The Autograph Man

The novel opens with a prologue set in the London suburb of Mountjoy. Twelve-year-old Alex-Li Tandem, a half-Chinese, half-Jewish boy, travels with his father, Li-Jin Tandem, a local doctor, to the Royal Albert Hall for a wrestling match. They are accompanied by two acquaintances: the domineering Mark Rubinfine, fifteen, and the good-natured Adam Jacobs, thirteen, an American-born Black Jew. Li-Jin is secretly dying of a pineoblastoma, a rare brain tumor, and has told no one, not even his wife, Sarah. At the match, Li-Jin sits beside Herman Klein, whose quiet thirteen-year-old son Joseph reveals himself as an autograph collector, planting the seed of Alex's future career. Li-Jin bets the boys a pound note each, and when he loses, the signed notes become sacred tokens among the friends. After the match, Alex gets a wrestler's autograph and turns to show his father, but Li-Jin collapses.

Book One opens fifteen years later. Alex, now twenty-seven, is recovering in his Mountjoy flat from a multi-day hallucinogenic episode caused by a drug called Superstar. His vintage car has been violently crashed, though he has no memory of the accident. Alex is an Autograph Man, a dealer who buys, sells, and verifies celebrity autographs. As he pieces his life together, calls arrive: Esther Jacobs, his girlfriend of ten years and Adam's sister, hangs up on him; Adam reports Esther was injured in the crash Alex caused while high; Joseph Klein, now an insurance claims handler, insists that a Kitty Alexander autograph Alex possesses is a forgery. Kitty Alexander is a reclusive 1950s movie actress whose autograph is among the most coveted in the collecting world. Alex has written her weekly fan letters since he was thirteen without receiving a reply. As he leaves the flat, he finds the Kitty autograph pinned to his front door. Joseph calls again, insisting Alex forged it during the bad trip.

Alex encounters Rabbi Rubinfine, his childhood acquaintance, now a rabbi of a modern, liberal Jewish congregation. Rubinfine pressures him about attending services for Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and asks about Alex's secret manuscript, "Jewishness and Goyishness," a sprawling list categorizing all phenomena as either Jewish or goyish, inspired by comedian Lenny Bruce. The book has consumed Alex for years but remains unfinished.

At an auction, Alex joins Jason Lovelear, a brash American dealer, and Ian Dove, a gentle English hobbyist. The trade is increasingly dominated by corporate buyers. Brian Duchamp, a mentally deteriorating former Hollywood publicity man who once forged autographs for the studios, causes a scene, and Alex recognizes in him a cautionary vision of his own future.

Alex visits Adam's cramped flat above a video store, where Adam lives a monastic existence devoted to Kabbalistic study and marijuana. His walls display mystical diagrams central to Kabbalah, and his small autograph collection hangs in Kabbalistic formation: names cut from signed documents and pasted on postcards, commercially worthless but personally meaningful. Adam pressures Alex about saying Kaddish, the Jewish mourner's prayer, for Li-Jin's upcoming yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death. Alex resists, arguing he is not religious and Li-Jin was not Jewish. Adam counters that a child's Kaddish brings the parent peace and explains his belief that the world is broken: God withdrew to create finite beings but left shards of Himself behind, and humans reunite what has been dispersed through good actions.

Alex writes Kitty Letters, a decade-long practice of sending short, imaginative vignettes to Kitty's fan-club address in Manhattan. He discovers he has booked nonrefundable tickets to New York for an autograph convention, overlapping with Esther's pacemaker replacement surgery.

On Thursday, Duchamp examines Alex's Kitty autograph and judges it looks real. He gives Alex a forged Kitty to sell on commission. Alex proceeds to Cotterell's Autograph Emporium but arrives intoxicated, gets punched trying to sell the forgery, and is rescued by Boot, a young woman who works there. That evening, Rubinfine and Joseph visit the flat. While the others argue, Rubinfine sneaks upstairs and rips apart what he believes is Alex's Kitty autograph, hoping to break Alex's fixation. He has unknowingly destroyed Duchamp's forgery, leaving Alex's genuine photograph untouched.

