CANR
WORK TITLE: A PLAGUE OF MERCIES
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://adampelzman.com/
CITY: New York
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CA 364
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Seattle, WA; children: son.
EDUCATION:University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, B.A.; University of California, Los Angeles, J.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Software entrepreneur, attorney, private investigator, novelist. Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, corporate lawyer and corporate associate; M31 Ventures, LLC, founder of technology-focused venture capital fund; Marsh & McLennan’s private equity group; Pelzman & Company, LLC, founder, 2003; Lincolnshire Management Inc., director; CAI, managing director, 2012—.
MEMBER:PCS-CTS Holding Corp., board of directors.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Adam Pelzman is a software entrepreneur, attorney, private investigator, and novelist. Born in Seattle but raised in New Jersey, he studied Russian literature at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and earned his law degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has worked as a lawyer at Marsh & McLennan’s private equity group, founded M31 Ventures venture capital fund, founded and managed a corporate investigations firm, and was director at Lincolnshire Management, Inc.
Writing novels in his spare time for twenty years, Pelzman returned to his love of Russian literature and published his debut novel Troika in 2014. The book begins with Julian, orphaned in Russia after his hunter father was killed in Siberia. A rich businessman adopts Julian and takes him to New York City where he grows up to be very wealthy, even though he inherited some violent tendencies from his father. Meanwhile in Miami, Cuban-American Perla lives in Little Havana with her mother and works as a stripper and exotic dancer. When Julian walks into Perla’s strip club, he is immediately attracted to her. It’s not until the two begin an affair that Julian reveals that he is married to the wheelchair-bound Sophie. A manipulative and desperate woman, Sophie elicits pity to hold onto her husband. Troika in Russian means a group of three or a carriage pulled by three horses, and this unusual love triangle pulls its characters in various directions.
Describing how he created the story of Julian and Perla, Pelzman said in a Huffington Post Web site article: “I spent a lot of time thinking about these two characters, and just like we do when we set two single friends up on a blind date, I decided to make an introduction—to see what would happen if Julian from Russia walked into a club and met Perla from Cuba.” After Pelzman did bring the characters together, he explained to Kelly Ebbels on the North Jersey Web site: “You can have people for whatever reason who don’t feel connected with other human beings. … Sometimes a few people can find a connection in the most unlikely places.”
“Not a persuasive read; with uneven pacing and some inconsistencies,” noted Susanne Wells in Library Journal. On the other hand, a writer in Kirkus Reviews said: “With unflinching honesty, the author goes to the source of Julian’s violence, Perla’s emotional detachment and Sophie’s manipulation to show how a third horse could work in a two-horse marriage.” Calling the book intriguing yet frustrating, a Publishers Weekly contributor remarked that there is so much backstory that the plot starts moving only in the book’s final third. Nevertheless the book succeeds “because the writing is so beautiful and powerful and the premise so unusual and interesting,” said the contributor.
[OPEN NEW]
Pelzman’s follow-up, The Papaya King, focused on a young man who feels out of place in twenty-first-century New York City culture. Then The Boy and the Lake told the story of a teenage boy who discovers the corpse of a woman while he is fishing. His attempts to unravel the mystery is met with resistance by the tight-knit community. Then in 2021, Pelzman’s debut novel, Troika, was reprinted as A Cuban Russian American Love Story.
His next novel, A Plague of Mercies, is set in the Upper West Side of Manhattan during a pandemic. Gabriel is stuck in his small apartment, but he wonders about his neighbors, particularly a young woman he calls Sophie. He watches her during the day and resents suitors who come calling. As the pandemic spreads, however, he fears what will become of his neighbors and what life might be like when the pandemic is over. Pelzman uses free verse and short lines to capture the strange reality of a time that was all too real. The review in Kirkus Reviews was ecstatic, describing the writing as “brilliantly observant poetry” that provides an “intimate portrait of a metropolis.” The review went so far as stating that this should be the first book future generations read when they want to understand what the COVID pandemic was like.
[CLOSE NEW]
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, April 15, 2014, Kelvin Clouther, review of Troika, p. 17.
Kirkus Reviews, April 1, 2014, review of Troika; August 15, 2019, review of The Papaya King; April 21, 2023, review of A Plague of Mercies.
Library Journal, April 1, 2014, Susanne Wells, review of Troika, p. 83.
Publishers Weekly, February 3, 2014, review of Troika, p. 30.
ONLINE
Adam Pelzman Home Page, http://adampelzman.com (October 1, 2014), author profile.
Book Passage, http:// www.bookpassage.com/ (October 1, 2014), review of Troika.
Bookreporter.com, http://www.bookreporter.com/ (October 1, 2014), short author profile.
Books and What Not, http://booksandwhatnot.com/ (April 7, 2014), Beth Golay, review of Troika.
Business Week, http:// www.businessweek.com/ (October 1, 2014), author profile.
CAI Funds Web site, http://www.caifunds.com/ (October 1, 2014), author profile.
Diesel Web site, http: //www.dieselbookstore.com/ (October 1, 2014), “A Bookstore in Brentwood welcomes Adam Pelzman.”
Dig Boston, http:// digboston.com/ (July 15, 2014), Katie Nofziger, review of Troika.
First to Read, http:// www.firsttoread.com/ (October 1, 2014), review of Troika.
Fun in the Moment, http://www.funinthemoment.com/ (October 1, 2014), short author profile.
Huffington Post, http: //www.huffingtonpost.com/ (July 3, 2014), Adam Pelzman, “The Long Road to a Published Novel.”
