Everything you always wanted to know about a terrible
writer.Expanding on the premise of his first novel (Sudden Noises
From Inanimate Objects, 2004), which purported to be CD liner notes
discussing the oeuvre of a cranky composer, Miller here offers a
putative guide to the works of one Phoebus K. Dank. A prolific
author of low-grade sci-fi novels and stories, Dank crafted
consistently mediocre prose and predictable plots, which didn't
keep him from being published, or from attracting a few hard-core
fans. One member of this group is Bill Boswell, a professor of
"Dank Studies" at a small college in California. This novel is
Boswell's magnum opus, an A-to-Z encyclopedia of all Dank-related
matters: his curious shorthand for much-used phrases ("cdcswffc=at
the CDC, scientists were working feverishly to find a cure"), his
efforts to hire assistants to write novels in assembly-line
fashion, his busted marriages, weight issues, etc. One of Dank's
biggest betes noires was his longtime housemate Owen Hirt, who
inserts entries of his own throughout. (Curiously, Hirt is
identified as Dank's murderer early on.) Boswell and Hirt don't
merely trade entries; they exchange swipes, bitter retorts and
threats amid arguments over the value of Dank's collected works.
Their verbal food fights in the footnotes give the text some
narrative drive, and in time the story darkens and deepens, calling
into question in interesting ways the motivations and identities of
the dueling authors. But Miller has set himself a high hurdle by
structuring the narrative around an encyclopedia, and the book
often feels exceedingly overstuffed with repetitive, arcana-filled
entries.A novel about authorship and unreliable narrators that too
often loses its own plot. (Kirkus Reviews)
From his humble beginnings as a scribbler of generic science
fictions to the night of his horrifying death, Phoebus Kinsman Dank
was probably the only real genius of our time, and certainly the
most prolific...So writes William 'Bill' Boswell, the nation's
leading 'Dankian' scholar and coauthor of "The Cardboard Universe",
the seminal biographical guide to the science fiction writer's life
and work. After years of tracking the obese, obsessive, and
logorrheic pulp novelist, Boswell joins his coauthor, critic, and
disaffected fellow acolyte Owen Hirt, to create the ultimate guide
to Dank's life and work: a biographical encyclopedia, in which the
two memorialize - and fight over - Dank's treasured yet hackneyed
body of work. As the reader is pulled along by the unbelievable
antics of Dank, the raucous Boswell vs. Hirt backstory gradually
comes into focus, and eventually subsumes the story altogether.
General
Imprint: |
HarperPerennial
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
April 2009 |
First published: |
April 2009 |
Authors: |
Christopher Miller
|
Dimensions: |
203 x 135 x 23mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
560 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-06-168636-8 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
0-06-168636-0 |
Barcode: |
9780061686368 |
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