Oyster:Baumgartner

Professor Seymour T. Baumgartner, known to friends as Sy, is a retired phenomenologist from Princeton in his seventies, who dedicates himself to writing philosophical books and increasingly to reminiscing about his youth: his lower-middle-class upbringing in Newark, his parents' troubled marriage, his college years, and a study stay in Paris, culminating in a love that struck him like lightning for the translator and poet Anna, with whom he spent the happiest years before she fell victim to a swimming accident ten years ago. Anna's death has left a deep void in his life that no amount of pragmatism or self-irony can fill. For Anna was truly what one would call his better half. One day, in search of comfort, Sy finally dares to enter her study, a room he has not stepped into since her passing. "One of the great authors of our time" - San Francisco Chronicle.