The Beard [Paperback]

Andersen Prunty (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2009

Seven-year-old David Glum watches as his grandfather is abducted by a legendary herd of elephants. Twenty years later, David returns to his parents' home to focus on growing a beard, a goal he feels sure he can accomplish. Once the beard reaches a respectable girth, uncontrollable things begin happening around him. His mother dies. Maybe. His father might really be a man named Gary Wrench. David is sure of one thing: his family is cursed. It could have something to do with an eternal flame his grandfather stole from a possibly imaginary group of people called the Nefarions. David and Wrench begin a surreal cross-country journey that might have something to do with saving the world. Along the way they pass through a number of absurd towns, meet some disagreeable people, and discover an America that is radically different from the one they thought they knew. And all the while, the beard grows, gaining strength, leading them toward a distant island that most people think doesn't exist.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Completely captivated me; all the various - and extremely strange - characters are surprisingly sympathetic. - Tony Cole for MobileRead.com

If Holden Caulfield rented a timeshare in Vegas, only to find out he double-booked with Hunter S. Thompson, and then they both sat down over a buffet of mind-altering drugs and wrote a book, I THINK it might be something like The Beard. BEHOLD THE POWER OF FACIAL HAIR! - Nathaniel Lambert, co-author of Sideshow PI: The Devil's Garden and It's OK To Be a Zombie

The story is so wild and unpredictable that the reader learns to let go early on in the book and just enjoy the scenery as the author takes them on a road trip through the world of bizarro. - William Pauley III, author of Doom Magnetic!

Sure to please any fan of weird fiction. - Grant Wamack for Spontaneous Combustion

I loved this book. I loved its feel, its pace, and its imagery. - Lucas Thorn for Lateral Obsessions

It messes with your perspective, sense of time and space, and makes you wonder if you really just read that sentence. - Jim Gavin, author of Hard Boiled Vampire Killers

It's like eating a creativity sandwich. - Daniel Clausen, author of The Lexical Funk

About the Author

Andersen Prunty lives in Dayton, Ohio. He is also the author of The Overwhelming Urge, Zerostrata, Jack and Mr. Grin, Market Adjustment and Other Tales of Avarice, and The Sorrow King. Visit him on the web at www.andersenprunty.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 246 pages
• Publisher: Atlatl Press (September 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0615326331
• ISBN-13: 978-0615326337
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,511,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Andersen Prunty is an American fiction writer. In 2006 he won an online contest sponsored by The Harrow and judged blindly by Ramsey Campbell and Brian Keene for his story "Rayles." His first book, a collection of weird little stories called THE OVERWHELMING URGE, was published in 2008 by Eraserhead Press. In 2009, two of his books (THE OVERWHELMING URGE and ZEROSTRATA) were nominated for the Wonderland Book Award. He is also the author of MY FAKE WAR, MORNING IS DEAD, and THE BEARD, among others. He currently lives in Dayton, Ohio. Visit him on the web at www.andersenprunty.com or contact him via email at [e-mail]

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wandering, Slacker of a Book--In a Good Way, October 4, 2009

By 

Daniel Clausen - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Beard (Kindle Edition)

Warning: One or two spoilers in the mix.

An elephant wind. That's what this book is. You probably don't know what that means. If you try to picture it your mind, you might get some idea of what the book is. You'll definitely know what that means after you read the book and then you can decide whether that statement is accurate or not--but for now, perhaps it's sufficient to say that the book is an elephant wind. I took up the book in the midst of doing some very difficult school research and came away with renewed optimism in life, the universe, and everything.

What's the book about? It's about growing up and growing old; it's about writing a book and abandoning it; it's about listening to records alone in your room at a time when you wish that everything would just fade into the background; it's about randomness and large creatures that look like whales but have human butts so that when they come out of the water, they moon you. It's about the comfort of having a beard, but also about tripped out firemen who are on something and so who jump into fires.