Friday morning, Alex's milk operative delivers a second Kitty autograph from America, inscribed "To Alex, finally" and signed by Kitty (174). He reveals he delivered an identical package the previous week, before the drug episode. Alex realizes the autograph pinned to his door was genuinely sent by Kitty. He did not forge it. Elated, he flies to New York.

In New York, Alex meets Honey Richardson, a confrontational Black woman in her mid-thirties who insists on wearing rubber gloves. He later learns she is Honey Smith, famous for a sex scandal, which explains her precautions. They form a genuine friendship. On Sunday, Honey accompanies Alex to find Max Krauser, president of the Kitty Alexander fan club. Krauser refuses to help, but by following him through Brooklyn they locate Kitty herself: alive, vibrant, seventy-seven, wearing jeans and red sneakers. Upon hearing Alex's name, she becomes animated. She recently found hundreds of his unread letters hidden in Krauser's apartment; he had intercepted them for thirteen years. Kitty explains that Krauser is her former husband and self-appointed protector of forty years. She has also been receiving threatening stalker letters, which Alex suspects Krauser wrote. When Krauser returns, he throws them out.

That night, Alex goes back to Kitty's home. They spend hours watching her old films as she tells stories of Hollywood. Near dawn, Alex proposes that Kitty come to London so he can sell her autographs incrementally and free her from dependence on Krauser. She agrees.

Back in Mountjoy, Joseph picks Alex up in a new red MG: Adam secretly insured the wrecked car and used the payout. During the drive, Joseph confesses that his years of tension with Alex mask an unrequited love. Alex is stunned but compassionate. At the flat, Esther and Kitty have bonded. Alex begins selling Kitty's private correspondence through online auctions. The next morning, Esther discovers Boot's fishnet stockings in the sofa cushions, reigniting conflict. Then Kitty Alexander's death is announced on television; Alex suspects Krauser reported her dead in a panic. He sees an opportunity: The death announcement will multiply the value of the Kitty lots being sold that day. He convinces a reluctant Esther to keep Kitty away from television while the auction proceeds. The lots sell for staggering sums. Alex experiences a brief brush with fame, but the feeling sours; he feels himself becoming a symbol of unearned luck, which his father once called an insult to the world.

Alex visits Duchamp in the hospital, where cancer has spread throughout his body. He writes Duchamp a check for fifteen thousand pounds, telling him it is the sale price of the forged Kitty. Duchamp is delighted; they are Autograph Men again, doing business.

Alex descends into a drinking binge, and Adam and Joseph carry him home. He crawls upstairs and finds Kitty and Esther sleeping head-to-foot in his bed. A devastating wave of grief overtakes him, not for any single loss but for the universal fact of impermanence. He retreats to the airing cupboard and spontaneously says his Kaddish, without gesture or formality, "just a wet song into his hands" (325). This is his first genuine engagement with the prayer, born from grief rather than obligation.

The next morning, Kitty discovers her own obituary and is hurt. She keeps the auction money, minus Alex's commission, and decides to stay in London. Esther and Alex argue about his carelessness with people's feelings; they do not break up but reach a state of suspension. Alex meets Rabbi Burston at the synagogue to prepare for the evening service. The rabbi, a man of restricted growth with extraordinary confidence, explains that Kaddish is not a duty but a gift. At brunch, Adam asks Alex for a Kitty autograph to complete his Kabbalistic collection, but Alex has sold them all. Instead, Alex takes Li-Jin's pound note and places it in the empty spot on Adam's wall, between the autographs of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and writer Virginia Woolf.

The epilogue presents the Kaddish service. Alex stands and recites the Mourner's Kaddish, rendered in English paraphrase, while his friends and family sit before him: Rubinfine, Joseph, Esther, Adam, Rabbi Burston, his mother Sarah, and two strangers who complete the required minyan, the quorum of ten Jewish adults needed for communal prayer. The ancient Aramaic prayer is interwoven with tender descriptions of each person's unconscious gestures: Rubinfine picking at his thumb, Joseph worrying his nose, Adam performing a discreet thumbs-up, Sarah crying openly. The prayer concludes with the communal wish for peace, and all say Amen.