Synopses & Reviews
It’s the bitter end of the 1960s. John F. Kennedy has survived
multiple assassination attempts and is entering his third term in
office. As the war in Vietnam rages on, the president introduces a vast
federal agency, Psych Corps, dedicated to maintaining the nation’s
mental hygiene by any means necessary. Returning soldiers have their
battlefield traumas “enfolded”---wiped from memory---while others, too
damaged for therapy, roam the streets and threaten civilians.
This
destabilized version of American history is the vision of Vietnam vet
Eugene Allen, who has returned home to write the book-within-a-book at
the center of David Means’s highly anticipated first novel.
The
critic James Wood has written that Means’s language “offers an
exquisitely precise and sensuous register of an often crazy American
reality,” and here the arsenal of his talents are on complete display.
Outlandish and tender, funny and violent, timely and historical, Hystopia invites
us to consider whether our traumas can ever truly be overcome. The
answers it offers are wildly inventive, deeply rooted in its characters,
and wrung from the author’s own heart.
Review
"Hystopia, David Means’s dark acid trip of a novel, reads like a phantasmagorical . . . mash-up of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Michael Herr’s Vietnam classic, Dispatches . . . It's
a meditation on war (not just Vietnam, Mr. Means suggests, but the
continuum of combat that links veterans through history) and the toll it
takes on soldiers and families and loved ones. It's also a portrait of a
troubled America in the late 1960s and early '70s--an America reeling
from unemployment and lost dreams, and seething with anger, and
uncannily familiar, in many ways, to America today.” Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
“David Means’s Hystopia is the boldest alternate history novel in
years . . . A debut novel that reinvents a genre . . . In his fidelity
to a peculiarly American brokenness, Means’ debut surpasses nearly all
of his recent peers.” Flavorwire
Synopsis
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE
Named a Best of the Year Selection by Kirkus Reviews, the San Francisco Chronicle, Commonweal Magazine, and the Library of Michigan
In his widely acclaimed and ambitious debut novel, David Means, one of America's greatest living short story writers, has produced a disorienting yet mesmerizing novel-within-a-novel. Twenty-two year old Eugene Allen, a Vietnam War veteran, has penned a revisionist history of the period that, channeled through Means, explores the realities of trauma, both national and personal. Consider Allen's imaginative register: John F. Kennedy has survived multiple attempts on his life and is entering his third term. Meanwhile, as the Vietnam War continues to wage, soldiers returning home face two fates: have their memories of war erased or, if they are too damaged for treatment, be released without monitor. But pain and their toxic strains of PTSD ultimately creates a band of deranged rogues, evading the government and reenacting atrocities on their own people.
Outlandish and tender, funny and violent, timely and historical, Hystopia invites us to consider whether our traumas can ever truly be overcome. The answers it offers are wildly inventive, deeply rooted in its characters, and wrung from the author's own heart.
About the Author
David Means is the author of several story collections, including
Assorted Fire Events, which was a Finalist for the National Book Critics
Circle Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and The
Secret Goldfish, which was short-listed for the Frank O’Connor
International Short Story Prize. His stories, which have received
numerous honors, including two O. Henry Prizes and two Pushcart Prizes,
have been translated into ten languages. He was the recipient of a
Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and teaches at Vassar College.