page title

Summary of

Wellness

A

Summary of Nathan Hill’s Novel

GP SUMMARY

Summary of Wellness a novel by Nathan Hill

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

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Cover, illustration: GP SUMMARY

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NOTE TO READERS

This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Nathan Hill’s “Wellness: A novel” designed to enrich your reading experience.

 

DISCLAIMER

The contents of the summary are not intended to replace the original book. It is meant as a supplement to enhance the reader's understanding. The contents within can neither be stored electronically, transferred, nor kept in a database. Neither part nor full can the document be copied, scanned, faxed, or retained without the approval from the publisher or creator.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

COME WITH

In Chicago, a man lives alone on the fourth floor of an old brick building with no view of the sky. He looks out his window and sees her window across the alley, an arm's length away. They have never spoken, and the alley is dark and still. On Christmas Eve, she appeared to him, and he sat up to peek out. He has come back to the theater of her window more often than he'd like to admit.

He finds her beautiful, objectively, classically, and obviously beautiful. Her apartment is decorated with postcards from places he assumes she's been, and framed posters of art he assumes she's seen in person. She reads inordinately, reading large textbooks, stage plays, poetry, and scientific journals. He imagines that if they ever actually speak, he will drop some morsel of Symphonie Fantastique knowledge and she will be impressed with him and fall in love.

The story revolves around a woman who is cultured and worldly, but she is not interested in a man who is uncultured, provincial, and backward. She has only once seen him entertain a guest, a man who arrived with a beer and spent two hours together. He never came back, and she changed into a ratty old T-shirt and sat alone in her apartment.

The man watches her, thinking that she is beautiful, but she finds it difficult to annul the public and private faces of beauty. He writes her a note on the back of a Chicago postcard, but he never sends them. Sometimes, his apartment is dark, and he wonders where she might be. She watches him, studying his stillness, tranquility, and admirable way he sits cross-legged on his bed.

She finds him handsome insofar as he seems unaware that he could be handsome, and he needs vegetables in his life. She admires his assertive tattoos, which speak to a confidence of personality and a person with strong convictions. He is an artist, mixing paints, solvents, inks, and dyes, and he chooses devotedly when choosing a picture, tattoo, or bohemian lifestyle.

The man's defiant and passionate nature makes her feel like a bean jumping against its pod. They do not speak, and the winter nights pass slowly, with their light off. On the nights she isn't home, he feels dejected, desperate, and pathetic, while she feels forsaken and dented by the world.

In the shadows, they linger in their separate studios, watching for each other's return. They stare across the alley, into dark apartments, and they don't know it, but they are staring at each other.

The Heir Buildings, originally a factory and warehouse, were never meant to be habitable. In January 1993, they were seized and repurposed into cheap apartments and studio space for the city's starving artists. The photographer is responsible for documenting the ruins before rehabilitation. He walks through the unmended reaches of the former factory, capturing the dirt, rubble, graffiti, broken windows, and curtains. He is worried about stumbling onto a sleeping squatter and decides to be loud to avoid confrontation.

The paint on the walls is peeling, reminding him of old portraits by Dutch masters and the small pond on his father's land. He decides to be loud, wearing thick and steel-reinforced boots and a mask due to the dust and dirt. He also finds needles in the building, which he photographs with the shallowest depth of field.

The heroin in the building inspires an odd love-hate relationship in the neighborhood, with people complaining about the hypodermics and abandoned buildings known as shooting galleries. Among the artists who live in his building, most of them also look like they do it, with a skinny, stringy-haired, sunken-eyed, colorless look.

At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a group of incoming studio art majors were displaying their work. One of the freshmen, Jack, was primarily interested in landscape photos, while the others were expressionist painters, sculptures, or video art installations. Jack took nine Polaroids of trees growing on the prairie, exposed to the wind.

Jack was approached by Benjamin Quince, a graduate student in new media studies. He explained that his images were not popular with the crowd because they are mass-produced, instant, cheap, and impermanent. Benjamin explained that collectors and investors are capitalist stooges who look to buy low and sell high. Jack appreciated Benjamin's authenticity and the idea of living rent-free in Wicker Park, an abandoned old ironworks building.

Benjamin then introduced himself as the owner of an exclusive co-op for creatives called the Foundry, which he called the Foundry. Jack found that being skinny and frail worked somewhat in his favor, leading him to live rent-free in exchange for photographic services. He finds that despite the harsh winter conditions and the city's noise and danger, he loves it.

Jack finds solace in the city at night, especially when he exits the Art Institute and looks upon Michigan Avenue and the skyline beyond. The city's unique blend of nature and urban life is a testament to the power of individuality and the power of community.

