Bildungsroman

As suggested by its subtitle, “The Education of an Artist,” the book is the nonfiction equivalent of a bildungsroman.

Zevin’s entrancing story of a gamer boy and a gamer girl building a video game empire from scratch is a romantic bildungsroman.

One of them is the bildungsroman.

It dawns on me that the real reason I’d taken the upper limit off my Hinge settings and agreed to this date is that I thought I might find someone like my former professor, whose class on the bildungsroman was my main motivation for applying to grad school.

He previously published “Some Hell,” a gay bildungsroman that was a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award, and nonfiction with 2021’s “Image Control.”