Summary

The novel opens on a bus in New York City in the year 1969. Novelist Nathan Zuckerman is riding the bus to visit an investment specialist on the advice of his literary agent. Zuckerman is recognized by a passenger as the author of a popular novel titled “Carnovsky,” an extremely successful novel published earlier that year. To Zuckerman’s chagrin, the man then points out Zuckerman to other passengers. As Zuckerman later sits in a café before his meeting with the investment specialist, he thinks about his loss of privacy ever since his recent and sudden rise to fame. He thinks about how he is now so often approached by people on the street who recognize him, many of whom believe that he has based Gilbert Carnovsky, the extremely sexually active protagonist of his latest novel, on himself.

Beginning on page 11, after his meeting...