The Day the Bozarts Died

Stanley Noseworthy is, at best, a serial monogamist. At worst, a faithless rake. Now his record-breaking long-term lover (“1001 better-than-Arabian nights”) Nina is fed up with his “inimitable bull%#$#” and threatening to end their relationship. “Show us there is some good in you,” Stanley’s best friend urges. “Show us there is a brain.” But Stanley’s decisions do not tend to be made by his brain.

He has profoundly mixed feelings about losing Nina, for he is nothing if not a profoundly mixed (up) fellow. Stanley is either a dedicated artist or a posturing fraud, a charming rogue or a shallow lothario, tragic victim or pathetic loser—or all of the above. (“Vote Online!” Stanley might well say to this, for he is always prepared to satirize his own life as sharply as the life around him.)

Meanwhile, Stanley’s beloved artists’ cooperative, The “Hotel Beaux-Arts” (hence Bozarts) to its inhabitants, is also under threat. Since its endowment a quarter-century ago by the august Canterbury Institute of Technology, the “Bozarts” has had a frequently glorious, always rambunctious, character-rich history. Lately, mysteriously, it has been dwindling toward extinction.

Stanley (who may or may not be paranoid) fears the reason for this is either that the Institute wants its building back for more profitable use, or that George W. Bush has declared an end to Art and Thought in America—or both of the above.