Summary of Wellness a novel by Nathan Hill E-Book

SUMMARY GP

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of Wellness a novel by Nathan Hill

IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

• - Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
• - Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
• - Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book

Wellness is a novel by the New York Times best-selling author of The Nix, reimagining the love story with insight, irony, and heart. The story follows Jack and Elizabeth, two college students who meet in the '90s Chicago art scene. After twenty years of married life, they face challenges like cults, polyamorous suitors, Facebook wars, and Love Potion Number Nine. They must face their demons and undertake personal excavations to save each other.

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GP SUMMARY

Summary of Wellness a novel by Nathan Hill

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.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

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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NOTE TO READERS

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

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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.