This nov­el is the pur­port­ed mem­oir of one Ariel Zin­sky, a sports addict with a rough child­hood and a chip on his shoul­der almost as out­sized as he is (6’8”). Despite his social mal­ad­just­ment, friends and women find him; because of his love of col­lege ath­let­ics and no small amount of ambi­tion, he finds suc­cess. Ariel’s oft-humor­ous sto­ry is about life as a well-edu­cat­ed (maybe over-edu­cat­ed) young per­son – lone­some, alien­at­ed, finan­cial­ly ten­u­ous, awash in rit­u­al mas­tur­ba­tion – with a knack for self­ish ter­ri­ble­ness that is some­times chal­leng­ing to read. It is also, ulti­mate­ly, a heart­warm­ing account of fam­i­ly life after par­ents remar­ry and half- and step-so-and-sos appear, with the slow, dif­fi­cult mod­i­fi­ca­tions to atti­tude and action that come with. Ariel, a man whose pain and unhap­pi­ness we come to know well, from whose social crimes we alter­nate­ly can’t and don’t want to look away, learns some lessons in adult­hood and love only belat­ed­ly and teach­es us some oth­ers about our­selves. The snap­shot we part with is, hap­pi­ly, a hope­ful one, but who can say what will hap­pen to Zin­sky the Obscure?

Read Ilan Mochar­i’s Posts for the Vis­it­ing Scribe

Not All Auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal Ele­ments Are Cre­at­ed Equal

A Word on Who I Am

West and Schwartz, Dream­ing at the Movies