Leonard Schiller is a novelist in his seventies, a second-string but respectable talent who produced only a small handful of books. Heather Wolfe is an attractive graduate student in her twenties. She read Schiller’s novels when she was growing up and they changed her life. When the ambitious Heather decides to write her master’s thesis about Schiller’s work and sets out to meet him—convinced she can bring Schiller back into the literary world’s spotlight—the unexpected consequences of their meeting alter everything in Schiller’s ordered life. What follows is a quasi-romantic friendship and intellectual engagement that investigates the meaning of art, fame, and personal connection. "Nothing less than a triumph" ( The New York Times Book Review ), Starting Out in the Evening is Brian Morton’s most widely acclaimed novel to date. PRAISE FOR STARTING OUT IN THE EVENING "Wonderful . . . This is what a novel is supposed to be." -- Newsday "Morton's perceptions of the conflicts within the human heart are keen." --Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones   "An extraordinary novel." Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones Heather Wolfe is a young, ambitious graduate student.Leonard Schiller is the seventy-year-old, out-of-print author who is the subject of her master's thesis.When the two meet, Schiller quickly falls under the seductive promise of Heather's admiration.As Brian Morton examines the intersections of these two lives, he intertwines their story with a third one that of Ariel, Schiller's tender and vulnerable daughter.What ensues is a rare and beautiful story that is at once comic, insightful, and moving. "Conjures a fully formed and vibrant sense of life in all its complexity . . . These three characters seem so organic and real, their emotions and actions so natural, that the reader slips instantly into intimacy with them." Elle "Never sinks under the weight of its own probing ideas . . . Morton stays rooted in the humanity of his characters and their diverse quests . . . Stirring." -- San Francisco Chronicle BRIAN MORTON is the author of three other novels, including A Window Across the River, which was a Today Book Club selection, Breakable You, and The Dylanist. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and New York University and lives in New York. Reading Group Guide available at www.HarcourtBooks.com." BRIAN MORTON is the author of four previous novels, including Starting Out in the Evening , which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was made into an acclaimed feature film, and A Window Across the River , which was a Book Club selection of the Today show. He teaches at New York University, the Bennington Writing Seminars, and Sarah Lawrence College, where he also directs the writing program. He lives in New York. Starting Out in the Evening By Brian Morton Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company Copyright © 1998 Brian Morton All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-15-603341-1 CHAPTER 1 Heather was wearing the wrong dress. It had seemed like a good idea in the morning — it was a tight little black thing; she'd looked fantastic in the mirror — but now she was thinking that she should have worn something demure. This was a foolish dress to meet your intellectual hero in. Waiting in the coffee shop for the great man to arrive, Heather was squirming with nervousness, and she began to wonder why she was here — why she had gone to such lengths to meet this man, when she knew he couldn't possibly be as interesting in person as he was in his books. She had a wild urge to flee — to scribble a note of apology, leave it with the waiter, and drive all the way back to Providence. But she stayed where she was. She was nervous; she was a little scared; but she could live with that. Fear of any undertaking, to her way of thinking, was usually a reason to go ahead with it. The door opened and a man came in from the cold. He was wearing an enormous coat — a coat that was like a house — and a big, furry, many-flapped hat. He peeled off the hat and stopped for a moment in front of the cash register, stamping off the snow. He was wearing galoshes. They had never met, but he picked her out instantly, and he came toward her, smiling. Old, fat, bald, leaning awkwardly on a cane. The man of her dreams. CHAPTER 2 "I can't believe it's you," she said, as he pressed her hand and sat heavily across from her. What she wanted to say was: You've been dear to me since I was a girl. You were one of my life-teachers. You understood me; you helped me understand myself. If reading a book is a naked encounter between two people, I have known you nakedly for years. She wanted to say wild things to him, but here he was, struggling out of his coat, and he seemed terribly old and terribly frail, and above all terribly unfamiliar, and she suddenly felt shy. When she read his work, it was as if he poured his soul directly into hers, and they mixed. Now there were bodies in the way