In a new novel the resorts in the Catskill Mountains are struggling in 1963, but the village of Fleischmanns has a secret that keeps the tourists coming back: A hidden colony of satyrs (a class of lustful, drunken woodland Greek gods).
Strikingly good-looking and differing in appearance from humans only because of their short horns and delicate hooves, it is easy for satyrs to pass.
In the summer, when New York City ladies take solitary and hopeful walks up the mountain paths, they frequently do. That great-looking guy who gave a New York college girl the best sex of her life behind the tennis courts and refused to take off his hat? Most likely a satyr.
Danny, a young satyr who hunts for books on the hotel grounds when no guests are around, is different. Danny is scandalizing his community because he does not want to make love to every woman he meets.
He wants the one great love he read about in The Great Gatsby, which he found near a hotel pool. Danny could not finish the book as the last chapters were ruined in a June thunderstorm, but he is certain that a love as powerful as Gatsby’s can end only in one way: with Gatsby and the woman he adores together for the rest of his life.
Joyce Wadler new comic novel, The Satyr in Bungalow D (2025), inspired by life in the Catskills, combines fantasy and fiction with real-life hotels, businesses and hang-outs.
Wadler is an award-winning New York City humorist and journalist who created and wrote the “I Was Misinformed” humor column for The New York Times, where she was a reporter for 15 years.
She was the New York correspondent for The Washington Post, a contributing editor for New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, and a staff reporter at New York City’s three major newspapers. Her memoir My Breast: One Woman’s Cancer Story, originally a two-part cover story for New York Magazine, was expanded to a book and translated into a half dozen languages.
She is a two-time winner of New York City’s Silurians Press Club Award for Commentary/Editorial. She also received The National Society of Newspaper Columnists First Place Award for Humor, The New York Press Club Award for Humor, The New York Newspaper Publishers Association Award for column writing, and Columbia University’s prestigious Mike Berger Award for Feature Writing.
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