Jack, a young man living in Chicago, finds himself experiencing a newfound sense of freedom and expansiveness. He enjoys seeing art in person, watching theater, eating new foods, and listening to classmates debate their favorite artists. The noise of the city is reassuring for him, as it provides evidence of other people, neighbors, and compatriots. The noise also serves as a marker of transcendence, as it allows him to sleep peacefully through the urban night without fearing beeps, voices, car alarms, and police sirens outside.

Jack has not yet been mugged, but his appearance in Wicker Park, Chicago, has made him a mugger deterrent. He has perfected a dangerous-seeming impression built from secondhand clothes, tattoos, unkempt hair, and an urban strut. The neighborhood's danger is part of its attraction, as artists who come out here are not there despite the neighborhood's danger but because of it.

Jack's photos capture the grit and gunk of the neighborhood, which he hopes will deter muggers. He searches the hallways and former offices of the fifth floor for evidence of life on the edge, such as cracked paint, left-behind hypodermics, broken windows, and crumbling walls. Benjamin Quince, a local artist, describes Wicker Park as Chicago's answer to Montmartre: cheap and dirty and run-down, therefore alive.

On a deep-winter day, Jack and Benjamin stand on the roof of their co-op, looking at the gray neighborhood around them. They see a girl in the window, who is a woman who buys rugs. Jack wants to know everything about her but cannot reveal that he occasionally spies on her, a practice he is ashamed of only insofar as he knows that others would shame him for it.

Benjamin and Jack are discussing the internet, a concept that is similar to flyers for bands on telephone poles. They discuss how the internet allows people to connect and communicate with each other, making it a more honest and real alternative world. The man with the duffel bag offers to tutor them in the New Economy by providing visuals of bars, bands, and parties.

The man with the duffel bag stops at a bike rack behind the co-op and uses a bolt cutter to remove one of the locked bicycles. He then spots the band on the roof, six stories up, and waves a friendly wave. Jack and Benjamin watch him ride away, and Benjamin smiles and looks at Jack.

In another loud bar, the woman is invited to see a band she's been told she must love. She listens to a band she doesn't know the name of, but the drummer and lead guitarist seem obsessed with preventing any behavior that doesn't pay attention to them. The music is not danceable or friendly, and people stand around flinching in rhythm. Drinks at the bar must be ordered via gesture.

As the door opens, there's a burst of cold air, and the woman wears her scarf, mittens, and woolen winter hat to muffle the onstage pandemonium. Just outside, roughly half of the bar's patrons stand stiffly, their arms and legs pulled tight to their torsos. It's a Chicago deep-winter evening that causes despair and bitterness, with people lamenting "Fuck, it's cold!"

A woman is at the Empty Bottle, a bar known for serious music. Her date, Bradley, is a serious, studied, and somber upperclassman who had sat next to her during a microeconomics lecture. After the lecture, he asked her if she had plans for the night, as he knew the bartender. He explained that she needed to hear the band at the Empty Bottle before word got out about them. She agreed to meet Brad at nine and he ordered beers and asked her if she like music.

He basically forced her to listen to the band, which she agreed to. The bartender's presence at the Empty Bottle adds to the atmosphere and makes the experience more memorable.

THE DUAL MASTERS

The phrase "This is your forever home" was used in meetings to encourage costly extravagance, suggesting that if the home is the one you'll die in, splurge on real marble tiles, reclaimed barnwood, and premium exotic materials. All parties involved took commissions and kickbacks on these materials, creating strong incentives for upselling.

Jack and Elizabeth were finally putting down roots in their future three-bedroom condo in Park Shore, a building that would eventually be named the Shipworks after renovations. They had spent an afternoon reading and signing loan-related affidavits, which were approved and celebrated by standing outside the construction fences and toasting what would eventually become the Shipworks.

When designing a full home from scratch, there are innumerable unanticipated questions, and Jack surprised himself at how much he cared about all of them. For example, Elizabeth wanted to forgo wall cabinets in the kitchen in favor of open shelves, which struck Jack with the force of heresy. Jack agreed, but Elizabeth showed him a photo of a kitchen with dark walnut shelves, white plates, bowls, and coffee mugs stacked among small pieces of whimsical art.

The couple was sitting at the counter of their small, cluttered Wicker Park kitchen, filled with dirty dishes, fingerprints, and a Tupperware collection. Jack offered a quick demonstration of their kitchen, showing that they needed to be realistic about wanting all their stuff out for everybody to see. Elizabeth explained that they sometimes have guests and that if they had open shelves, it wouldn't look like that.

In summary, Jack and Elizabeth were on the brink of homeownership, but they had a lot of unanticipated questions when designing their new home. They had a gap between their lives and the lives of people with open shelves, and they needed to be realistic about their choices.

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.10.2023
ISBN: 978-3-7554-5465-6

Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Widmung:
Wellness is a novel by The Nix, reimagining the love story between Jack and Elizabeth, who face challenges like cults, polyamorous suitors, Facebook wars, and Love Potion Number Nine.