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.
"The Great American Nose-Picking Novel. A witty, erudite and gleefully gross-out satire of our information-
clogged and techno-bananas age. An energetic and thrillingly modern romp."
-Stuart Hammond, Dazed & Confused
"[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
"A postmodern examination of the self that teases the very idea of postmodernism. . .
that rare bit of lampoonery that is both humorous and smart."
-Tod Goldberg, Los Angeles Times Book Review
"[Crust] ridicules our culture's obsession wtih the search for Truth, as well as our
reliance on Google as the gatekeeper to our every question. In between cringing and
laughing, you're bound to feel a touch more enlightened about contemporary culture."
-Jessica Herman, Time Out Chicago
"Half DeLillo's Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies at College-on-the-Hill,
and half Christopher Hitchens, Linchak is a model pundit for a post-9/11 age:
death-obsessed, long-winded, addicted to Googling himself, and, on the sly, an
inveterate nose-picker. Crust is about mindless compulsion, or the digital
stretch for oblivion, or a comment on the jaded habits of a citizenry that's
had its private domain annexed by omnipotent admen."
-Zach Baron, Village Voice
"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
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.
If you are affiliated with a media review outlet and would like to receive an advance reading
copy of Crust, contact Brian Obenauf at
brian [at] twodollarradio.com. We can now provide either a galley or digital copy of the book.
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.