A boy wakes one morning to discover he is sinking into the earth. A detective is hired to find Patty Hearst's alter ego. A postal worker fulfills his occupational clich‚ and attacks Danny DeVito. Drawing from sources as varied as the Bible, Herman Melville, pulp fiction, pornography, and Mark Twain, Obenzinger skillfully braids multiple narrative threads into a lyrically beautiful novel readers will experience as much as read.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Hilton Obenzinger is an American original. His lost histories are acts of legerdemain and cunning-mixing truth and imagination in ways rarely seen before." - Paul Auster"
About the Author
Hilton Obenzinger is the author of Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco, New York on Fire (available from Turnaround) and This Passover Or The Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award. Earlier books include The Day of the Exquisite Poet is Kaput and Bright Lights! Big City!,
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Magic Surrealist,
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This review is from: A*hole : A Novel (Soft Skull ShortLit) (Paperback)
Obenzinger is that rare combination of novelist, narrative historian, and social commentator who weaves a captivating and relevant story. This hip blend of prose and a sprinkling of meta-poetry (generated in command line interface interludes that really do serve to punch things along) is a milestone on the order of Breton's "Nadja". Think James Joyce meets Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski. Really! He combines mythical parent-child musings with portraits of a cyber-Skid Row, the Philippine origins of a sect that worships the Nike "swoosh" logo, the journey of Danny DeVito on the cusp of a physical labyrinth, and religious metaphors that manage to encompass Jonah and Jeffrey Dahmer in a visceral counterpart to Dante's Inferno. Here is a deftly told tale that continues Obenzinger's expert use of the unreliable narrator that I first observed in his estimable work "Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco", which I also heartily recommend (there is even another girl embedded in a wall). Mark Twain's America has been updated with observations informed by Obenzinger's real-life stint teaching the Yurok Indians. He is the ultimate meta-narrator, who jumps in and out of his own story with startling ease and grace as he sows and then reaps a matrix of clues, symbolic associations, and point of view shifts that somehow make perfect sense. Behind these supple movements is the weight of a Stanford professor of American studies, Obenzinger's "other" job, where he ponders notions of Judeo-Christian paradigms with an original brand of scholarship. I literally felt I wanted to scan this book into a text file so I could run searches on it, surely the type of symbolic crossword that already exists in the author's mind.
A must read, and a great story.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A* hole,
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This review is from: A*hole : A Novel (Soft Skull ShortLit) (Paperback)
A fantastic page-turner that's over too soon! Obenzinger weaves a tale of lives that intersect as they slide along their personal planes and slippery slopes of existence. Some collide, some barely brush past, yet none leaves the other unaffected. Each brief episode creates strong characters we respond to with a range of feelings from loving concern to visceral repulsion. Before long, I found myself racing through, eager to find out what further connections would be revealed. Such revelations make a whole of the parts, and create a story that moves in many directions in time and space without once leaving the reader behind. An exhilarating trip!
5.0 out of 5 stars
You Don't Believe I'm Sinkin'...................,
This review is from: A*hole : A Novel (Soft Skull ShortLit) (Paperback)
Hilton Obenzinger's experimental novel "A*Hole" is a magic realism ride with multifaceted voices challenging and seducing the reader to patch together the mysterious events, philosophical puzzles and good old story telling into a surprisingly lucid experience. This book gives you a glimpse of how the creative mind works.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
My parents became worried when I refused to go outside, so I didn't tell them for a long time that the reason I wouldn't go to school or even out on the street was because I was sinking. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
little hoy, vida loca Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Patty Hearst, New York, San Francisco, Eiffel Tower, Prophetic Attractions, Santo Niño, Brad Honeysuckle, Bar Code, Cain's Day, Foster Parents, Grand Parent, Janey Jimenez, Love Lucy, Madame Zanco, Marvelous Marv, Oliver Menard, Twin Peaks New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
My parents became worried when I refused to go outside, so I didn't tell them for a long time that the reason I wouldn't go to school or even out on the street was because I was sinking. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
little hoy, vida loca Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Patty Hearst, New York, San Francisco, Eiffel Tower, Prophetic Attractions, Santo Niño, Brad Honeysuckle, Bar Code, Cain's Day, Foster Parents, Grand Parent, Janey Jimenez, Love Lucy, Madame Zanco, Marvelous Marv, Oliver Menard, Twin Peaks New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 7
books:
See all 7 books this book cites
- New York on Fire by Hilton Obenzinger in Back Matter
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Treasury of Illustrated Classics) by Tracy Christopher on page 41
- Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain on page 41
- Eiffel Tower by Christopher Ryan on page 116
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Sterling Classics) by Mark Twain on page 41
See all 7 books this book cites
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