The Current Climate

Bruce Jay Friedman

Dec 2007 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

About this ebook

Screenwriter Harry Towns continues his misadventures in this novel from a New York Times–bestselling author and “witty chronicler of urban angst” (San Francisco Chronicle).
 
Set in late-1980s New York, this novel continues the story of Harry Towns—who is well into his fifties and is feeling increasingly out of place in the world, but doesn’t let that stop him from pursuing success as a playwright (or at least making some quick cash by selling a TV series). He has a second wife and a young daughter, but he doesn’t let that stop him from bedding the occasional hooker (and getting mugged along the way). It isn’t easy getting older, but Harry plugs along. The only thing that truly paralyzes him is trying to decide whether to get tickets to Cats . . .
 
“A triumph . . . Hilarious.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
 
“Harry Towns, like his creator, shows in the end . . . amazing resilience, inventiveness, hope and good humor.” —The Washington Post

About the author

Bruce Jay Friedman (1930–2020) was a novelist, short story writer, playwright, memoirist, and screenwriter. He was the author of many books, including Stern (1962), A Mother’s Kisses (1964), The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life (1978), and Lucky Bruce: A Literary Memoir (2011). His best-known works of stage and screen include the off-Broadway hit Steambath (1970) and the screenplays for the films Stir Crazy (1980) and Splash (1984), the latter of which received an Academy Award nomination. As editor of the anthology Black Humor (1965), Friedman helped popularize the distinctive literary style of that name in the United States and is widely regarded as one of its finest practitioners. According to the New York Times, his prose is “a pure pleasure machine.”