A Confederacy of Dunces

Literature & Fiction

TOOLE, JOHN KENNEDY

Literary

Grove Press/ Black Cat

It opens innocently enough: the diary starts off with a tone of self-absorbed adolescent wistfulness. The fourteen-year-old Melissa starts taking notes about her feelings during a very hot summer. Her bedroom is plastered with Klimt posters and photos of Marlene Dietrich. She is a loner, fond of classical music. She examines her body in the mirror, pleasurably yet without desire. Her friend Alessandra introduces her to Daniele, an eighteen-year-old who intrigues her. She is embarrassed when he asks her if she is a virgin and she says yes. He invites her to his home to go swimming, and after cornering her in a secluded room and kissing her passionately, he asks, Do you feel like doing it?” She declines coyly, but soon he is pushing her face below his waist. When she takes his penis in her mouth, he comes immediately. Is this the way it’s done?” she asks him. He isn’t very nice to her, but the act fills her with a strange contentment.” The diary then jumps to her fifteenth birthday, and then Daniele’s nineteenth. She is smitten with him, can’t keep her mind on her Latin lessons, tells him she wants to make love, but he responds that she doesn’t even know how to suck him off.” She depicts her parents as not very caring of her, and feels unloved. She starts masturbating habitually and finally offers herself to Daniele, who tells her that he’ll have sex with her only if their relationship remains purely sexual. She hopes that it will turn into love. When she arrives to have sex with him, he mistreats her; when he finally penetrates her and she claims not to feel any pain, he accuses her of lying to him about being a virgin. They begin to meet regularly to have sex on the beach, but she is unsatisfied, detached, deeply hurt by his abusive treatment. She feels guilty and sad when she confronts Daniele with his abuse of her, and he is humiliated: he bursts into tears. She stops seeing him, but the relief is mixed with the desire for self-punishment One day at a school assembly, she flirts with one of the guest speakers, an intellectual law student named Roberto. Though he has a girlfriend, he is intrigued by Melissa, who is tiny, standing at five feet, and invites her to an abandoned country house. He is brutal, tells her he wants her to scream, showers her with obscenities, and she complies, but is finally detached from the act, distanced by his commands and his foul language. Still, she is very much in control when they meet, she strokes his macho ego and is amused by his transformation from the well-mannered guy to the passionate lover. She begins to discover things about men and the faces they put on to meet the world On her sixteenth birthday, Roberto arranges a celebration” for her: he takes her to an abandoned house and blindfolds her, whereupon she is stripped by him and four other men who take turns caressing her. She is intermittently excited and at one point, during a pause in the action, thinks about leaving, but doesn’t. She is then made to kneel down and give head to all five them, in succession, until they ejaculate. After the oral sex, they take turns mounting her. I felt invaded, dirtied,” she writes upon her return home. Then I brushed my hair a hundred times, as princesses do, my mother always says.” The next entry begins with broad irony: her mother asks, Did you have fun last night?” She suspects her daughter of smoking pot, but Melissa just feels empty.” The question of self-love is raised again, and she distinguishes between the girl who did not love herself last night and the girl who does this morning. The next several entries switch between three different narrative threads, sexual relationships that begin on the internet. Melissa meets a lesbian called Letizia, who intrigues her. They exchange photos and talk on the phone. I’m thinking (or perhaps I’m deluding myself) that by surfing the net I might find someone inclined to love me.” She also finds Fabrizio, a thirty-five-old married man who repulses her--she won’t kiss him--but whom she fucks. She is not doing well in school, so she finds a private tutor, a mathematics professor” in his late twenties called Valerio, who attracts her. Their relationship starts very professionally, with actual lessons, but he also arranges phone calls in which he tells her his fantasies and she masturbates. He calls her Lo” at the end of a call, an allusion that is later made explicit with a brief extract from Nabokov. Melissa has her first encounter with Letizia, and then a sexy date with Valerio, who instructs her on what clothes to wear and takes her to a secluded spot. The encounter is outdoors at night, graphically described, beginning with their passionate kissing, continuing with them going down on one another, and then fucking in the car where ere she straddles him and reaches a shuddering orgasm. Fabrizio meanwhile has bought an apartment where he wants to rendezvous and watch porn films. But ultimately he has somethhhhhhing else in mind: they make an appointment, and she arrives first, only to find a group of boxes that each contain an assortment of sex-oriented clothing, ranging from lingerie to leather gear. She chooses the leather, and he shows up for a sadomasochistic encounter. She shows herself to be an accomplished dominatrix, sees the power to inflict pleasurable pain as self-defining, and vents her distaste for him as she whips him and fucks him with a dildo. She realizes that of all her lovers, Valerio is the one most capable of recognizing her passion. She writes him a letter essentially explaining to him who she is, what she’s looking for, asks if he’s up to the task of seeing her as the passionate person she is. She doesn’t hear back, and realizes that she is no more than a somewhat pedophiliac fantasy to him. Then one night she’s at a bar with her friends and someone catches her eyehe can’t stop staring at her, she can’t stop staring at him. They have a tentative conversation and then he shows up at her house to serenade her. She is amazed and touched and they go out on a date that lasts all night, though nothing physical happens. He alone has recognized her passionate self. But suddenly she doesn’t know if she can handle true intimacy, she doesn’t feel worthy. Valerio contacts her and she decides that a meeting with him will show what she really is, what she wants. When she arrives, Valerio introduces her to Flavio, and they arrange an evening at which a number of couples are invited. The idea seems to be an orgy, starring Melissa, but as soon as Valerio begins working on her, she decides to leave. On the way home in the car, she asks him about her letter. He doesn’t respond till he drops her off: Addio, Lolita,” he says. She sees Claudio again, and he admits that he’s fallen in love with her. She challenges this love, asking him when he wants to make love to her, and his response is just what she has wanted for the entire book: when two people are joined together,” he responds, it is the height of spirituality.” The last few entries--they end in August 2002--show her vacillating between accepting and fearing his love. They finally spend the night together, and make love instead of simply fucking, and the diary ends on a very hopeful noteshe is loved, she has learned to love others, and more importantly herself. This is a titillating and graphic account of one young girl’s extreme sexual journey, but it is also a fascinating and often sad portrait of female adolescent identity. The diary is impelled by Melissa’s arresting and powerful voice, transforming what could otherwise be mere pornography into a literary experience that is sweet, bold, and totally fresh.

