The Tenants of Moonbloom

Norman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan. Making his rounds from apartment to apartment, Moonbloom confronts a wildly varied assortment of brilliantly described urban characters, among them a gay jazz musician with a sideline as a gigolo, a Holocaust survivor, and a brilliant young black writer modeled on James Baldwin. Moonbloom hears their cries of outrage and abuse; he learns about their secret sorrows and desires. And as he grows familiar with their stories, he finds that he is drawn, in spite of his best judgment, into a desperate attempt to improve their lives. Edward Lewis Wallant's astonishing comic tour de force is a neglected masterpiece of 1960s America.

Edward Lewis Wallant (1926-1962) won critical acclaim for his novels The Human Season and The Pawnbroker, which was made into the first American film to portray the inside of the Nazi death camps. After Wallant’s untimely death, an annual award was created in his name to honor an outstanding work of fiction that “has significance for the American Jew.”

Dave Eggers is the editor of McSweeney’s and the author of three books: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; You Shall Know Our Velocity, a novel; and Visitants, a collection of short stories. He lives in California.