A Space of One’s Own

“Not to boast,” Calvin Trillin told Book magazine last summer about his newest book, “Tepper Isn’t Going Out,” “but I think this is the first parking novel.” I would add that it is unlikely to be superseded any time soon. Among car-owning New Yorkers who have mastered the arcane rules of alternate side of the street parking and who know that you’re more likely to score a spot between Lexington and Park than farther east--good luck with the killer Upper East Side--Trillin is a professional among gifted amateurs.

Trillin is the man who, in the 1960s, co-edited a one-issue publication called Beautiful Spot: A Magazine of Parking. And any parking aficionados or other readers who understand that urban parking is a test of fortitude, a survival skill demanding highly developed instincts and occasionally a blood sport will surely be satisfied by the inspiring story of Murray Tepper. A much-needed addition to automotive literature, it certainly hits the spot. Trillin is at his charmingly funny best in this good-humored satire of urban politics and media spin.

Murray Tepper co-owns a small business called Worldwide Lists, which matches its clients and their products with the mailing lists most likely to yield sales. He muses on the mysterious connections that sometimes emerge. Accountants, for example, are a good market for discount designer jeans, and people who send away for treated cloths that wash cars without water turn out to be lucrative targets for Republican and Democratic fund-raisers. His protege in the firm, Arnie Sarnow, has made it his mission to compile the list of lists. He figures there must be a magic bullet, one item that identifies consumers willing to buy anything, “portable saunas and life insurance and matched luggage and attache cases that turned into foldout computer tables.”

Murray is a gifted parker. Although he has a garage slot, he likes to take the car out early evenings and Sunday mornings, find a legal spot and read the newspaper. He infuriates space-seeking drivers who curse at him when he gives them the long-practiced shooing gesture or the barely perceptible head shake that means: I’m not moving. His friend Jack admiringly says, “[W]hen it comes to parking, you like to play rough but clean, like the West Point football team.” When his daughter asks him if he’s trying to relive the old garage-less days when he’d try to score “a beautiful spot” every evening, Murray explains patiently that this is a different situation. Then it was alternate-side, now it’s meters.

One day, a young freelance journalist interviews him. Answering his philosophical question about why he likes sitting in his car, Tepper gets straight to the heart of the matter: “Oh, it’s a legal spot. I’ve got thirty minutes left on the meter.” When the interview appears, Murray increasingly finds people politely knocking on the passenger-side window, asking for advice. Tepper nods gravely at their stories and opines, echoing that other sage of New York, “Saturday Night Live’s” Rosanne Rosanna-Danna, “There’s always something.” His legend spreads and pretty soon there are lines waiting in various places where he’s been spotted parking. He makes the front pages and the network news.

Word of the parking advisory sessions reaches the mayor, Frank “Il Duce” Ducavelli, who pegs Tepper as one of the “forces of disorder” that he has been battling against. Giuliani, I mean Ducavelli, has tried to enforce modest dress codes in Central Park and has forbidden the citizens of New York from stepping into the street to hail a cab. Before even his close aides can enter his office, they must submit to an iris scan and the BOSS (Body Orifice Security Scanner). Now he tells his pollster, Mike Shanahan, “Parking is the key. That’s where the disorder starts.” The fact that Tepper parks legally shows how wily he is. “It’s a way to mock the law is what it is,” the mayor yells at one point. “When you strip away the legalisms, the man’s an anarchist.”

Tepper becomes a folk hero, the Little Guy to whom others attach their own grievances while he remains calm and unflappable. The man just wants to park. The American Civil Liberties Union takes the case; his supporters make “Tepper isn’t going out” their rallying cry. In a rousing climax, Tepper reminisces about parking strategies with the judge, Sarnow is vouchsafed a vision of the ultimate List, and Ducavelli is challenged by the Irish singing ex-mayor in the upcoming election. If you’re reading “Tepper” in your comfy car, make sure you’re close to the curb and feed the meter.

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Brigitte Frase is critic at large for Ruminator Review.