THE SUM OF HIS SYNDROMES: A NOVEL - Softcover

DIXON, KENNETH

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0897335864 ISBN 13: 9780897335867

Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers, 2009

Synopsis

Oregon Book Award Finalist

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

This uninspired short novel presents itself as a collection of notes scrawled in an office men's room. "Is art a business? If so, how much is it a business like any other?" Another: "One thing I can tell you for sure: I'm nobody's first choice." As thought-provoking as these might be, the reader is rarely allowed time for contemplation. The narrator is a man weighed down by a vague sense that he was meant for better things ("The real trouble begins when you can't, in your own mind, turn your suffering into something heroic-when it is simply suffering and not the price you have to pay for some plucky act of witness.") He shares concerns about his shrink, his girlfriend and the possibility of a new job, but any fruitful development is sidetracked by one-liners about office life and co-workers that zing only occasionally. It seems the narrator's focus on such distractions is to demonstrate just how alienated he is from his own existence, but the point becomes belabored after nine chapters and hundreds of subsections.
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Review

"...a strangely enigmatic novel which is kind of addictive...With passages that are so well turned they can be called lyrical--and others that are laugh out loud funny. This is the kind of book where we see a bit of ourselves and grimace--but keep reading." -- Novelist A.M. Homes

"it's funny; it's insightful; it's gonzo." -- Willamette Week

" ..original...unusual...full of pithy observations." -- Jeff Baker in The Oregonian

"Dixon effortlessly captures what it's like to be human in a relatively uncaring world, but the beauty of the book is in the fact that he makes you laugh while doing so. Don't look for the answers in "The Sum of His Syndromes"; look for humanity. You'll find it." -- Katherine Weikert in the The Lit Mob

"The notes range from hysterical, to insightful, to the common, but are never banal. The Sum of His Syndromes is literary poetry on the page." -- Metroreader

Edition details

• Publisher: Academy Chicago Publishers
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0897335864
• ISBN 13: 9780897335867
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 144