It's "absurdist" fiction, or "bizzarro" fiction, certainly. But in another sense, I think this book is also slacker fiction. When I opened up the book, man oh man, I was in need of some slacker fiction in my life. Fiction that kind of wanders around, tries to befriend you, then falls asleep on your couch for a week. That may sound bad, and in some parts of the book, I admit it's easy to get lost--but I thought it was comfortable to read; maybe I was just in the right mood. In other ways it's like eating a creativity sandwich. I came up with like three ideas for stories while reading this book. At one point in the book, one of the characters says, if you chase something then it only gets further away. One of the virtues of this book is that it won't try to hard to get you to like it--it just is what it is, and for me it's fairly easy to befriend a piece of writing that comfortable with itself.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the sacred elements of sleep, November 21, 2009

By 

Lucas Thorn "a moon man ate my mango." (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Beard (Paperback)

Andersen Prunty has a style I really like, and I'm not afraid to admit that. While so far I've only read one of his other books, Zerostrata, I feel I can comfortably order the rest of his collection without fear. Especially after reading The Beard.

Plotwise, it's a funky one. Basically, a young boy witnesses his grandfather being abducted by a herd of elephants in a scene I really really liked. I, too, could smell the elephants and I will never look at a storm in quite the same way again. He grows up with aspirations of being a writer, however his single manuscript is rejected so he decides instead to grow a beard. Returning home, he is confronted with his mother's death and the revelations his father may not be his father but an imposter (imposters are a common theme in this novel), who convinces him he must go to the mystical island of the Nefarions to return a sacred flame his grandfather had stolen from them in hope that might appease them and thus earn the lifting of the family curse. The trip is, quite literally, a trip, and it was dealt out with masterful prose in a quiet and near-dreamlike manner which suited the book's use of naps and sleep as a central theme.

Along his travels, our hero journeys through some strange towns, cities and states. He is witness to some truly interesting moments while being pursued by his own imposter and two other mutants from the island of the Nefarions. Accompanied only by the man he thought was his father who may not be but could be his father or an imposter of his father (just go with it), and at one stage a nice dwindling team of bodyguards, he discovers not just resolution to the family curse, but a resolution of the spirit which may allow him to live his life as he is comfortable.

This summary, of course, does absolutely no justice whatsoever to the book. Mister Prunty's gentle voice lulls you into accepting the surreality of his world despite the often macabre imagery he conjures. A scene involving a lawnmower in a field of grass springs to mind as one which I could see in my head and made me feel a little more afraid of fields than I already am. They're spooky things at the best of times, and so I can only thank Mister Prunty for keeping me strictly a cityboy for the rest of my life.

The recurring naps in the book made me feel more comfortable and I found myself feeling like a leaf flowing down a river. Even if sometimes the river seemed to twist in a strange way, I didn't really mind because I was floating along quite nicely - all things considered. Something he says about naps also resonated quite nicely with me and my own philosophy on laziness, and that was a brief moment where our hero, David, nods off while his father/imposter/father is driving. He wakes to find his driver, too, has nodded off and the car is sitting there idling while they both snooze. He doesn't really consider waking him as "It was rare to find another person with such an affinity for napping. I could have awoken him but, for the nappers of the world, sleep is a sacred thing that should never be interrupted except in cases of life and death." I could use that as a near-biblical quote to base my life on, really. It's second only to a quote from one of my favourite movies where the main character is told to get a job and responds with, "Who's got the time? I'm already busy doing nothing."

I loved this book. I loved its feel, its pace and its imagery. I also loved the final lines of the book which I would love to quote for you but won't, so you don't have it ruined for you. Let's just say it's another one of those phrases you can take to the bank and deposit it to see how much interest you can make on it.

I bet it'd be a lot.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating Internal Logic, May 8, 2011

By 

Kate Jonez "Dark Fantasy Author" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Beard (Paperback)

The Beard by Andersen Prunty is an excellent introduction to the bizzaro genre. The story follows a dream logic and is surreal at times. It is never difficult for the sake of being difficult or weird for the sake of weirdness. The book has a fascinating internal logic that leads the reader toward the goal of finding brilliance. Sprinkled along the way the author drops gems of sparkling insight.