Michael Zadoorian was born & raised in Detroit, Michigan. His short fiction has appeared in many journals, including "The Literary Review" & "American Short Fiction". He lives with his wife in a bungalow filled with many strange old objects & a death-row cat. "Second Hand" is his first novel. mostra'n més (Bowker Author Biography) mostra'n menys
Crèdit de la imatge: Photo by John Roe

Obres de Michael Zadoorian

The Leisure Seeker (2009) 440 exemplars
Second Hand (2000) 158 exemplars
Beautiful Music (2018) 58 exemplars

Obres associades

Detroit Noir (2007) — Col·laborador — 67 exemplars
The Leisure Seeker [2017 film] (2018) — Original book — 12 exemplars

Etiquetat

Coneixement comú

Nom oficial
Zadoorian, Michael
Data de naixement
20th Century
Gènere
male
Nacionalitat
USA
Lloc de naixement
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Llocs de residència
Ferndale, Michigan, USA
Educació
public schools
Wayne State University (BA, MA)
Professions
freelance writer
copywriter
Premis i honors
Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts
Columbia University Anahid Literary Award
Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award
Barnes & Noble Discover Selection
Michigan Notable Book award
Booksense 76 Selection
Agent
Jud Laghi, LJK Literary Management
Biografia breu
Michael Zadoorian is the author of three novels, BEAUTIFUL MUSIC (To be published in May 2018 by Akashic Books), THE LEISURE SEEKER (William Morrow) and SECOND HAND (W.W. Norton), and a story collection, THE LOST TIKI PALACES OF DETROIT (Wayne State University Press). A motion picture of THE LEISURE SEEKER starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland will be released in March 2018. 
Zadoorian is a recipient of a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Literary Arts, the Columbia University Anahid Literary Award, the Michigan Notable Book award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has appeared in The Literary Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, American Short Fiction, Witness, Great Lakes Review, North American Review and the anthologies Bob Seger’s House, On The Clock, and Detroit Noir. He has worked as a copywriter, journalist, voice over talent, shipping room clerk, and a plant guard for Chrysler. A lifetime resident of the Detroit area, he lives with his wife in a 1937 bungalow filled with cats and objects that used to be in the houses of other people.

Membres

Ressenyes

I've had this book for a long time. I don't know what made me finally pull it out but I'm glad I did. It's both funny and poignant about an older couple, both in bad health, who decide to take a vacation. They drive along as much of the old Rt. 66 as possible from Michigan to Disneyland in California in their old Leisure Seeker camper.
 
Marcat
Dianekeenoy | Hi ha 40 ressenyes més | Dec 29, 2023 |
So so end of life road trip novel.
 
Marcat
secondhandrose | Hi ha 40 ressenyes més | Oct 31, 2023 |
Ressenya escrita per a Crítics Matiners de LibraryThing .
I RECEIVED AN ARC FROM THE PUBLISHER. THANK YOU.

My Review: I think Author Zadoorian's Detroitophilia needed this book to come to a head...
It was a way for gray-flannel types to shed their inhibitions, go native, and get weird—uninhibited boozing, semierotic dancing to faux-exotic music, gaudy flowered shirts, sticky finger foods, unclad maiden flesh, and phallic tiki idols. At one point, Detroit had three Polynesian palaces, but when the city started bleeding honkies after the '67 race riot, all of them eventually closed.
–and–
Should you be going to tiki parties in your forties? Was it possible to maintain ironic distance for that long, or should you have outgrown it by then? How long before you needed an irony supplement?

Joe is an urban explorer, a man whose purpose in life is looking for something to look at; this isn't a tremendously profitable career, but he freelances as a local-music critic and spelunks the abandoned spaces of the city as his avocation. He has no mortgage and no kids, just a partner of over a decade, Ana. They're living an intentional life, but that ain't free. So Ana, his squeeze, makes the bills...in advertising, in a dead and dying city, that takes skill and luck which she abounds in.

And then, as it always will, Life happens. The two of them are wearing on each other. The thing about stasis is, no matter if it's tolerable or not, it has to end. Things in life are growing or dying:
“Truth like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”
–and–
When is it going to end, this worshiping of ephemera? How long will our generation be obsessed with the past, with stuff that barely meant anything when it happened, that’s remembered only because it’s old or bad or weird or kooky?

There's nothing like the world for knocking your corners off...just sucks when the chunks go flying into those closest to you.
"You drop names and make references. You talk about songs, but rarely does a song speak to you. You laugh at cleverness because you recognize it's supposed to be funny, not because it is funny. You know about things for the sake of knowing about them, because you think you're supposed to, because you're afraid of being left out, not because they interest you. You're a dilettante, a potterer. You simply stopped trying to be anything more."
–and–
"It looks different through the lens, doesn't it?" {Joe's friend} said {to him}.
"I don't know why. It just makes more sense this way. It's easier to take in."
"Uh-huh. Sometimes what I'm looking at is too intense for me to understand without a filter, a way to view it. The camera helps." Brendan leveled his camera...and squeezed off a shot.
"Why is this so magnificent? What's wrong with us?"
"I told you...The verity of decay."

If Ana had wanted a sullen teenager, she would've had a kid...but here she is with a fractured man-child who resents her for winning their bread and whose friends are nasty pieces of White Male Privilege...Transphobia: one-half star off. N-word and repeated misogynistic bullshit use by white character: one-half star off. Yes, it's set in 2009...yes, it's not like these are people whose sophistication is meant to hold them up as examples. But this is ugliness and prejudice, and it doesn't get treated as such.

But the story is about more than that. It's about what it means to be You at last. These are forty-year-olds doing what the middle-aged literary characters of US while privilege are supposed to do: Reflecting on the emptiness of a life of getting and spending. And coming to terms with what they really, in fact, want from The System. Ana's decisions are less crowd-sourced...her one obvious friend isn't who she thought she was at exactly the wrong moment...than Joe's, but considering the caliber of his friends that's a good thing.

I found the story...exasperating. I found the dramatis personae...uncongenial. I found the ending...condign.
… (més)
½
 
Marcat
richardderus | Hi ha 10 ressenyes més | Jul 6, 2021 |
"I know nothing lasts, but even when you know that things are just about over, sometimes you can run back and take a little bit more and no one will notice." p. 46

"(W)hatever happens at the end of a life does not represent the entire life." p. 266

"We built a life together and will happily do what comes after together. I say if love is what bonds us during our lives, why can't it still somehow bond us, keep us together after our deaths?" p. 271

"Now there's all the time in the world. Except I'm falling apart and John can barely remember his name. But that's all right. I remember it. Between the two of us, we are one whole person." p. 12

"He knows who I am. He knows that I am the one person who he loves, has always loved. No disease, no person can take that away." p. 205
… (més)
 
Marcat
mbellucci | Hi ha 40 ressenyes més | Apr 10, 2021 |

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Estadístiques

Obres
5
També de
2
Membres
723
Popularitat
#35,108
Valoració
3.9
Ressenyes
81
ISBN
51
Llengües
6
Preferit
2

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