Authors: Stephen McCauley
The Easy Way Out
PRAISE FOR STEPHEN McCAULEY'S
THE EASY WAY OUT
“The Easy Way Out
is the best kind of contemporary fiction. Stephen McCauley captures not only how we live, but how we love, and even how we get through the day.
The Easy Way Out
manages to be miraculously both a joyous and important book.”
âWendy Wasserstein
“Delightfully eccentric characters. . . . A gentle, quirky, and very funny novel.”
âHouston Chronicle
“McCauley has a good time with his settings, describing them with great visual and psychological accuracy. . . . Droll and astute. . . . Stephen McCauley casts an astute eye on relationships. . . . How easy to take for granted the tremendous technical accomplishment of Stephen McCauley's sparkling fiction.”
âBoston Globe
“McCauley is a writer with near-perfect balance: he is as funny as he is smart. He manages to deliver every joke that comes within shouting distance of his characters while never once ignoring or trivializing the complexity of their inner lives.”
âMirabella
“McCauley's witty, frequently epigrammatic style . . . is redolent of Oscar Wilde. . . .
The Easy Way Out
is engaging, satisfying . . . appealing.”
âThe Plain Dealer
(Cleveland)
“A sweet, sad, and funny novel . . . full of McCauley's characteristic sly charm and gentle humor.”
âSan Francisco Chronicle
“A daffy, often sage, touchingly wistful tale.”
âBoston Sunday Herald
“This beautifully written, heartbreaking book . . . is an eloquent depiction of the compromises lovers and families make to keep relationships alive. . . . Its considerable drama arises from the clever, revealing dialogue and the reader's intense involvement with the sharply drawn characters.”
âPublishers Weekly
“Funny and painful. . . .
The Easy Way Out
is an engaging novel.”
âHouston Post
“What a joy it was to curl up with the new McCauley and find it every bit as beguiling as his first.
The Easy Way Out
weaves its way deftly through the tangled web of modern allegiances, heaping irony upon irony, yet never once losing its remarkable generosity of spirit. The people we meet here are as exasperatingly human as our own friends and families. No one tells of the heart quite like Stephen McCauley.”
âArmistead Maupin
“It's not easy to write a character who has the power to charm. . . . Stephen McCauley has that skill.”
âTime
“Few writers today capture the emotional texture and endlessly shifting tensions of daily life as well as McCauley. . . . McCauley unabashedly writes to tell stories. . . . It's enormously hard to do it as wellâand with as much humanityâas McCauley has done. The characters in
The Easy Way Out
stay with the reader throughout the day and after the book is done. . . . We ache for them as they face difficult choices, and we learn with them that life offers no easy way out.”
âBoston Phoenix
“McCauley's wry takes on relationships of convenience are literary Toblerone: dark, rich, pointed, and slightly nutty. . . . McCauley has an eye for the comedy of modern life and a genius for rendering even the most tangential character.”
âDetails
“Stephen McCauley is a master at relationships. . . .
The Easy Way Out
is an infectious tale packed with wit and humor, and with characters who are so likable and so human that it's hard to part ways when the book ends. . . . It is a powerful, truthful, and salient book with a wondrously benevolent spirit.”
âMilwaukee Journal
“You're in for a very âgood read. . . .'
The Easy Way Out
is a hybridâa sometimes serious work that is more often than not very, very funny. It may be just the tonic to get you through disastrous vacations, lost loves, and a world not so much warmed by toxic fumes as by the human heart.”
âLambda Book Report
Books by Stephen McCauley
The Object of My Affection
The Easy Way Out
The Man of the House
True Enough
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Stephen McCauley
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
First Simon & Schuster hardcover June 1992
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon
&
Schuster, Inc.
Cover design by Jeanne M. Lee
Front cover illustration by Izhar Cohen
McCauley, Stephen.
    The easy way out / by Stephen McCauley.
       p. cm.
    I. Title.
[PS3563.C33757E27Â Â Â Â 1992b]
813'.54âdc20
92-42590
CIP
ISBN: 978-1-4391-2230-3 (eBook)
For Luppus
Contents
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1
F
our and a half months before his wedding, my younger brother called me from Chicago at one in the morning. I'd been having a nagging problem with insomnia for about five years, so I was always thrilled to hear the phone ring, the smoke alarm sound, a picture fall from the wall, or anything that gave me an excuse to get out of bed. On that particular night, I'd been thrashing under the covers since the end of the late news, scratching my armpits and bouncing my legs, all quietly enough to leave my lover Arthur's sleep undisturbed. At the sound of the phone I leapt up, ran into the living room, tripped over a pile of clothes and picked up the receiver. As soon as I heard Tony's voice, I mumbled something about having been asleep. With my younger brother, I try to grab the advantage immediately.