100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

Biographies & Memoirs

P., Melissa

Community & Culture

With The Hole We’re Ina bold, timeless, yet all too timely novel about a troubled American family navigating an even more troubled Americaaward-winning author and screenwriter, Gabrielle Zevin, delivers a work that places her in the ranks of our shrewdest social observers and top literary talents. Meet the Pomeroys: a church-going family living in a too-red house in a Texas college town. Roger, the patriarch, has impulsively gone back to school, only to find his future ambitions at odds with the temptations of the present. His wife, Georgia, tries to keep things afloat at home, but she’s been feeding the bill drawer with unopened envelopes for months and never manages to confront its swelling contents. In an attempt to climb out of the holes they’ve dug, Roger and Georgia make a series of choices that have catastrophic consequences for their three childrenespecially for Patsy, the youngest, who will spend most of her life fighting to overcome them. The Hole We’re In shines a spotlight on some of the most relevant issues of today: over-reliance on credit, gender and class politics, and the war in Iraq. But it is Zevin’s deft exploration of the fragile economy of family life that makes this a book for the ages.

The Hole We're In

Zevin, Gabrielle

United States

Award-winning author Nancy Huston follows her bestselling novel, Fault Lines, winner of the Prix Femina, with an intensely provocative story about a passionate yet emotionally-wounded woman’s sexual explorations. After a troubled childhood and two failed marriages, Rena Greenblatt has achieved success as a photographer. She specializes in infrared techniques that expose her pictures’ otherwise hidden landscapes and capture the raw essence of deeply private moments in the lives of her subjects. Away from her lover, and stuck in Florence, Italy, with her infuriating stepmother and her aging, unwell father, Rena confronts not only the masterpieces of the Renaissance but the banal inconveniences of a family holiday. At the same time, she finds herself traveling into dark and passionate memories that will lead to disturbing revelations. Infrared is both an explicitly bold story of how sexuality is influenced by childhood, family, and culture, and a portrait of a woman coming to terms with the end of her father’s life. With exceptional flair and intelligence, Huston fearlessly investigates the links between family intimacies and our collective lives, between destruction and creation.

Infrared

Huston, Nancy

Fobbit \’fä-bit\, noun. Definition: A U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2011). Pejorative. In the satirical tradition of Catch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad’s Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like a desk job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy. Darkly humorous and based on the author's own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war.

Fobbit

Abrams, David

Humor & Satire

From internationally best-selling author Tommy Wieringa, comes a rich and engrossing novel about a man on an odyssey in search of answers about his dysfunctional artistic family and the legacy they left behind. When Ludwig Unger returned to his hometown after a decade, he arrived with a plastic bag filled with his mother’s ashes and little else. He was there to make amends with his lonely past, to say goodbye to the familial ghosts that still haunted him. Raised in a cliff-top cottage on the coast of England, Ludwig’s mother tried to create a normal life for her son after her husband one day left them to pursue his art. A mama’s boy, Ludwig grew up in her shadow, developing an obsession with her and her sensual allure. But when he discovered the secret of her past as the world-famous porn star Eve LaSage” and her plans for a comeback, Ludwig’s world spun out of control. He soon found himself homeless, shouldering the shame of his mother’s career, and embarking on a journey that took him around the world. Little Caesar is a story of beauty and decay, of filial loyalty and parental betrayal, and of the importance of self-sacrifice.

