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Crust
A new novel by Lawrence Shainberg
October 2008
Lawrence Shainberg is the author of two novels — One on One
and Memories of Amnesia — and the non-fiction books Brain Surgeon:
An Intimate View of His World and Ambivalent Zen. His fiction and journalism
have appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Tricycle, and The New York Times Magazine.
He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize for a
monograph on Samuel Beckett, published in the Paris Review.
Reviews:
"[A] Vonnegut-worthy satire. What the book really satirizes is American culture and
media - the way trends are conjured out of nothing, thanks to a few blog posts
here, a tenure-track academic looking for a hot topic to theorize about there,
and of course, newspapers like this one."
-Joshua Glenn,
Boston Globe's "Brainiac"
"Filled with pop-cultural references and technology gone wild."
-Publishers Weekly
"There's something to offend everybody and entertain many in this engagingly
subversive novel from the resolutely quirky author. . . Among the most
amusing fiction picks for fall." -Kirkus Reviews
Advance praise for Crust:
"Crust is unique. I know of no other novel remotely like it. The first words
that come to mind are daring, daunting, irreligious in the extreme, an academic
send-up and a grasp with no small grin of the essential mindlessness and urge to
power that besets humans and creates new ventures. It's wild as sin and revolting
as vomit and as exceptional as the lower reaches of insanity itself."
-Norman Mailer
"Incredible... One of the most perverse and single-minded satires I've ever read."
-Jonathan Lethem
Synopsis:
Walker Linchuk is an aged writer and author of the Complete Series (The
Complete Book of Aids, 9/11, Terrorism) whose name has often been discussed
as a strong possibility for the Nobel Prize, suffering from a seven month plague
of writer's block that New York Magazine says, "for candor and anguish, surpasses
any we have on record." One morning Linchuk wakes to find a crust in his nose -
the "definitive crust of his life" - that awakens him to a new world of desire
and enlightenment.
Extraction of this “breakthrough crust” leads to further secretion in the form of
medical and scientific research into “the habit once called nose-picking,”
Linchak’s The Complete Book of Nasalism, a memoir of his breakthrough, an endless
succession of heated blog entries, and a flood of email exchanges with friends
like George W. Bush, who is so moved by Linchak’s passion for the habit to confess
his own on “Larry King Live.”
What ensues is equal parts George Orwell and Christopher Guest, an insightful
and hilarious journey through our hyper-technological age.
News & Events:
*Coming soon...
Review copies:
If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance galley
copy of Crust, contact Brian Obenauf at brian [at] twodollarradio.com.
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