Martin, Steve: The Pleasure of My Company

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Daniel Pecan Cambridge is beset by a collection of neuroses that have rendered him jobless and lonely--and the subject of study of a psychiatry student who stops by his compulsively cleaned apartment twice weekly. Some of Daniel's peculiarities merely make his life difficult, such as his need for the aggregate wattage of lit lightbulbs in his apartment to equal precisely 1125 at all times. But others virtually preclude normal conduct. Most awkward, perhaps, is Daniel's inability to step over curbs: he can only cross a street when two scooped-out driveways lie directly opposite one another. This requirement makes an adventure of Daniel's frequent trips to the local Rite Aid, and it complicates his attempts to woo the real estate agent showing apartments across the street from his own.

Steve Martin's chronicle of Daniel's self-imprisonment, narrated by Daniel himself, is a sweet story filled with often gorgeous prose. Martin's writing is both delightfully precise ("Let me tell you about my mailbox. It is one of twelve eroded brassy slots at the front entrance of my building.") and quietly funny: "I never have interfered with a relationship, out of respect for the guy as much as for myself, but Brian is a dope and Philipa is a sylph and I am a man, even if that description of myself is qualified by my failure to be able to cross the street at the curb." The Pleasure of My Company is a quick read--163 pages and chapterless, with an ending that is perhaps too abrupt--and it is well worth a look. You'll leave the book appreciating, quite possibly madly envious of, its Renaissance-man author's highly re-readable prose style.

Comments

[Susan]

1.

How could I have missed this review up until now? I love Steve Martin and I absolutely agree on the book. It was pure joy to read.