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    Love and the Incredibly Old Man: A Novel
    Love and the Incredibly Old Man: A Novel
    Love and the Incredibly Old Man: A Novel
    Ebook225 pages6 hours

    Love and the Incredibly Old Man: A Novel

    By Lee Siegel

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    About this ebook

    “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” begins one chapter of critically acclaimed Lee Siegel’s new novel, Love and the Incredibly Old Man. “In the beginning” starts another. What else can a novelist do when hired as a ghostwriter by an elderly, irascible, conquistador-costumed man claiming to be the 540-year-old Juan Ponce de León? The fantastic life of that legendary explorer—inventor of rum, cigars, Coca-Cola, and popcorn—is the frame for Siegel’s fourth chronicle of love, lies, luck, loss, and labia.  
                Summoned with cold hard cash and a pinch of flattery, a professor and novelist named Lee Siegel finds himself in Eagle Springs, Florida, attempting to give form to the life of the man who, contrary to popular and historical opinion, did indeed find the Fountain of Youth. Spending humid days listening to the romantic ramblings of the old man and sleepless nights doubting yet trying to craft these reminiscences into a narrative that will satisfy the literary aspirations of his subject, Siegel the ghostwriter spins an improbable tale filled with Native Americans, insatiable monarchs, philandering cantors, deliriously passionate nuns, delicate actresses, androgynous artists, and deceptions small and large. For de León, and for Siegel too, centuries of conquest and colonialism, fortune and identity, are all refracted through the memories of the conquistador’s lovers, each and every one of them adored “more than any other woman ever.”
                Comic, melancholic, lusty, and fully engaged with the act of invention, whether in love or on the page, Love and the Incredibly Old Man continues the real Lee Siegel’s exuberant exploration of that sentiment which Ponce de León confesses has “transported me to the most joyous heights, plunged me to the most dismal depths, and dropped me willy-nilly and dumbfounded at all places in between.”
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateNov 15, 2008
    ISBN9780226757070
    Love and the Incredibly Old Man: A Novel
    Author

    Lee Siegel

    Lee Siegel writes about culture and politics for a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a recipient of the National Magazine Award. He is the author of three books: Falling Upwards: Essays in Defense of the Imagination; Not Remotely Controlled: Notes on Television; and Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. He lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife and two children.

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    Reviews for Love and the Incredibly Old Man

    3/5

    11 ratings2 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Oh dear......I do wish I could have got into this book. Having tried on at least three occassions I was not able to get past the first dozen or so pages, which was a pity as the premis was most promising. Perhaps this was just a case of 'win some-lose some' as the writing was rather good and I will seek out Lee Siegels other books.
    • 4/5
      "Love and the Incredibly Old Man" is an entertaining, raunchy, funny story about a writer, Lee Seigel, who agrees to ghostwrite the memoirs of Ponce de Leon, who turns out to have found the Fountain of Youth after all and is now a 540 year old man living in St. Augustine, FL. The book, as Ponce de Leon imagines it and the real-life Lee Seigel presents it, is an homage to all the famous explorer's lovers (aka the women he "cardar-red"). I've seen the book described as "porny", and while it is a bit on the racy side, it's not even remotely graphic. Seigel's prose is amusing throughout, and often laugh-out-loud funny, particularly when Ponce and book-Seigel disagree about what should be included in the memoir. The Ponce de Leon character is fantastic - arrogant and obnoxious and over-the-top (he loves almost every woman mentioned "more than any woman ever") and absolutely the best part of the novel.

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