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Sam Pink

Rontel Paperback – February 1, 2013

by Sam Pink (Author)

83 ratings

4.1 on Goodreads

976 ratings

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We now enter: Total Isolation

Rontel is the story of one man's odyssey through Chicago. Follow him as he attempts to go to his last day of work. Follow him through the subway as he considers stealing chips from a dancing baby. Find him being threatened by a homeless man holding board games. Take his hand as he considers building a hydraulic cocoon for his cat out of a complimentary duffel bag. Walk the streets of Uptown as a cop-killer takes hostages to the roof of an apartment building. Meet his friends. Just kidding! Follow him to his neighbor's apartment where he gets paid in pumpkin pie to watch a baby. Follow him through through the dull pains of never quite becoming an adult. Sit back, laugh, smile, hold your breath, because not even he knows how it ends.

Print length

96 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Lazy Fascist Press
Publication date

February 1, 2013
Dimensions

5.51 x 0.23 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

1621050793
ISBN-13

978-1621050797
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Funny as hell, searingly honest, and urgently real, Sam Pink's Rontel puts to shame most modern fiction. His writing perfectly captures the bizarre parade that is Chicago, with all its gloriously odd and wonderful people. This book possesses both the nerve of Nelson Algren and the existential comedy of Albert Camus." - Joe Meno

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Lazy Fascist Press (February 1, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 96 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1621050793
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1621050797
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 4.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 0.23 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,439,689 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30,371 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #96,333 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
83 ratings

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Sam Pink

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Sam Pink is the author of PERSON, THE GARBAGE TIMES/WHITE IBIS, and THE ICE CREAM MAN AND OTHER STORIES. He sells paintings at instagram.com/sam_pink_art.

Customer reviews

5 star		65%
4 star		20%
3 star		9%
2 star		2%
1 star		4%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

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Abraham

Not for everyone but it enjoyed it a lot

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 27, 2022

Verified Purchase

Great eye for detail, pacing and sense of humor.

Helpful

Fred Sniack

Great cure for indigestion

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 30, 2022

Verified Purchase

As someone that suffers from constant irate bowel syndrome, this book helped me cure all my ails with succinct, down-home advice that anyone could copy and paste and spend the rest of the night with an airtight alibi, because who would question the strange bearded lady reading a Sam Pink book on the Red Line. No one, I presume.

Helpful

steve anwyll

they make things so very hard

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 28, 2013

Verified Purchase

i was pretty excited about sam putting out a new book so i pre-ordered it like some pathetic little fanboy. i even paid for shipping. something i hate doing.

i received an email from Amazon telling me that my purchase was going to arrive a week later then expected. i chalked this up to being canadian, something most american super sellers hold against me and my ilk. but whatever, it was going to get here, if i wanted it instantly then i would've bought the kindle version.

one day a few weeks later when i came home my landlord was in the opening foyer messing around with the intercom. she pointed out a canpar delivery slip that was stuck to a wall, out of view, with my name on it. i became happy, it had to be rontel, i could forget the last eight hours of work now. all i had to do was go pick it up.

i emailed them as instructed to do so on the slip and they got back to me with the address. it was out by the airport at the end of a dead end street. no bus service. held for only five days. do you have friend who can come pick it up?

being a loner i didn't. what else can i do i asked. well, you can pay another 10$ and we'll ship it to you again. what choice did i have?

this time i had it sent to my work. in the end i spent twice what the book cost in shipping. normally thats the kind of thing that would really boil my onions, but rontel delivers. if sam can do anything it is accurately capture what it's like to be a human going from day to day with no real plan except the inevitability of death looming on the horizon.

seriously though, well worth all the baloney.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Damien

Another short tale of every day life

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 4, 2014

Verified Purchase

I've read quite a few books by Sam Pink and they basically all have the same structure; a guy who works a stupid job, lives a life in a cold town and thinks about a long of different random things. There's no beginning or end, no true conflict and it's all extremely real. If you can relate to it than you'll get good laughs. His style is minimalist, quirky, manic very alternative. You won't find this on your Barnes & Noble top sellers and chances are your friend that shows off his unique taste in Chuck Palahniuk books would find even this sort of fiction to be absurd - which baffles me, because it's not absurd.. It's the basis of many people's lives.