North Jersey, http:// www.northjersey.com/ (August 4, 2014), Kelly Ebbels, “Author to Discuss Debut Novel in Montclair Bookstore.”
Nuts 4 Books, http:// www.nuts4books.com/ (August 21, 2014), review of Troika.
Penguin Web site, http://www.penguin.com/ (October 1, 2014), author profile.*
Adam Pelzman was born in Seattle, raised in northern New Jersey, and has spent most of his life in New York City. He studied Russian literature at the University of Pennsylvania and went to law school at UCLA. His first novel, Troika, was published by Penguin (Amy Einhorn Books) and later republished by Jackson Heights Press as A Cuban Russian American Love Story. He is also the author of The Papaya King (which Kirkus Reviews described as "entrancing" and "deeply memorable") and The Boy and the Lake (which is set in New Jersey during the late 1960s). His newest novel is A Plague of Mercies.
adampelzman.com
Born: 47.6613, -122.4171
Raised: 40.8648, -74.2582
Favorite Place as a Child: 40.9207, -74.5125
"Art, at those moments when it feels most like art—when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant—is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks." —John Gardner, The Art of Fiction.
"One day you'll look back on this and laugh . . . or not." —On dealing with adversity: cherished advice from my wise but warped grandmother.
Pelzman, Adam THE PAPAYA KING Jackson Heights Press (Indie Fiction) 7, 16
An eccentric outsider is baffled by contemporary Manhattan in this engrossing second novel by Pelzman (Troika, 2014).
Robert Walser is a struggling writer whose genteel ways suit a bygone age. He lives on the Upper West Side, supported by a dwindling inheritance, clinging to the hope that his work will be published. Besides his agent, Belinda St. Clair, "a sour but persistent old woman," Walser has only one other important contact--Rose--a woman with whom he has exchanged letters but never met. The novel's opening finds the protagonist in high spirits, having received two important messages--the first from Belinda informing him that his short story is being considered by a literary journal, the second from Rose, announcing her imminent arrival in New York. The storyline follows Walser on his walk from his 72nd Street apartment to the Port Authority, where Rose will alight a bus from Philadelphia. Sadly, Rose fails to show, and Walser's heart sinks as he realizes that he must continue to navigate the unforgiving city alone. Meanwhile, he discovers that a sculpture is being erected near his apartment that embodies all he despises about contemporary city life. Pelzman's second novel brims with intrigue. Does the enigmatic Rose exist? What is the significance of the sculpture titled: "#dunamisto"? Pelzman's reveal is tantalizing and richly detailed. Many of the scenes that define Walser's character will live on in the memory. One such is when he rides the subway and confronts a young man for failing to give up his seat to the elderly: "I await a humane response, but instead he shrugs his shoulders, returns the headphones to his ears and taps away at the screen of his phone as if he exists on a planet of one." Walser's old-fashioned set of values--which may appear priggish but are founded on human decency--cause him to be looked upon as potentially insane. This is acutely observant, timely writing that confronts the ever heightening sense of disconnection and self-absorption extant in city life. A minor criticism: The narrative could be distilled from novel length into an even more intense short story. Walser's jury duty, for instance; although amusing, it feels somewhat extraneous. Still, this is another entrancing, deeply memorable offering from Pelzman.
Devilishly sharp social commentary.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Pelzman, Adam: THE PAPAYA KING." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A596269742/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=31122812. Accessed 18 July 2023.
Pelzman, Adam A PLAGUE OF MERCIES Jackson Heights Press (Fiction Poetry) $15.95 6, 7 ISBN: 9781733258562
A New Yorker watches from his apartment window as a plague ravages the city in this prose poem by Pelzman.
Gabriel is a lonely, troubled, and divorced industrial designer who lives in an apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Each day, he observes his neighbors go about their lives in adjacent apartment blocks. Despite never having met them, he grows to know the actions of a select few intimately, including an aging Mancunian couple, a pair of gay doctors, a lonely old man, and a widowed socialite. The girl he nicknames "Sophie" particularly captivates Gabriel. He watches her go about her daily chores and grows jealous when any potential suitors visit. Gabriel observes sadly that "despite being separated by only a few inches of concrete, / they will never be of service to each other." His neighbors suddenly begin to fall ill as a pandemic moves through the city. "Death is here," declares the speaker, and the city's forces are "depleted" for a moment. As Manhattan begins to recover, neighbors begin to "see" one another for the first time. What will this mean for Gabriel and Sophie? The author's poetic narrative captures the rapid manner in which the city generates an ever-changing spectacle for the distanced observer. The everyday street life is captured in short, urgently descriptive lines that comment on the action as it unfolds: "There is a cyclist, / a pot-bellied man, / who spits on the ground / and clears his nostrils." Such descriptions are often interspersed with Gabriel's reactions "(Gabriel believes that the social contract continues to erode"), framing each scene with personal opinion. The result is an intimate portrait of a metropolis, which becomes distressingly distorted and paranoic with the onset of the "plague" ("An ambulance, / a deathmobile with pretty lights, / ambles up Amsterdam. / He glares at the ambulance / Stay away, / he warns"). Pelzman meticulously captures the shifting moods of the city during the pandemic crisis and knits a captivatingly unconventional love story into the narrative. If future generations wish to understand what the Covid lockdown felt like in America's great cities, this book should be among the first on their reading list.
Brilliantly observant poetry that captures a dark moment in our recent history.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Pelzman, Adam: A PLAGUE OF MERCIES." Kirkus Reviews, 21 Apr. 2023, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A747342011/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b047218c. Accessed 18 July 2023.