Gone Tomorrow [Hardcover]

P.F. Kluge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2008

**One of NPR's best books of 2008**
**One of The Cleveland Plain Dealer's top 10 Fiction titles of 2008**

When George Canaris, a writing professor on the verge of forced retirement at a small college in Ohio, is killed by a hit-and-run driver, he is the first faculty member in half a century whose death merits an obituary in The New York Times. "A writer, a critic, a professor, a campus legend and a national figure, the very embodiment of the liberal arts," says the paper. And a mystery. "Compared to Faulkner and Dos Passos at the start of his career," the Times observed, "in the end he resembled Harper Lee."

With a book listed among the one hundred greatest novels of all time, decades now separating him from the hefty advance taken on his next book, The Beast, and not a page to show of it, Canaris is an enigma. Inevitably, speculation grows that the book was a myth, a lie, a joke.

Upon his death, Mark May, a young English professor who barely knew him finds himself named as Canaris's literary executor and begins a search through lives and letters that is at once gripping, hilarious, and affirming. A true page-turner, Gone Tomorrow is equal parts Richard Russo and Michael Chabon, and yet entirely unlike anything you've ever read.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Kluge's (Eddie and the Cruisers) thoughtful new novel, Mark May, a young professor at an Ohio college, is surprised to be named the literary executor of a recently deceased colleague he barely knew. George Canaris was a literary sensation in the 1960s, but hadn't published anything in 30 years. At the time of his death, he was rumored to be working on his magnum opus, but there is doubt the manuscript exists. While inspecting the dead man's house, Mark finds the manuscript of Canaris's memoir, which provides insight into the man and his work, and even if Mark has doubts about its veracity, it pushes him to arrive at some important decisions about his own life. The novel is suffused with Kluge's obvious affection for books, and has some cleverly aphoristic things to say about the joys of teaching, the pitfalls of academic infighting and the tragedy of artistic expectations left unfulfilled. Although not as witty or biting as Kingsley Amis's academy fiction, this novel combines elements of Citizen Kane and Goodbye, Mr. Chips for a satisfying resolution. (Nov.)
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From Booklist

George Canaris, an aged professor and formerly famed author, turns up dead from a hit-and-run accident in the midwestern college town where he taught and lived for more than 30 years. Mark May, a fledging academic, is named as his literary executor and is sent to uncover the novel Canaris has supposedly been writing for the past three decades. What he discovers, instead, is the professor’s account of his final year at the college and a remembrance of a lifetime that crossed paths with students and town locals and that spanned the globe to a small spa town in Eastern Europe. Without pretense, Gone Tomorrow offers an insider’s view of the politics of academia and all it entails. Though the quiet life of an academic is not a subject that will resonate with every reader, Kluge buoys the novel through to the end with intimate details about personal and professional failure, set against success in small doses, and he anchors the tale in a vivid rendering of the passage of time. --Heather Paulson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 286 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Press (November 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159020090X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590200902
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,126,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intimate love story in an institution, December 9, 2008

By 

Elaine Scranton - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gone Tomorrow (Hardcover)

Some authors own the genre of mysteries, thrillers, love stories, or outdoor adventure. But P.F. Kluge owns the give and take intimacy of small college relationships: politics, expectations, taboos and awakening minds. This is a love story, but not the romantic type. It is a love story for a lifetime of nuturing of relationships created in a small liberal arts college. It is an explanation of the fictional life of a writer-in-residence, George Canaris who has turned away from the expectations of others and their definition of success, and instead become intoxicated with awakening young minds to write and express themselves.
It is extravagant in captured metaphor and wisdom. The essence of writing: "I hope that what matters to me will matter to others." The sense of loss and loneliness of a retired professor: "..if you have no students in front of you, your life thins out. It's like an abandoned bird's nest, a few twigs and feathers waiting for a strong wind." The pettiness of academic politics: "With him the applause was based on enthusiasm, not reverence, and it kept growing as he approached. There was no counting the number of faculty enemies he'd already made."
In the end we see the interweaving intricacy and intimacy of a small college campus, seen close up through a long looking glass. And if one looks back through that glass, at the other end, way far away we can see the author with his beast.

