Notices/Reviews of The Door-Man:
What does one say when a new review of The Door-Man begins:
“Do.Not.Miss.This.Book.”
Kirkus throws down the gauntlet…
“Wheelwright is a thoughtful, meticulous writer…A scientifically intriguing, dramatic, and challenging read.”
5 stars out of 5 stars is…well, 5 stars.
“The Door-Man is a luminous historical novel…“
The New Yorker
Briefly Noted, March 21, 2022
It’s very nice to be noted, if only briefly…
“The thrill of hiding out in one’s own life…“
“Wheelwright is something of a Renaissance man: architect, professor, and novelist. In The Door-Man, he has created an impressive structure of fiction and nonfiction, both of which contribute to its power, grace and truth.“
Peter Matthiessen Wheelwright
is a writer, educator, and architect. He is Emeritus Professor at The New School, Parsons School of Design in New York City, where he taught design and was the Chair of the Architecture Department. He also wrote on matters of environmental philosophy, design theory, and social practices in the built and natural worlds.
As It Is On Earth (Fomite Press), his first work of fiction, received a 2013 PEN/Hemingway Honorable Mention for Literary Excellence. His most recent novel, The Door-Man (Fomite Press), was listed as one of “The Best Books of 2022” by The New Yorker. His short stories have appeared in The Stone Canoe and The Twin Bill where he received The Jackie Mitchell Creative Nonfiction Prize.
Educated at Trinity College where he studied painting and sculpture, Peter went on to receive his Master in Architecture from Princeton University. His design work as an architect has been widely published. The Kaleidoscope House, a modernist dollhouse designed in collaboration with artist Laurie Simmons is in the Collection of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art. To learn more about Peter Wheelwright’s work as an architect, click on The Architecture.
Peter comes from a family of writers, naturalists, and architects. His uncle and namesake is/was three-time National Book Award recipient, Peter Matthiessen.
He is currently working on a new novel tentatively titled Adams’s Navel.
…And be sure to visit Ruminations…where blocked writers, bored philosophers, and deep thinkers go for sport
The PEN/Hemingway Ceremony
(at the J. F. Kennedy Center
with fellow HM Awardee
Catherine Chung, Forgotten Country)
“There is no lack of ambition or artistry in Peter Wheelwright’s As It Is On Earth, a complex tapestry of the collisions between civilization and nature, and science and religion, among other minor topics. But its heart is “the family thing”, and the pleasure of this book is watching Wheelwright’s sensitive and skeptical protagonist unravel decades of secrets and lies. A remarkable debut.”
– Helen Schulman, Come with Me and This Beautiful Life
“As It Is On Earth is a spiritual coming of age story of New England bred brothers who have been shaped by secrets, grievances and betrayals. Yet, far from being a simple chronicle of family dysfunction, Wheelwright’s richly layered tale can be read as a contemporary rendering of the Cain and Abel story and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.”
– Wesley Brown, Tragic Magic and Darktown Strutters
“With a Yankee tap root breaking through layers of granite guilt, the Thatcher family tree is a challenging climb. From its branches, author Peter Wheelwright peers compassionately at a world inhabited by young survivors of extinct tribes and inherited griefs. Fascinating and absorbing and forgiving.”
– Meryl Streep
“A suspenseful reflection on identity and memory, with their unsparing strangeness and dreamlike fragility, The Door-Man intimates that while time does not heal all, it does elicit forgiveness. Wheelwright reminds us that, like memory itself, life does not progress steadily without opposition, but occurs in unexpected leaps and bounds, seemingly random and always incomplete. A complex and thoughtful book.”
– Susanna Moore, The Lost Wife and In the Cut
The Door-Man is a big, deep, beautiful book that ponders the mysteries of identity and existence–where we’re from and what we are, and the hidden forces that bind people together and drive them apart. Peter Wheelwright has written a riveting multigenerational saga that is also a meditation on time itself–what it gives and what it takes, and ultimately, what endures.
– Catherine Chung, author of Forgotten Country and The Tenth Muse
“Good fiction opens new dimensions and perspectives on our existence, and Peter Wheelwright opens many in The Door-Man…a gripping three-generation saga that includes murder, incest, bastard siblings, and other skeletons in the closet. A frothy bouillabaisse of narrative history and imaginative storytelling.”
—Alex Shoumatoff, author, editor of Dispatchesfromthevanishingworld.com
