Paula Fox

Introduction by Jonathan Lethem

Poor George

Paula Fox’s stunning first novel—available for the first time since its initial publication in 1967.

Poor George gives us George Mecklin, a restless, soft-spoken teacher at a private school in Manhattan. Depressed by his life of vague moral purpose, George discovers a local adolescent named Ernest breaking into his house. Rather than hand the boy over to the police, as his nagging wife insists, George instead decides to tutor him. His life consequently implodes. Filled with vividly acid portrayals of American life in the 1960s, prescient explorations of suburban anomie, and a riotously disturbing cast of supporting characters, Poor George is a classic American novel—further reminder of Paula Fox’s astonishing literary gifts.

"Like a sealed bottle of pure mid Sixties. . . . Poor George feels fresher after a third of a century than do most novels written yesterday."—Jonathan Franzen

"The best first novel I’ve read in quite a long time."—Bernard Bergonzi, New York Review of Books