The Exquisite [Paperback]

Laird Hunt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2006

“Strange, original, and utterly brilliant—Laird Hunt is one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today.”—Paul Auster

Henry, a New Yorker left destitute by circumstance and obsession, is plucked from vagrancy by a shadowy outfit whose primary business is arranging for staged murders of anxiety-ridden clients unhinged by the “events downtown” and seeking to -experience—and live through—their own carefully executed assassinations. When Henry joins this nefarious crew, which includes a beautiful blonde tattooist named Tulip, contortionist twins, and a woman referred to only as “the knockout,” he becomes inextricably linked to its ringleader, the mysterious herring connoisseur Mr. Kindt, whose identity can be traced through twists and turns all the way back to the corpse depicted in Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson.

Mirrored by a concurrently running story set in a hospital where Henry and Mr. Kindt are patients attended to by a certain Dr. Tulp, the mysteries surrounding Mr. Kindt’s past, Henry’s fate, and murders both staged and real begin to unravel in the most extraordinary ways. Substantive, stylish, and darkly comic, The Exquisite is a skillful dissection of reality, human connection, and the very nature of existence.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shiftless and broke, thieving drifter Henry gets involved with a gang of faux assassins in Hunt's intensely cerebral third novel. Written in an intentionally mystifying fashion ("Falsification," says one character, "sits at the center of everything"), the novel, set in a shell-shocked post 9/11 Manhattan, alternates between two narratives: in one, Henry joins a group, led by the mysterious Mr. Kindt, that stages fake murders for money; in the other, Henry resides in a psychiatric hospital, where Mr. Kindt visits him daily and encourages him to earn money by stealing pharmaceuticals. In both story lines, Henry tries unsuccessfully to sort through layers of deception to learn about Kindt's past. It is possible that Henry's life as a fake hired gun is imagined during his hospital stay; it is equally possible that both lives are occurring simultaneously, as Hunt makes obfuscation one of his chief objectives. A wan love interest develops with tattoo artist Tulip (an echo of the hospital's Dr. Tulp), but it is mostly motivated by Henry's desire to discover why Tulip would want to "tussle" with him. This noir labyrinth captures the post-9/11 gestalt of anxiety and hopelessness. (Sept.)
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From Booklist

Hunt's novels shimmer and shift like reflections on wind-stirred water. His third haunting, nonlinear tale is set in post-9/11 New York City. Henry has lost his girlfriend, his cats, and his apartment. A beautiful woman he calls Tulip sends him to Aris Kindt, an eccentric old gent fond of herring and esoteric subjects who may be the mastermind behind a mock murder service--people pay strangers to pretend to kill them. But Henry may actually be a murderer. Perhaps he's a patient in a mental ward. Aris Kindt just so happens to be the name of the thief whose body is the subject of Rembrandt's famous autopsy painting, The Anatomy Lesson. Hunt cites W. G. Sebald as the inspiration for what he calls ghost noir, although Paul Auster seems more apt. Either way, Hunt performs a bravura solo variation on the exquisite corpse--a collaborative approach much loved by the surrealists in which artists contribute to a composition without seeing it whole. The result is an edgy and labyrinthine tale of longing, madness, and death. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Coffee House Press (September 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566891876
• ISBN-13: 978-1566891875
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #219,257 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Implacable, Elegant, Sublime, July 13, 2009

By 

Val Killpack (Boulder, CO, US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Exquisite (Paperback)

This is one of those books I want to quote a passage from. But, then, I realise to quote only one passage is a great disservice, and that I must, in fact, quote the entire book. I will ask you to sit down, now, and even force you--knock you out if necessary--and we will start at the beginning, (or so it seems...)