P.E. Scranton Jr.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book for book lovers- hilarious and gripping, November 13, 2008

By 

Carol Madsen (Denver, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gone Tomorrow (Hardcover)

I've been waiting for another book by Kluge to come along for years, when I saw this one in Entertainment Weekly I jumped at the chance to get my hands on a copy early at the bookstore up the street. I wasn't disappointed. Gripping and inspiring to be sure, but hilarious too. Truly just laugh out loud funny. I don't know anyone else who can capture witty banter quite like Kluge- it's as though Aaron Sorkin met reality. I recommend it highly... I just wish there was more- reads really fast. You'll be hooked from the first line:

"George Canaris is the first faculty member of this college in half a century whose death merited an obituary in The New York Times. He was our best-known professor, one of those outsized characters who arrives in an obscure place and makes it his own. "A writer, a critic, a professor, a campus legend and a national figure, the very embodiment of the liberal arts," the Times obituary said. And a mystery. He was the author of two well-received novels and a book of essays, all published more than 30 years ago. Taken together, they were the beginnings of an impressive shelf to which, in all his years here in Ohio, he added nothing. "Compared to Faulkner and Dos Passos at the start of his career," The Times observed, "in the end he resembled Harper Lee."

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Teaching in a small college (4.25*s), March 15, 2009

By 

J. Grattan "Ideas can move the world" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gone Tomorrow (Hardcover)

Set in a small liberal arts college in an even smaller Ohio town, this book examines the strained fit of a celebrity writer/professor among purely academic types, the diminishment of the currency of celebrity, and the willingness of college administrators to succumb to public relations and superficial measures to enhance their and the college's image, even at the expense of long-time employees. And then there are the joys, frustrations, and difficulties of teaching with the necessity of delivering the news to students that their high school teachers had much oversold their talents and beginning their education from the ground up.

George Canaris was starting to get a reputation as a superb writer in the 1960s, having published two well-received books and being well-known around Hollywood circles. His acceptance of an offer to teach in an obscure Ohio town in the early 1970s seemed odd, unlikely to last, but the wild card in his move was the pressure to write another outstanding book. Would a small college town be inspirational or did it represent an avenue for escape? Prof Canaris settled into the small town, gaining a small group of friends, and found enjoyment in the occasional student with a gift for writing. While not a womanizer, per se, his intellectual, paternalistic role was attractive to female students resulting in one ten year relationship. The prospective book referred to as The Beast lurked, however, a subject for many to ponder, which clouded his relationships and standing with the college.

It's not a spoiler to say that the first line of the book refers to Canaris' flattering obit in the NY Times, which propels the book into his past including a search for the mysterious The Beast by his literary executor. What is found rather quickly is a memoir written by Canaris over the last year after his forced retirement and his various rounds of ceremonial appearances, some of which backfired on the college. The memoir is actually the main part of this book - a book within a book -and details Canaris' teaching and his last year, but also reveals that he conceived of The Beast as being concerned with the horrors of the Nazi occupation of Carlsbad of the Czech Republic in 1938 and the travails of those who escaped or did not. Perhaps The Beast is more illusion than reality, but the reader gets to share his thinking as Canaris makes two visits to Carlsbad.

Canaris is a good fellow but remains rather enigmatic: his motivations, relationships, plans, etc. Yet, the book is very readable and revelatory about the environment that those who would choose the college life are likely to encounter: politics, dilemmas, constraints, pressures, and the like. Interestingly, the author provides a certain amount of commentary on various writers as to their being overrated or underrated.

PS. The typos and anomalies mentioned by some are trivial with no impact on the book.