Double or Nothing

Federman, Raymond

ISBN 10: 1573660752 / ISBN 13: 9781573660754

Published by Fiction Collective 2, 1999

About this Item

Satisfaction Guaranteed or your money back.

Seller Inventory # 1573660752

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Double or Nothing
• Publisher: Fiction Collective 2
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573660752
• ISBN 13: 9781573660754
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Double or Nothing is a concrete novel in which the words become physical materials on the page. Federman gives each of these pages a shape or structure, most often a diagram or picture. The words move, cluster, jostle, and collide in a tour de force full of puns, parodies, and imitations. Within these startling and playful structures Federman develops two characters and two narratives. These stories are simultaneous and not chronological. The first deals with the narrator and his effort to make the book itself; the second, the story the narrator intends to tell, presents a young man's arrival in America. The narrator obsesses over making his narrative to the point of not making it. All of his choices for the story are made and remade. He tallies his accounts and checks his provisions. His questioning and indecision force the reader into another radical sense of the novel. The young man, whose story is to be told, also emerges from his obsessions.

Madly transfixing details—noodles, toilet paper, toothpaste, a first subway ride, a sock full of dollars—become milestones in a discovery of America. These details, combined with Federman's feel for the desperation of his characters, create a book that is simultaneously hilarious and frightening. The concrete play of its language, its use of found materials, give the viewer/reader a sense of constant and strange discovery. To turn these pages is to turn the corners of a world of words as full as any novel of literary discourse ever presented. Double or Nothing challenges the way we read fiction and the way we see words, and in the process, gives us back more of our own world and our real dilemmas than we are used to getting.

Picked for American Book Review's 100 Best First Lines from Novels

About the Author

Raymond Federman was born in 1928 in France. His novels have been translated into fourteen languages and include Smiles on Washington Square, winner of the American Book Award. He lives in San Diego.