Praise for Elevating Overman
“Before Overman learned to walk, he learned his limits. Enduring sure-targeted bias reinforced by genetic fiat, Overman is doomed. He can only claw from destiny once he is visited by the sins of an entire people. This remarkable achievement is the seminal victory within Bruce Ferber’s brutally funny, Elevating Overman. Frailty abounds in this searing examination of our lesser selves. With hints of Philip Roth, the cultural byplay will bring out the self-hatred in us all—and turn it on its head. Elevating Overman deserves a place in the Jewish-American canon.”
—Roy Teicher, former Tonight Show writer,
Los Angeles Times columnist
“Ira Overman knew his world was narrow and petty, but after a dramatic Lasik surgery he sensed ‘it was about to become narrow and petty in bold new ways.’ It’s well worth going along with him for the ride. Elevating Overman is funny, sad, and very, very engaging.”
—Charlie Hauck, author, Artistic Differences,
creator, seven network TV series,
New York Times Contributor
“If Woody Allen, SJ Perelman, and Phillip Roth had a son…that son and his three fathers would love this book! A great read! Outrageous, funny, sad, and wildly original!”
—Billy Van Zandt, writer/producer
of a ridiculous amount of TV comedies,
widely popular playwright,
and author of “You’ve Got Hate Mail”
“Bruce Ferber has come out of the gate with balls. His dysfunctional creation Ira Overman ponders why ‘volumes have been written about bad things happening to good people,’ but nothing about when good things happen to someone like him. Ferber’s novel makes one think, ‘What would happen if Holden Caulfield suddenly got everything he wanted?’ Okay, besides a bevy of hot ladies…Loaded with laughs, Elevating Overman makes you read late into the night when you have a court appearance the next morning. ‘What is going to happen to this jerk?’ Is what your brain says as it continues to turn the page. Thankfully, the answer is happy, funny, sexy and utterly original.”
Dwight Slade, standup comedian,
Winner Boston Comedy Festival
THIS IS A GENUINE VIREO BOOK
V
A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books
453 South Spring Street, Suite 531
Los Angeles, CA 90013
rarebirdbooks.com
Copyright © 2014 by Bruce Ferber
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address:
A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department,
453 South Spring Street, Suite 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013.
Permission to reprint previously published material may be found in the acknowledgements section at the end of the book.
Set in Caslon
ISBN: 978-1-940207-92-6
Author photo: Paul Harris
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.
www.bruceferber.net
Twitter: @BruuuceF
In loving memory of Jenise and Sam
For Lyn, Aaron, Sarah, Bea, Vy Vy, and Anthony
But by my love and hope I beseech you: do not throw away the hero in your soul! Hold holy your highest hope!
—Friedrich Nietzsche,
“Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.
—Sinclair Lewis, “Babbit”
A mole digging in a hole
Digging up my soul now
Going down, excavation
I and I in the sky
You make me feel like I can fly
So high, elevation.
—U2, “Elevation”
I’m often asked why I left the glamorous world of television for the lonely and monetarily challenging path of writing novels. In fact, the career shift was a response to a profound and disturbing life experience. My wife was being treated for Stage 3 Breast Cancer while I was making the rounds of the networks, pitching sitcom premises to twenty-five year-old executives with no power to do anything but offer me bottles of water. One day, as I was listening to their ideas, I realized that I didn’t want their water anymore, both literally and metaphorically. The notion of trying to homogenize an idea to please these people had become anathema to me. So I walked away from TV cold turkey and devoted my time to being with my wife and kids—until Jenise lost her battle.
As I processed my grief, I started to wonder what I was going to do with myself. I was still relatively young, (though not by entertainment industry standards), I still had the drive to write comedy, but I was burned out on the TV process. More importantly, I knew that whatever I did next couldn’t be for anyone else, and would have to reflect who I’d become. I’d never written a novel before and didn’t know if I could, but sink or swim, I wanted out of my comfort zone.
I found Ira Overman, a man who has pissed away the first fifty-five years of his life and wants one more chance to make things right. Then one day, I went to my mailbox and pulled out a copy of the Pennysaver. On the cover was an ad for “Life-Changing Lasik Surgery—$299 per eye.” This became the engine for the novel. Overman, who has been wearing glasses since he was four, decides that even a small change, like improved vision, would be a step up from life as it stands. As it turns out, the Lasik not only makes him see better but see differently, empowering him to accomplish things he never thought possible. The change is so dramatic that his best friend, Jake Rosenfarb, becomes convinced that Overman has morphed into some kind of superhero, and Rosenfarb offers to be his sidekick.
While the book takes many comic twists and turns, it poses the essential question: How do we atone for our mistakes and gain insight into a life that matters? As I wrote a character who was searching for meaning and granted a second chance, I began to realize that Overman’s journey was paralleling my own. After my wife’s passing, I, too, was contemplating a second chance, albeit one I never wanted to take. I struggled with why bad things happened to good people. Overman wondered why good things were happening to a schlub like him. The further I dug into the writing, the more our paths started crisscrossing, which frightened me, given Overman’s pathetic track record. But as his character started to blossom, I began to take heart. I suddenly realized that this flawed, middle-aged Jewish man from my imagination had given me my second chance.
To Overman, everything in life was a negotiation. In his dealings with women, the grueling battle of give and take was a foregone conclusion, cruelly validated by the indelible scars left in its wake. At the office, there was the ever-nagging question of whether the size of the paycheck