Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin

Murray Tepper is an ordinary New Yorker simply trying to read the newspaper in peace.

Parked in his Chevrolet Malibu on the uptown side of Forty-Third Street between Fifth and Sixth, he reads the New York Post and listens to a peddler yell in an accent he couldn't place even by continent. Forty-Third is usually quieter, not like Forty-seventh Street. People who roll up alongside, honk, or ask if he is going out receive a wave of the hand or a "No," to which incredulous drivers shout, "He's not going out? What do you mean he's not going out?" Even his daughter asks why he keeps doing it, remembering the old days when he would leave his family to shift the car on alternate-side parking days.

People begin to tap on the window and ask questions. Outside a deli on the Lower East Side, one man opens the door and sits inside to voice his frustrations, and people take notice. A reporter writes a story, and soon there are lines of people waiting to speak with him. There's always something.

The mayor is known for passing frivolous ordinances like a park dress code and not leaving the sidewalk to hail a cab. He sees the gathered crowds as a disturbance of the peace by an anarchist mocking society. The New York Civil Liberties Union takes his case, and an agent promises a huge book deal. Tepper knows all the parking rules as an art form. He has simply paid the meter in a legal spot, and he has a right to read the paper wherever he likes.

Parking as a philosophy. In this satire, Trillin has created a New York everyman, like the brilliant Chauncey Gardiner in Jerzy Kosinski's Being There. A difficult balance maintained throughout. People project what they wish onto him, and find his wisdom sage. This is a rare find for me: a comic novel which is genuinely funny. I was smiling through every page and did not want it to end.

Manhattan author Trillin is a long-time staff writer for The New Yorker and co-editor of a one-issue publication called Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking that is rumored to contain instructions on how to avoid each type of parking ticket that the city issues.

2001 / Hardcover / 213 pages

My reviews for other New York satires:

Being There by Jerzy Kosinski

What's With Baum? by Woody Allen