First ever novel by two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
Pieces of Payne
A Novel
- “A fascinating divided work. The division between text and notes creates an intentionally challenging reading experience.”—Boston Globe
How is Eliza's divorce connected to the rise of twentieth-century quantum physics? Why does the steamy promise of "a key unlocking a door at a cheap motel along I-35" lead us to a consideration of Moby-Dick? What does one physician's fake appointment book have to do with Columbus, with werewolves, with Fanny Burney's famously excruciating 19th-century mastectomy? Goldbarth sets his story of love's daily pleasures and griefs upon a foundation of ever-branching footnotes-from the strange worlds of supermarket tabloids and the Legion of Super-Heroes, to more contemplative forays into gender politics, Dickens scholarship, and medical anomalies. By taking us on this mind-bending journey, he shows us how our lives are both confused and empowered by the multilayered universe around us.
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About the Author
Credit: Michael Pointer
Praise
- “A whale of a performance.”—San Francisco Chronicle
- “Stunning and enigmatic.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
- “As intimate as a seven-drink conversation, as compulsive as a pocket encyclopedia, as unwilling to end as the light from stars no longer burning.”—Village Voice
- “Goldbarth, a whirling dervish of a poet, has fashioned a splendidly clever and tender first novel….A dazzling, sagacious, and poignant search for oneness within the many-faceted chaos of human life.”—Booklist, starred review
