by Teddy Wayne
To put it in layman’s terms, I’d get off scot-free.
I told my parents I wanted my day in court, to clear my name completely and (I didn’t mention this part) to tarnish yours. Absolutely not, they said; it wasn’t worth the possibility of not winning.
From what I heard, you were initially outraged by the terms of the plea bargain, but upon learning that the Ad Board was kicking me out of Harvard, you grudgingly agreed. My parents instructed me not to appeal the decision, assuring me I could transfer to another good school the next year. I went along with everything.
The Crimson reported on the incident (using only my name) and my expulsion but, lacking juicy details and a court case, soon turned its attention to a hazing scandal at a final club.
With my academic rap sheet, however, no respectable institution would accept me. My parents insisted I go somewhere, so I enrolled at a community college within driving distance of home. I got meaningless straight As without even trying, took my cafeteria lunches outside. An English composition adjunct said I showed a lot of academic promise and should consider applying to a four-year school.
Word spread to my Hobart High classmates. “I guess you decided not to take it slow after all!” Daniel Hallman e-mailed me. That was the last I heard from anyone there.
Anna hardly acknowledged me. When Miriam came home, she chose her words carefully, as if I were an obtuse foreigner.
I don’t leave the house much these days. Usually I’m in my bedroom, on the Internet. You can burn a great deal of hours like that.
I turned twenty-four last week. My mother asked if I wanted anything special for my birthday. To get my van Gogh prints framed, I said. She also gave me a pair of slippers with DAF monogrammed across the toes.
It’s risky to do anything with this, even if there aren’t judicial consequences. You wouldn’t read it anyhow; you were never interested in knowing me. But I didn’t write it for you (the way you manipulated me to write your essays, the way you manipulated me the whole time). I wrote it about you, a big prepositional difference. For legal purposes, let’s classify it as fiction—or as fictional as your term paper. Call it Veronica Morgan Wells: A Study.
It’s funny. Lately I’ve found myself thinking of Sara more often than I do of you. The other day I saw she had a new profile photo, one of her and a guy hiking through some woods, their backs to the camera.
I couldn’t see her other pictures, but I imagined what she looked like now, and began conjuring her future selves as the years whipped by and she accumulated wrinkles and pounds and reading glasses. Also kids and a husband—me, with thinning hair and a thickening waist, the two of us racking mugs and bowls in the dishwasher, scooting our brood off to school, a hectic morning routine; but before we departed for our idealistic jobs that actually existed, she kissed me good-bye, tapping me on the head twice.
Knock, knock. Who’s in there?
We shared a smile, the kind couples reserve for private jokes that no longer inspire laughter but still bear the memory of it, because, after all these years together, she had gotten me to let whatever was in there out.
In Harvard Yard that winter night—more than five years ago—I settled into the police car, my posture slumped from the handcuffs, red and blue lights flashing around me like Fourth of July fireworks.
“What’s his name?” one of the gawking students asked the girl down my hall. “Who is he?”
I sat up, my spine erect against the seat, making myself more visible, listening for my name.
Divad Namredef. Somewhat of a loner.
“I don’t know,” she said, and the door closed.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the following:
my two editors—Millicent Bennett, to whom I am profoundly indebted for her meticulous attention and unflagging stamina, and Ira Silverberg, as adroit a shepherd and champion as I could ask for; their respective assistants, Julianna Haubner and Kaitlin Olson; my superb publicist, Erin Reback; my copy editor, David Chesanow; and Jon Karp, Marysue Rucci, and everyone else at Simon & Schuster;
my agent, Jim Rutman, a paragon of professionalism and decency;
my selfless and perspicacious readers—Chelsea Bieker, Clara Boyd, Sarah Bruni, Amber Dermont, Maura Kelly, Aryn Kyle, Diana Spechler, and John Warner;
my research resources—Andrew Epstein in clinical psychology, Josh Gradinger in the law, and Julian Lucas for Harvard-related queries (all errors are mine);
for conversations on the subjects of risk and reward, Lev Moscow and Nathaniel Popper;
the MacDowell Colony and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference;
the Greathead/Pennoyer family for welcoming me so warmly, and the Waynes for not evicting me;
and, finally, Kate Greathead, who not only tirelessly and sacrificially took time to make this novel the best possible version of itself, but has even more generously done the same for me.
Simon & Schuster Reading Group Guide
By Teddy Wayne
This reading group guide for Loner includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
Loner is a gripping novel about a Harvard freshman whose infatuation with a classmate takes a dark, obsessive turn.
