Dimensions
135 x 203 x 23mm
"From his humble beginnings as a scribbler of generic science fictions to the night of his horrifying death' Phoebus Kinsman Dank was probably the only real genius of our time' and certainly the most prolific. . . . "
So writes William "Bill" Boswell' the nation's leading "Dankian" scholar and coauthor of THE CARDBOARD UNIVERSE' the seminal biographical guide to the science fiction writer's life and work. After years of tracking the obese' obsessive' and logorrheic pulp novelist' Boswell joins his coauthor' critic' and disaffected fellow acolyte Owen Hirt' to create the ultimate guide to Dank's life and work: a biographical encyclopedia' in which the two memorialize-and fight over-Dank's treasured yet hackneyed body of work.
The result is this fiendishly inventive novel' in which the story of these three obsessive men unfolds entry by entry-from Agoraphobia to Writer's block-revealing both Dank's peculiar habits and his two followers' twisted psyches. As Bowell and Hirt compete to draw the definitive portrait of Dank's life' dissecting Dank minutiae and each other's motives by turns' their own rivalry simmers between the lines-and then erupts into all-out war.
Imagine Vladimir Nabokov's PALE FIRE in a road-show production starring John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius J. Reilly' with Rod Serling as stage manager' and you'll have something like THE CARDBOARD UNIVERSE: a Rabelaisian comic romp through the dysfunctional landscape of the literary life' speckled throughout with literary in-jokes-and punctuated by a surprising murder. It will delight anyone who has ever questioned the bizarre workings of the literary mind.