In a post-9/11 NYC, this novel surfs the shattered psyche of one Henry and his loosening grasp on reality. Henry's self fractures into separate narratives, parallel and interweaving. As narrator and protagonist, Henry is unreliable and without a stable identity. Culture defines Henry; the unmentionable destruction of 911 creates multiple and disparate identities for him as a sort-of afterquake of the terror. It seems that the "self" has also been attacked. In fact, it seems, that there is a demand for a certain destruction of the "self" in NYC, and Aris Kindt fills this desire for fracture by attacking others with pseudo-murder. This is not unlike the dismemberment of the "self" depicted in Rembrandt's painting. Dr. Tulp facilitates this work, it seems, just as in the parallel narrative Tulip also--though more elusively--enables the undoing of lives. The self--and its fragmentation/destruction--is founded from cultural conditioning (such as 9/11). Aris Kindt speaks of this phenomena early in the text: "Are you sure I did? Are you sure it was me? This is, after all, in at least one of its guises, a city of subtle simulacra, of deceptive surfaces, of glib and phantom shimmerings" (2). This passage alludes to Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality and a self-identity and culture that is based upon another representation, rather than grounded in any substantial signified "X". Often, in fact, the simulacra is marketed to the public in order to propel the American capitalist machine. On 9/11, terror took down two magnanimous symbols of this corporate brainwashing industry, and it seems that the aftermath--as depicted by Hunt--consists of the fracturing of the hyperreal identities based upon the creative corporate marketing that stemmed from those corporations.

Job appears in multiple places throughout the book, and one wonders, is Job actually a person, or is the identity "Job" merely a label applied by Henry? The narrator comments concerning the displaced identities running rampant in the text: "Unchecked, he said, our belief systems eventually overrun everything, blot out the world, at the very least rewrite the map" (23). Henry's belief system, as a matter of fact, obfuscates reality in favour of a certain and twisted mental projection.

As a literary thriller and ghost noir, this text absconds from tradition and skirts the marvellous on one side and the uncanny on the other. In the end, the events are never explained as fitting in with the rules of reality as already existent (the uncanny), nor are the seemingly supernatural happenings meant to be accepted as part of a new suspension-of-disbelief world (the marvellous). The entire text, then, falls into the realm of the fantastic. The space of questioning, of being unsure and living in an unknown border-space, this mode of uncertainty pervades the pages right up until the end, which is an admirable accomplishment. Hunt has been careful to avoid a simple metaphorical or allegorical analysis, and bringing the text into the ambiguous and hesitant reality, though grounded in a realist and matter-of-fact tone, allows the reader to actively participate in the puzzle. A truly engaging read.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The world is born to culminate in a book, December 15, 2006

By 

T. Atkins (Cloudy, Ab Lench, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Exquisite (Paperback)

The Exquisite has pleasured me more than any other novel this year.

More, in fact, than any novel since either B.S. Johnson's or Hunt's last. That The Exquisite (and, indeed, Hunt's work in general) is regularly compared to Paul Auster's novels is certainly good copy: but it fails to take into account the fact that the wan light which emanates from the pages of all his works is his and his alone. One is reminded of Kafka, Wodehouse, Creeley; and yet when one puts down the latest Hunt novel there is a sadness to the knowledge that nothing will come along that is quite as satisfying (and that is certainly the right word) until his next.

What goes on in The Exquisite is best left untold, for, although what goes on in the novel is the reason most first-time readers will initially go to it, it is the how of the telling that is most compelling. Hunt's prose: at times surreal, at times delicate, at times as robust as Hemingway, never fails to engage, amaze and amuse.

There are very few authors today who are moving the novel on from its moribund and money-bound pastures. It is both a surprise and relief that The Exquisite (Hunt's finest work since The Paris Stories) is in the world doing just that.

5.0 out of 5 stars if david lynch impregnated paul auster..., August 7, 2007

By 

wordtron (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Exquisite (Paperback)

If David Lynch impregnated Paul Auster, or vise versa, and the no-doubt prodigiously coifed offspring, inspired by W.G. Sebald's THE RINGS OF SATURN, were to write a novel set in New York's East Village, this would be it. Funny, atmospheric and just plain cool.