Synopses & Reviews
“Bakopoulos has invented a man for all rainy seasons—a horny, heartbroken cousin of Richard Ford’s Frank Bascombe.” —Tom Piazza
“A winning distraction, a smart entertainment.” —New York Times Book Review
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders, a renegade when it comes to bureaucracy, Zeke asks almost everybody he meets, “Why are you so unhappy?” The answers he receives—a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint—become the core of an obsessive project, “The Inventory of American Unhappiness,” a project that becomes all the more personally meaningful as he follows steps outlined in a women’s magazine on finding the perfect mate. Incisively tapping the voice of one of the most charming—and deluded—narrators to come along in years, Dean Bakopolous captures our zeitgeist with lacerating wit and a big heart, confirming Jonathan Miles’s (author of Dear American Airlines) claim that “there’s no such thing as unhappiness when you’re holding a Dean Bakopolous novel.”
“Hilarious and heartfelt . . . This funny-sad novel seems to take elements of the author’s own life . . . and twists them in a funhouse mirror—with delightful results.” —NPR
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"[A] hilarious, often ingenious ode to America....Whip smart yet entertaining enough to rival anything from John Grisham." Julia Dahl, Time Out New York
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"Kirn's style is as bright and metallic as the shiny skin of a jet airplane. But his underlying point is refreshingly down to earth." Chicago Tribune
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"Kirn's prose is splendid, his observations droll and intelligent." Kirkus Reviews
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"[A] marvelously entertaining and keenly satiric novel." Booklist
Synopsis
Ryan Bingham's job as a Career Transition Counselor — he fires people — has kept him airborne for years. Although he has come to despise his line of work, he has come to love the culture of what he calls Airworld, finding contentment within pressurized cabins, anonymous hotel rooms, and a wardrobe of wrinkle-free slacks. With a letter of resignation sitting on his boss's desk, and the hope of a job with a mysterious consulting firm, Ryan Bingham is agonizingly close to his ultimate goal, his Holy Grail: one million frequent flier miles. But before he achieves this long-desired freedom, conditions begin to deteriorate.
With perception, wit, and wisdom, Up in the Air combines brilliant social observation with an acute sense of the psychic costs of our rootless existence, and confirms Walter Kirn as one of the most savvy chroniclers of American life.
Synopsis
Soon to be a major motion picture from director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Juno) starring George Clooney, Jason Bateman, and Anna Kendrick.
Synopsis
When Matthew, a forty-something media executive, finds his job, health, and wife slipping through his fingers, he embarks on a stumbling, agonizing, hilarious vision quest that takes him from a strip-mall parking lot to a Bali medical clinic, a uniquely American adventure that involves drug-running, mug-making, and extreme RVing.
Synopsis
When Matthew, a fortysomething media executive, finds his Manhattan job, health, and Connecticut marriage crumbling, he goes native: Drinks in his car. Gives drug dealing a shot. Looks for direction in easy-listening rock lyrics, takes a free crafting class at the community center, and gets in a fistfight with a meditation instructor. He also tries jogging.
Soon hes on a stumbling, sideways vision quest that takes him from strip malls to national parks to a Bali medical clinic, from an unlikely romance with a Hollywood agent specializing in hot young vampire roles to extreme RVing with a disgraced Wall Street trader.
In this heroic, hilarious debut novel, Dan Kennedy, a mainstay of the storytelling phenomenon The Moth, gives us an Everyman who takes us to the dark valleys and neon-lit edges of contemporary American life.
Synopsis
A witty and emotionally raw novel from the award-winning Dean Bakopoulos that introduces Zeke, a scholar looking for love—and a second chance at life.
About the Author
Walter Kirn is the literary editor for GQ and a contributing editor to Time and Vanity Fair. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and numerous other national magazines. He is the author of the short-story collection My Hard Bargain and the novels She Needed Me and Thumbsucker (a 1999 New York Times Notable Book). He lives on a farm near Livingston, Montana.