A harrowing, intense, powerful new novel that reads like a classic, from one of the great writers of his generation. Nineteen battles his way into the pros, becomes the quarterback, becomes the myth. Marries the owner's daughter, touches greatness few will ever dream of, retires into what he assumes will be the promised afterlife of days on the golf course, celebrity endorsements, and cushy real estate investments. But markets tank, family disintegrates, fame fades, and the holes in his mind and memory from a career of punishment on the field become too large and frightening to ignore. When he hears of a miracle brain damage treatment forbidden in the U.S., he travels to the Mosquito Coast of Honduras in search of a chance to restore himself to the man he was. Instead, he finds himself on a journey that plunges him into a darkness more violent and horrific than he could have possibly imagined-at once a fight for his life and to hold onto the shards and fragments of the life he's fighting for. A sports saga, sprawling thriller, and existential reckoning with the rot at the core of the west, told by an unheralded, singular master, Pure Life is a daring, complex, and brutal confrontation with and demolition of our modern myths in the most primal of settings-one as perilous as it is imperiled.

Pure Life: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Marten, Eugene

United States

Strange Light

Fiction. A spare and chilling account of the day-to-day experience of Sloper, a janitor in a big-city office building, WASTE explores the import of the discarded--for those who generate it, those who dispose of it, and those who are themselves discarded. From the humble prospect of his station, Sloper uncovers ominous possibility in lives he barely brushes. Brian Everson says, "Only Eugene Marten can keep a reader enthralled with the minutiae of a janitorial existence.... Precisely and exquisitely detailed, WASTE is a stark little masterpiece." And Dawn Raffel writes, "[P]itch-perfect. WASTE wastes nothing--not a syllable, a beat, a ragged breath." And Sam Lipsyte writes, "There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's prose."

Waste

Literary

Ellipsis Press

To borrow Rakim's words, this book is 'a sack of dynamite, powerful and bright.' It's a grimly exciting report of the street-level world, a lyric highway story that pops with real American voices and roars with an underground river of criminal menace, a strange captivating work of the imagination, original and great.” Atticus Lish
Firework is about the gorgeous plasticity of the American language. It’s about motiveless malevolence and the human want to flee. It’s about Jelonnek, and there isn’t any figuring Jelonnek. He’s a prisoner and a security guard, a good Samaritan and a creep. Jelonnek will never leave you. Lucky you, lucky us, to have his wild tale in our hands.” Noy Holland
There is nothing quite like the controlled burn of Eugene Marten's prose.” Sam Lipsyte
An explosive road novel.” Vanity Fair
Firework is the story of a man who, though ill-equipped to help himself, attempts to help someone else, and the beautifully rendered, perhaps necessary catastrophe that results. Unequaled in intensity and often blackly humorous, it is also an exhilarating expression of the all too human impulse to become more than what we seem to be.
Eugene Marten is the author of In the Blind, Waste, and Layman’s Report.

Firework

Tyrant Books

Praise for Eugene Marten's Waste:
"When a poet pal had put a copy of Waste into my hands, I right away went nuts. . . . Here, said I, in wild proclamation, is one for history and a half."— Gordon Lish
Firework is the story of a man who, though ill-equipped to help himself, attempts to help someone else, and the beautifully rendered, perhaps necessary catastrophe that results. Unequaled in intensity and often blackly humorous, it is also an exhilarating expression of the all-too-human impulse to become more than what we seem to be.
Eugene Marten is the author of In the Blind and Waste.

"Marten's powerful novel focuses on a man trying to put the shards of his life together...Fans of Chuck Palahniuk and Jim Thompson, in particular, should take note." ―Roberta Johnson, Booklist (starred review) Eugene Marten's In the Blind takes readers through a keyhole and shows it to be a tunnel, a cave -- a way through to a hard-earned light. The speaker in this astonishing novel has been released from the boiler room dark of prison, but he is not free. He must move on at an angle against all that has been subtracted from the world he returns to, and always against the bleak weight of memory. By accident he finds work in a locksmith's shop, and something in the dark inner spaces of the locks speaks to him of a universe of locks, and to the prospect of a concentration that will open the way to breathable air. With the uncanny precision of observation found in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, and the eerie mystery of Don Delillo's The Body Artist, Marten generates a narrative that enthralls. When released by the book's amazing close, readers will find themselves in the new light cast by this novel, and with a hunger for more of Eugene Marten's fine work.

In the Blind

Contemporary

Turtle Point Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Marten, Eugene. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Marten, Eugene

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Marten, Eugene. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Pure Life: A Novel

Waste

Firework

Firework

In the Blind