I read No Hello's Diet, Person and Rontel back to back to back while working two minimum wage Pizza jobs and these pieces were sort of a form of religious scripture for me. It does tell the nihilistic living where nothing truly happens and how extremely boring life is. The glowing neon lights show more importance than the significance of using your friends car to go buy hangers.

If you're a young adult lost in a freezing alien world you may find this comforting. These books are short and quick to read. I can swallow them up in just a few hours. There is something strangely poetic about Sam Pink - I think that shows there's a poet in all of us and in every moment of our useless daily routines.

4/5

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Tao Lin

So funny

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 12, 2013

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I earnestly thought "this is the funniest book I have ever read" or "Rontel is the funniest book I have ever read" probably ~200x while and after reading Rontel. I said "~300x" somewhere else but ~200x seems more accurate. (I should say that I don't feel, or haven't felt, amused by, for example, Saturday Night Live, which to me has never seemed funny.) I didn't feel that Rontel (which seemed, to me, hilarious and "delightful" and moving) was distracting me with humor, or anything, from things like death and confusion. I felt like it was successfully teaching me a sustainable, non-faith-based, stimulating, considerate way to live with those things.

Rontel affected my actions IRL to a degree that books, for me, rarely do. I viewed things differently for considerable amounts of time after reading Rontel and was, I think, more patient and considerate and less frustrated and paranoid. I was better able to view "problems"/[anything] as humorous and other people, like Schopenhauer recommended, as "fellow sufferers" and myself, in a calming manner, as insignificant. I honestly think that, in a clinical study, "reading Rontel 30-minutes/day" could be shown to be as effective, or much more effective (and cheaper, with less negative side-effects), for certain people, as [whatever methods are currently being used] for the treatment of depression or anger.

36 people found this helpful

Helpful

Caleb Bouchard

Review by Caleb Bouchard

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

So I finished reading this book today. Pretty good. Quick, satisfying read. I've read several of Sam Pink's books. Person and Hurt Others are my favorites.
In this book the narrator details his time on unemployment, while living with his brother and their cat, Rontel.
Rontel is a cool lil frick.
There's hardly any filter in Sam Pink's writing, it seems, which makes it devastating and funny at the same time. Just, like, the phrases he chooses to repeat and describe certain things and feelings. He has a very dry sense of humor. Almost scary dry, but it's good though. (He's human and so are you.) He explores situations and feelings of boredom and alienation and exhaustion, which most human beings can relate to.
I especially liked the scenes where the narrator is in the deli and also where he goes to the library and writes online reviews.
(You'll see.)
Basically, if you're into Sam Pink or alt lit, Rontel holds up.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Collector of things

A very special writer

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

This was the first Sam Pink book I ever read. I'd just finished reading 'Richard Yates' by Tao Lin, and was looking online for authors in or around the Alt-Lit thing going on in America (although its worth noting, Sam and Tao are very different writers). I brought this on a total whim, and ordered another Sam Pink book before I had even finished reading this one. It was just too good. I brought copies for x3 friends. I have never been able to connect or relate to an author in the way I can to Pink's books. He's just such a special writer, who is at the same times heartbreaking, hilarious and weird. I would like to live in his head, but it seems like its sometimes a scary place to be. Reading his beautiful books is the next best thing. Its so hard for me not to just endlessly, embarrassingly gush about how moved I have been by his books, from first reading Rontel onward.

One person found this helpful

Harry

More like..

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 4, 2016

Verified Purchase

Rontel?

More like... Rontel!

AJ's Book reviews

A hilarious and random read from Sam pink

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 17, 2016

Verified Purchase