Herb Richman

Herb Richman, founder of DefinitionAmerica, is a fitness-center tycoon whose need for a large corporate headquarters gives Charlie Croker a potentially valuable tenant for Croker Concourse. Croker invites him to Turpmtine Plantation intending to charm him into a lease, but Richman’s mild manner and reserve frustrate the performance. When Croker turns the estate’s spectacle into an argument about gender and sexual politics, Richman’s visibly pained response exposes the limits of the world Croker has built around himself. Richman later reappears as a business interlocutor and as one of the few white figures identified as willing to support Fareek Fanon publicly.

Identity and Business Position

Richman founded DefinitionAmerica, a network of 1,100 health-and-fitness centers that began in Atlanta and expanded across the country. His company is looking for 360,000 square feet of prime office space for a new corporate headquarters. For Croker, that requirement could translate into seven floors at Croker Concourse and more than $10 million in annual lease income. Securing Richman would therefore mean more than filling empty offices: it could produce a conspicuous business success at a moment when Croker is under pressure from PlannersBanc.

Richman’s professional standing is paired with an understated personal manner. At a dinner on the estate, he praises the turtle soup but does not extend the exchange into the kind of hearty, masculine banter Croker expects. Croker privately thinks of him as a difficult prospect to win over with the usual Turpmtine charm. He also notes the social distance between them: Richman is Jewish, and Croker assumes their paths would not often cross in Georgia society. These are Croker’s judgments, not a full account of Richman’s character; the difference between his self-assured host’s expectations and Richman’s quiet reserve shapes their encounters.

Croker’s Courtship at Turpmtine

Croker has designed the weekend around Richman’s prospective lease. Turpmtine Plantation is not merely a country retreat in this arrangement; Croker treats it as a business instrument, a setting whose hunting, meals, animals, and displays of property might make a guest receptive to a deal. He has used the estate this way before, though he keeps his blunt private term for such guests from his current wife. His hope is that the accumulated force of the place—the Turpmtine Spell—will help him secure the headquarters tenancy.

The effort falters at the dinner table. Richman and his wife, Marsha, appear tired and apprehensive amid the guests’ strained responses to Croker’s humor. Richman’s face is described as numb, and his look toward his wife suggests that the two are enduring the occasion rather than enjoying it. Croker, who expects the Gun Room to embody male camaraderie, notices the unease but initially cannot understand what has unsettled the group. The discomfort is a contrast to the warm, easy fellowship he believes the estate should produce.

The contrast sharpens during a visit to the breeding barn. Richman asks Croker what the building is called and what it is used for; Croker identifies it as the breeding barn and leads the group into the scene. After watching the animals, Croker presents their mating as proof of a natural order based on male and female. He delivers the argument directly to Richman, while Richman and Marsha stand with lowered heads and guarded, numb expressions. Croker reads Richman’s face as pain and paralysis, though he cannot tell what the expression means. The encounter does not establish Richman’s private beliefs; it shows, instead, how Croker’s attempt to turn a business visit into a demonstration of his worldview may alienate the very guest he means to persuade.

A Business Conversation with Raymond Peepgass

Richman later receives Raymond Peepgass at his office. He rises from behind his desk, greets Peepgass warmly, and treats him as a familiar social equal. The greeting relieves Peepgass, who has been anxious about whether Richman still regards him as an important banker or only as a mid-level employee. Richman’s welcome gives Peepgass confidence to continue the relationship beyond the status distinctions attached to his job.

Their conversation turns to exercise. Richman makes a mildly cynical observation about the public enthusiasm for fitness, noting that more than one fifth of American adults follow—or tell themselves they follow—some kind of exercise regimen. Peepgass uses the opening to bring up Croker’s unorthodox approach: Croker has joked that when he needs firewood, he starts with a tree. The anecdote lets Peepgass present Croker’s physicality as a distinctive business persona, connecting Richman’s fitness industry to the larger effort to make Croker memorable and appealing.

Peepgass also proposes that Richman might join a syndicate to buy Croker Concourse from PlannersBanc. He describes a possible sale at about $50 million, a $10 million down payment shared among four investors, and a later resale at a projected value of $120 million. Richman immediately questions Peepgass’s arithmetic: if the building sold for $120 million and there were four investors, each would receive $30 million, not the amount Peepgass has calculated. The correction marks him as an attentive listener rather than a passive target for a pitch. The proposal remains a proposal in the presented exchange; Richman’s question does not establish that he agrees to invest.

Public Support and Social Visibility

When Ba​​ck McNutter discusses a possible press conference calling for patience and fairness in the Fareek Fanon case, he names Richman as the only other white person he knows who might appear. Croker recognizes Richman as the owner of DefinitionAmerica and privately associates him with being Jewish and liberal. McNutter then qualifies the suggestion by saying Richman does not carry much weight. The exchange places Richman in an awkward political position: his willingness to be present could help signal cross-racial support, but the people arranging the appeal also treat his influence as limited.

Richman’s presence is also part of the social world through which Raymond Peepgass hopes to rise. At the High Museum of Art, Peepgass remembers that Richman had greeted him as an equal at an expensive, socially prominent opening. That memory matters to Peepgass because it suggests that he may belong, at least temporarily, among Atlanta’s influential patrons and guests. Richman thus functions not only as a prospective tenant or a potential public supporter, but also as a point of access to a social circle Peepgass has previously watched from a distance.

Narrative Role and Limits

Richman’s recurring importance lies in the mismatch between what others want from him and what the evidence shows him doing. Croker wants him as a tenant whose lease could strengthen a distressed property; Peepgass approaches him as a possible investor; political strategists imagine him as a useful public voice. Yet Richman is not simply carried along by these plans. He responds to the business proposal with a precise correction, and his expressions at Turpmtine register an unease that Croker’s confident explanations cannot dispel.

Croker later measures his son Wally’s embarrassment against what he sees as Richman’s sensitivity, describing both men in terms that reveal more about Croker’s contempt for perceived softness than about either person’s actual convictions. Richman’s function in the story is therefore partly reflective: the discomfort he provokes in Croker exposes the narrowness of Croker’s masculine code, while his practical and social connections show how business, status, and public alignment overlap in Atlanta. The evidence leaves Richman’s ultimate response to Croker’s leasing pursuit and to the proposed press conference unsettled; his importance lies in the pressures that others place upon him and in the moments when his composure does not amount to consent.