The last remaining tenant in a condemned New York tenement, Harry Lesser struggl
es against rising panic and escalating odds to complete the novel he started ten
years earlier, while his landlord Levenspiel cajoles through closed doors with
hard-luck tales and substantial cash sums. Then he stumbles on a black man, sitt
ing typing in one of the deserted flats: Willie Spearmint, soul writer. Touchy,
hostile and anti-semitic - demanding then denouncing Lesser's critical help with
his floridly voilent tales of oppression and pogroms against whites - Spearmint
is exactly what he doesn't need; or does he? For each man has his motives...Fir
st published in 1971, The Tenants is a pessimistic, ruthlessly funny dissection
of a writing and racial relationship of profound unease and -ultimately - mutual
creative destruction.
