โ Scribed by Dean Bakopoulos
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders of strangers, a renegade when it comes to bureaucracy, Zeke asks almost everybody he meets, "Why are you so unhappy?" The answers he receives-a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint-become the core of an obsessive project, "The Inventory of American Unhappiness," a project that becomes all the more personally meaningful as he follows steps outlined in a women's magazine on finding the perfect mate. Incisively tapping the voice of one of the most charming, and deluded, narrators to come along in years, Bakopoulos captures our zeitgeist with lacerating wit and a big heart-confirming Jonathan Miles' (author of "Dear American Airlines") claim that "there's no such thing as unhappiness when you're holding a Dean Bakopoulos novel".
"My American Unhappiness ""shimmers with mischief and offbeat charm. A dark entertainment infused by a bluesy yearning for a better America."
--"Kirkus Reviews" "Bakopoulos writes with great heart and a cold eye, and his limpid, ironic prose will appeal to those who like the early work of Martin Amis."
--"Library Journal" ""My American Unhappiness" is a smart, funny, charming novel - an incisive critique of the way we live now, but aremed, unlike contemporary satire, with a big, generous heart. I got addicted to the misadventures of Zeke Pappas. I didn't want the book to end."
--Dan Chaon, author of "Await Your Reply"
"In Zeke Pappas, Dean Bakopoulos has invented a man for all rainy seasons - a horny, heartbroken cousin of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe, telling a long, tall tale of anomie in the heartland."
--Tom Piazza, author of "City of Refuge
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"If the nature of despair, as Kierkegaard wrote, is to be unaware of itself, then Zeke Pappas is its perfect spokesman: a blithely deluded nebbish whose epic longings--to document the emptiness at the center of American life and to win the heart of Sofia Coppola and/or his local Starbucks barista--propel him into ever more twisted predicaments. There's no such thing as unhappiness when you're holding a Dean Bakopoulos novel in your hands."
--Jonathan Miles, author of "Dear American Airlines
""Vivid as a searchlight gliding across suburban picture windows, MY AMERICAN UNHAPPINESS displays its author's saddened comic wisdom, as apparently self-effacing as it is marvelously inventive and observant. Dean Bakopoulos is a writer to watch, a novelist to cherish."
--Peter Straub, author of "A Dark Matter
""Zeke Pappas, the visionary behind the American Unhappiness project, is the perfect hero for our times - an age of J. Crew catalogs and Starbucks lattes, of political absurdities and almost-fractured families barely holding themselves together. In telling Zeke's story, Dean Bakopoulos
Library : General
Formats : EPUB
ISBN : 9780547549101
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