David Federman has never felt appreciated. An academically gifted yet painfully forgettable member of his New Jersey high school class, the withdrawn, mild-mannered freshman arrives at Harvard fully expecting to be embraced by a new tribe of high-achieving peers. Initially, however, his social prospects seem unlikely to change, sentencing him to a lifetime of anonymity.
Then he meets Veronica Morgan Wells. Struck by her beauty, wit, and sophisticated Manhattan upbringing, David becomes instantly infatuated. Determined to win her attention and admittance to her glamorous world, he begins compromising his moral standards for this one great shot at happiness. But both Veronica and David, it turns out, are not exactly as they seem.
Loner turns the traditional campus novel on its head as it explores ambition, class, and gender politics. It is a stunning and timely literary achievement from one of the rising stars of American fiction.
This guide is intended to help your reading group find new and interesting topics for discussion and to increase their enjoyment of the story.
Topics and Questions for Discussion
1. What was your initial impression of David Federman? How did your trust in his account and his reliability as a narrator shift as his obsession with Veronica deepened?
2. Sara tells David, “You’re missing whatever it is that makes you feel things for other people.” Do you agree with Sara? If so, do you think David’s behavior is influenced by his environment and upbringing, or is it inherent in him?
3. David suggests that human beings tend to overestimate the role of destiny in “selectively applying it to favorable outcomes.” Do you agree with his view that much of what happens in our lives is out of our control and due to mere luck, good or bad? And do you think David’s penchant for rearranging words and sentences backward is his way of exercising control over his world? Or is it merely a social tic?
4. Sara, David, Veronica, and the other freshmen in Loner seem uncomfortably conscious of their social backgrounds and the fact that they are attending an elite university. “Maybe it’s a good thing for us to experience being unseen at a Latino event,” Sara says, “when Latinos have to deal with being unseen more systematically every day in the U.S.” Does her comment shed light on this awareness of privilege and how one might cope with it?
5. Compare Steven’s experience at Harvard to David’s experience. How are they similar? Why do their paths end up so different despite initial similarities?
&nbs
p; 6. Why do you think David steals Veronica’s bathrobe belt? And why does he specifically hold onto the portion of the belt that is monogrammed with her initials?
7. Do you agree with David that Veronica manipulated him? If so, did learning about Veronica’s motivations change how you felt toward her at the end of the book?
8. In her term paper, Veronica suggests that all relationships are transactional. Do you think Sara shares this view? What do you think Sara might have wanted from David when she started dating him?
9. David directs his entire account toward Veronica. Do you think that after the final episodes in the book he would still imagine an intimate or emotional connection to her?
10. Discuss the gender roles within Loner. Do they confirm or refute our traditional expectations of women as passive victims and men as aggressors?
11. Why do you think the author chose to set Loner at Harvard University? Could David’s story occur at other colleges, too?
12. Is the ending of the book a commentary on how our society views sexual assaults as well as the complexities involved in prosecuting them? Should Veronica’s lawyers have insisted on a trial?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Loner tackles the issue of sexual assault on college campuses. Research real-life cases such as the Vanderbilt rape case. Read Jon Krakauer’s Missoula for additional insight.
2. With your reading group, explore more novels with unreliable narrators such as Herman Koch’s The Dinner and Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs. Discuss how unreliable narrators change your reading experience.
3. Imagine the rest of David’s, Sara’s, and Veronica’s lives and the ways their experiences in the novel might alter those lives.
4. Read Teddy Wayne’s The Love Song of Jonny Valentine and compare Jonny, the narrator, to David Federman.
About the Author
Photograph by Kate Greathead
is the author of two previous novels, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine and Kapitoil. He is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. A columnist for The New York Times, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and McSweeney’s, and has taught at Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis. He lives in New York.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Teddy-Wayne
ALSO BY TEDDY WAYNE
The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
Kapitoil
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events
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Copyright © 2016 by Teddy Wayne
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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition September 2016
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Interior design by Lewelin Polanco
Jacket design by Na Kim
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wayne, Teddy, author.
Title: Loner : a novel / Teddy Wayne.
Description: New York : Simon & Schuster, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015044742 | ISBN 9781501107894 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501107900 (softcover) | ISBN 9781501107917 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: College students—Fiction. | Man-woman relationships—Fiction. | Psychological fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Psychological. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | GSAFD: Black humor (Literature)
Classification: LCC PS3623.A98 L66 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC record
available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044742
ISBN 978-1-5011-0789-4
ISBN 978-1-5011-0791-7 (ebook)