Little Caesar

Wieringa, Tommy

In Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia, acclaimed author José Manuel Prieto has masterfully crafted a kaleidoscopic portrait of post-Communist Russia. Strikingly poetic and cleverly humorous, it's the story of two misfits caught between old world traditions and the lure of contemporary Western influences as they set off on an adventure to immerse themselves in the beauty of the world. Thelonius Monk (not his real name) and Linda Evangelista (not her real name) meet in Saint Petersburg after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. They journey to Yalta, where Thelonius promises to make Linda famous in the fashion magazines. But in fact, he's drafting a novel about her. Over the course of their travels, the two indulge in all sorts of sensual amusements—extravagant dinners, luxury automobiles, seaside hotels—while they engage in grand discussions of love, art, celebrity, and other existential polarities. Alphabetically organized from Abacus to Zizi, this book defies chronology and conformity. Finding the sublime in the trivial through meditations on wildly varied subjects of fact and fancy—from Bach and Dostoyevsky to Italian alligator shoes and fluoride toothpaste—Prieto ardently explores the crossroads of literature, philosophy, history, and pop culture in this singular novel that captures a nation straddling custom and innovation.

Encyclopedia of a Life in Russia

Prieto, José Manuel

"Malae is like a young Nelson Algren or Richard Wright, one of those writers who can hit with both hands." Russell Banks By way of Italy, the Felice family puts down new roots in Southern California, settling into a grand Victorian home and buying a share of the great American Dream. But for their five, first-generation children, an idyllic childhood didn’t quite translate into success and happiness. Rather, the pressures of living up to expectations drove a wide rift through the family. After decades apart, the five siblings find themselves together again at their ailing mother’s bedside, caught in a deadlocked feud over her hospice care. Into the morass steps Murron Teinetoa, one of their bastard children, who carries an idealistic hope of finally fitting in among her estranged relatives. In an interweaving narrative, Malae portrays the Felices in their formative years of the fifties; he excavates the personal lives of the siblings in the eighties and nineties; and he follows Murron in the present as she raises her son as a single mother. A powerful and fiery multi-generational story, Our Frail Blood captures the beauty and horror, the strength and fragility, the selfishness and love comprising the threads of familial bonds.

Our Frail Blood

Malae, Peter Nathaniel

Parenting & Relationships

"Sex is the answer to death."Charlotte Roche In her controversial first novel, Wetlands, which The New York Times called "a cri de coeur against the oppression of a waxed, shaved, douched and otherwise sanitized women’s world”, Roche wrote about sex and the female body in an unprecedentedly frank and intimate way. Roche's second novel, Wrecked is just as raw and powerful as her debut, but is a more mature and impressive work that deals with sex, death, fidelity, and the question of what is expected from a twenty-first century wife and mother. "It's easier to give a blow job than to make coffee." That's what Elizabeth Kiehl, mother of seven-year-old Liza thinks to herself, after a particularly lengthy and inventive bout of sex with her husband Georg—recounted in detail over the book's first twenty pages. Elizabeth goes to great efforts to pleasure her husband in the bedroom, and also is an extremely thoughtful and caring mother to her daughter. But the perfect mother and wife act she puts on hides a painful past and a tragic rift in her psyche, which she is working through in weekly sessions with her therapist. Sex is the other tool that she uses to relax herself. Elizabeth and Georg watch porn together, and even go off on joint trips to a local brothel for threesomes with prostitutes while their daughter is at school. But is their relationship unhealthy, even tragic, or just a very modern marriage?

Wrecked

Roche, Charlotte

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Best Book of the Summer: Los Angeles Times and Publishers Weekly An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Mystery, Thriller &amp; Suspense) Three years have passed since Gustavo, a renowned psycholinguist, last spoke to his closest friend, Daniel, who has been interned in a psychiatric ward for murdering his fiancée. When Daniel unexpectedly calls to confess the truth behind the crime, Gustavo’s long buried fraternal loyalty resurfaces and draws him into the center of a quixotic investigation. While Daniel reveals his unsettling story using fragments of fables, novels, and historical allusions, Gustavo begins to retrace the past for clues: from their early college days exploring dust-filled libraries and exotic brothels to Daniel’s intimate attachment to his sickly younger sister and his dealings as a book collector. As the circumstances grow increasingly intricate, Gustavo is forced to deduce an sinister series of events from allegories that are more real than police reports and metaphors more revealing than evidence. With sumptuous prose and haunting imagery, Faverón Patriau has crafted an unforgettable, labyrinthine tale of murder, madness, and passion that is as entertaining as it is erudite and dark as it is illuminating.

The Antiquarian

Faverón Patriau, Gustavo

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Grove Press/ Black Cat publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Grove Press/ Black Cat