Pieces of Payne A Novel

by Goldbarth, Albert

• ISBN13: 9781555973780
• ISBN10: 1555973787
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-04-01
• Publisher: Graywolf Press

Summary

Albert Goldbarth is "a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart" (Joyce Carol Oates) 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, werewolves, and Fanny Burney's famously excruciating nineteenth-century mastectomy? Albert Goldbarth sets his story of love's daily pleasures and griefs upon a foundation of ever-branching footnotesfrom 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. Pieces of Payne is the first novel by Goldbarth, a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Author Biography

Albert Goldbarth recently received the National Book Critics Circle Award for his poetry collection Saving Lives and the PEN West Award for his essay collection Many Circles. He is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Wichita State University.

Table of Contents

“No one else now is writing what Albert Goldbarth gives us because no one else can.” —Frederick Busch