Synopses & Reviews
Fiction. "If the book is difficult to break into, it is because Lewelling relentlessly runs after everyfrustrating convolution that tempts the urban mind. Messages broadcast from the psychicareas that must, for most of us, be avoided to keep on going. Convolutions that THIS GUY needs, apparently; a life populated by theories, suspicions and obsessions instead of people. THIS GUY may dwell, at the start, in the loneliest place, but by the end he has collected--however brutally or accidentally--a collection of companions; he has gone over an edge and he is loving it"--Brooklyn Rail.
Synopsis
A skewed cross between The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Kobo Abes Box Man, This Guy simultaneously enacts and dramatizes the blackly humorous, ghostly, and subtly hellish condition of namelessness resulting from the stubborn refusal to own the circumstances of ones own life. It exists most fully in light of the progressive arc of fictional technique stretching from Kafka to Beckett to Blanchot. With a fully integrated structure akin to that of a Klein Bottle, it is the only novel to our knowledge that threads the needle of the third person limited perspective passing through the invisible between protagonist and narrator as its central thematic and dramatic device.
About the Author
James Lewelling has been writing fiction since 1988. To that end, he has made a living in every menial position available in the food service industry, tended bar at the second smallest pub in London, The Swan, lost and found files for the Bank of Paris, taught Berbers the Beatles on the edge of the Sahara, taught immigrants of all stripes the present perfect in Chicago and Milwaukee, been mistaken for a computer whilst conducting phone surveys, been mistaken for an asshole whilst answering complaint letters for an insurance company, taught writing, creative writing, business writing, developmental writing, reading, Russian literature and on one occasion, algebra. Most recently, he has been trying to persuade young basketball-playing Emirati women to proofread in the United Arab Emirates. Lewelling's work has appeared in FENCE, Word Riot, The Evergreen Review, Café Irreal, The Stranger and elsewhere. He is the author of the books TORTOISE (Calamari Press, 2008) and THIS GUY (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006). He lives in Abu Dhabi with his wife, the poet, Lisa Isaacson, and their two lovely daughters, Frances and Cecily.