Famous Builder

Paul Lisicky remembers being not much like other boys his age, but rather the awkward thirteen-year-old with "arms thick as drinking straws," who composes tunes in his head that he might later send to Folk Mass Today or to the producers of The Partridge Family. Born into a family whose incremental success bumps them up a notch from their immigrant upbringing and into suburban America, Paul puts his creative, undaunted energy into drawing intricate housing development plans and writing liturgical music.

In these lively, loving essays, Lisicky explores the constant impulse to rebuild the self. With gracious, thoughtful candor and pitch-perfect humor, he explores the very personal realms of childhood dreams and ambitions, adolescent sexual awakenings, and adult realities.

Paul Lisicky is the author of the celebrated novel Lawnboy. He teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence College and in the low-residency M.F.A. Program at Antioch University and lives in New York and Provincetown.

Paul Lisicky remembers being not much like other boys his age, but rather the awkward thirteen-year-old with "arms thick as drinking straws," who composes tunes in his head that he might later send to Folk Mass Today or to the producers of The Partridge Family. Born into a family whose provisional success bumps them up from their immigrant upbringing and into suburban America, Paul puts his creative, undaunted energy into drawing intricate housing-development plans and writing liturgical music, while his younger brothers rescue midcentury modern furniture from the neighbors' trash and open personal branches of major department stores in the family living room.

In these lively, loving essays, Lisicky explores the constant impulse to rebuild the self. With gracious, thoughtful candor and pitch-perfect humor, he explores the very personal realms of childhood dreams and ambitions, adolescent sexual awakenings, and adult realities.

"This book shows all the vital signs of genius. In Famous Builder, Paul Lisicky asks the tragic American question: who are you if you recreated yourself? And he answers it: you are alone, vulnerable and fully loaded."Edmund White

"How difficult it is to make the familiar fresh again! Yet that's exactly what Lisicky does in this wise and unusual memoir, gently rotating our perspective on suburbia until a truly New Worldas peculiar, obsessive, and utterly marvelous as his younger self's miniature housing developmentsshimmers before us. In the neighborhood you might also find Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Steven Millhauser's Edwin Mullhouse, and some of Rick Moody's work. But the structure Lisicky has built for us is sturdy, and all his own."Andrea Barrett

"Paul Lisicky writes with red-blooded realism about the mysteries of subterranean New Jersey, both its sunny burbs and dark corners. Deliciously wacky and lyric, these charged essays explore the warring powers of youth, of family, and of the writer's imperturbable emergence as a artist. A charmed love letter to American life."Maria Flook

"By recalling the people and events that have shaped him, Lisicky brings to light the forces that shape each of us. As a boy, Lisicky dreamed of building an intricate and habitable world; with Famous Builder, he's done just that."Bernard Cooper

"Stunning and revealing . . . Famous Builder is a rare feat of imagination, forming an exquisite architecture of the self."Out magazine

"A refreshingly affectionate book . . . An endearing, often amusing story about a quirky boy's coming of age."Kevin Riordan, The Courier-Post

Paul Lisicky remembers being not much like other boys his age, but rather the awkward thirteen-year-old with "arms thick as drinking straws," who composes tunes in his head that he might later send to Folk Mass Today or to the producers of The Partridge Family. Born into a family whose incremental success bumps them up a notch from their immigrant upbringing and into suburban America, Paul puts his creative, undaunted energy into drawing intricate housing development plans and writing liturgical music.

In these lively, loving essays, Lisicky explores the constant impulse to rebuild the self. With gracious, thoughtful candor and pitch-perfect humor, he explores the very personal realms of childhood dreams and ambitions, adolescent sexual awakenings, and adult realities.

Paul Lisicky is the author of the celebrated novel Lawnboy. He teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence College and in the low-residency M.F.A. Program at Antioch University and lives in New York and Provincetown.