Gary Oldman Is A Building You Must Walk Through - Softcover

Roth, Forrest

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0996227660 ISBN 13: 9780996227667

Publisher: What Books Press, 2017

Synopsis

Unemployed,aimless, stuck in a mundane relationship with a burned-out social worker, ananonymous writer (of some sort) awaits the phone call that he believes willchange their fortunes: his being hired to script a television commercialfeaturing renowned actor Gary Oldman. In preparationfor the momentous day,his various obsessions connected to Oldman's cinematic career hold forth,including the return of his girlfriend's marginally "famous" sisterfrom a Los Angeles psychiatric ward and her ensuing disappearance, as well ashis questionable attraction to them both. But once the quasi-narrativeof assorted characters he creates for her consolation over the lost sisterbegins, the only story to prevail may be aninescapable echo chamber of Oldman's dialogic influence into which everythingand everyone must fall.

About this title

About the Author:

Forrest Roth's work has appeared in NOON, Denver Quarterly, Juked, Sleepingfish, Caketrain, The Collagist, and other journals. He is the author of a novella, Line and Pause (BlazeVOX Books), and a prose poem chapbook, The Sullen Pages (Little Red Leaves). His most recent novel, Gary Oldman Is a Building You Must Walk Through, was also named a semi-finalist for the Noemi Press 2015 Book Contest in Fiction. He received his Creative Writing Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Marshall University in West Virginia.

Review:

"Gary Oldman Is a Building You Must Walk Through is a gloriously entrancing 'elaboration,' an obsession in prose. One wonders at Gary Oldman, containing multitudes: Wittgenstein's Nephew comes to mind, though so do Notable American Women, The Making of Americans, I Looked Alive. 'This is something which the I hasn't been trained for,' we're told. Indeed." -- Gabriel Blackwell, author of Madeleine E.

"A tessellation of spinning faces--some legendary, some just neurotic--Forrest Roth's Gary Oldman Is a Building You Must Walk Through is a playful pattern, masterfully tailored, as though for a famous actress, a red carpet star. Perhaps without blushing, perhaps she signs her autograph." -- Lily Hoang, author of A Bestiary
 
"Like an exploded villanelle, or Oulipo with invisible constraints, this darkly playful Beckettian monologue maps a syntactically circuitous route to the meaning of fame, violence, interiority, and language itself. It's smart, it's mysterious, and it's damn funny." -- Shya Scanlon, author of The Guild of Saint Cooper

"Gary Oldman Is a Building You Must Walk Through is an insanely original, hyperreal romp through the simulacra of celebrity and culture and celebrity culture. In this sprawling monologue of a book, Roth proves that a novel can be just that: novel. There are no precedents." -- Ryan Ridge, author of American Homes

About this edition

• Publisher: What Books Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0996227660
• ISBN 13: 9780996227667
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 172