Brock Clarke

A Novel

An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist. In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination.

“A story in which anything and everything can happen, and mostly does. This is a book of many trips--across oceans, back to the past, and, most profoundly, into the infinite deep space of the human heart. Brock Clarke has given us a wonderful novel that bursts with all the meaty stuff of real life.” —Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Calvin Bledsoe’s journey begins with the death of his mother. An internationally known theologian and an expert on all things John Calvin, she had been the dominant force in her son’s existence, so much so that he never left home—even when he married—and, as a result, never grew up. At his mother’s funeral, Calvin is introduced to his aunt Beatrice, a woman he had not even known existed. Beatrice immediately makes it clear to Calvin that she is now in charge of his life, and the first thing she is going to do is whisk him off to Europe with her for a grand adventure. As Calvin and his aunt traverse the continent, it becomes apparent that her clandestine behavior is leading leading him into danger. Facing a menagerie of antiquities thieves, secret agents, religious fanatics, and an ex-wife who is stalking him, Calvin begins to suspect there might be some meaning behind the madness. Maybe he’s not the person he thought he was? Perhaps no one is ever who they appear to be? But there’s little time for soul-searching, as Calvin first has to figure out why he has been kidnapped, why his aunt has disappeared, and who the hell burned down his house in Maine. Powered by pitch-perfect dialogue, lovable characters, and surprising optimism, Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe? is a modern-day take on Graham Greene’s classic Travels with My Aunt, a novel about grabbing life, and holding on—wherever it may take you.

Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?

Therapist Dr. Pahnee, hired by young Miller Le Ray's mother, finds his own reality unraveling as he tries to deal with a patient dedicated to telling the truth who is unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, while grappling with his own growing attraction to the boy's mother.

Exley

"A collection of stories featuring absurdist plot twists and trenchant wit"--

stories

The price of the haircut

Search for The Arsonists Guide to the Homes of New England

Sam Pulsifer is determined to put his past behind him after serving a prison term for torching an American literary landmark and killing two people in the blaze, but when the homes of notable American writers begin to go up in smoke, his history makes him

An over-educated, middle-class young man in a depressed, working-class town, twenty-seven-year-old Lamar Kerry faces a host of challenges as he deals with his mother's chronic illness, the disappointment in him of his father and girlfriend, the disappearance of his town's only Hispanic, who is missing and presumed dead, and the responsibilities of becoming an adult. A first novel. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

The Ordinary White Boy

A satirical spy thriller follows the misadventures of a political cartoonist, who after triggering uprisings with a controversial comic accepts CIA protection in a small upstate New York town, only to become enmeshed in a complicated love affair involving several agents. By the best-selling author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England.

The Happiest People in the World

El club de los pir¢manos

The 2000 Winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction judged by Mark Richard.

Stories

What We Won't Do

The stories in this collection occupy a world at once as familiar as a suburban backyard or a southern college's hallowed football field and as strange as a man who buys Savannah, Georgia, and tries to turn it into the perfect Southern city as part of his attempt to win back his estranged wife. The fictional territory of Carrying the Torch , is in short, Brock Clarke's, one in which the surreal and the hilarious share a neighborhood with the painfully real and the sweetly ironic. Here readers will encounter characters dislocated by work and love, by huge losses and life's small dramas, men and women who have migrated South in search of redemption--or at least in the hope of leaving the worst behind.In these tales about what people try to leave and find they can't, about the lies we tell the people we love and the myths we create to make life livable, Marly Swick cites an "exceptional originality" as well as an "amazing emotional resonance, a haunting quality." "Notable for their balance of sentiment and restraint, the music of their language, and the haunting human longing that coexists with the irony and the humor," as Lee Martin remarks, these remarkable stories carry forward a tradition reaching from Flannery O'Connor to John Cheever and Donald Barthelme--and arrive at a brilliance all their own.Brock Clarke is an assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He is the author of the novel The Ordinary White Boy and of What We Won't Do , a short story collection that won the 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction.

Carrying the Torch

From an acclaimed and original writer comes a new collection of stories bursting with absurdist plot twists and laced with trenchant wit. Brock Clarke, author of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and Exley, among other novels, now offers up bite-sized morsels of his trademark social satire that will have readers laughing, and perhaps shifting uncomfortably in their seats. The title story delivers a cringingly biting dissection of racial attitudes in contemporary America, and Clarke also turns his eagle eye to subjects like PTSD, the fate of child actors, and, most especially, marital discord in stories like “Considering Lizzie Borden, Her Axe, My Wife” and “The Misunderstandings.” In “The Pity Palace,” a masterful study in self-absorption and self-delusion, a reclusive husband in Florence, Italy, who believes his wife has left him for a famous novelist, sells tickets to tourists anxious to meet someone more miserable than they. It’s a distinctly Clarkean world, in which readers find themselves reflected back with the distortion of funhouse mirrors—and swept up on a wild ride of heart-wrenching insight and self-discovery.

The Price of the Haircut

Roman

Leitfaden zum Abfackeln von Schriftstellerresidenzen

A lot of remarkable things have happened in the life of Sam Pulsifer, the hapless hero of this incendiary novel, beginning with the ten years he spent in prison for accidentally burning down Emily Dickinson's house and unwittingly killing two people. Emerging at age twenty-eight, he creates a new life and identity as a husband and father. But when the homes of other famous New England writers suddenly go up in smoke, he must prove his innocence by uncovering the identity of this literary-minded arsonist. In the league of such contemporary classics as A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England is an utterly original story about truth and honesty, life and the imagination.

In fifteen sharply engaging essays, acclaimed novelist and short story writer Brock Clarke examines the art (and artifice) of fiction from unpredictable and entertaining angles, positing through a slant scrutiny of place, voice, and syntax what fiction can--and can't--do. ("Very: is there a weaker, sadder, more futile word in the English language?") Clarke supports his case with passages by and about writers who have both influenced and irritated him. Pieces such as "What the Cold Can Teach Us," "The Case for Meanness," "Why Good Literature Makes Us Bad People," and "The Novel is Dead; Long Live the Novel" celebrate the achievements of master practitioners such as Muriel Spark, Joy Williams, Donald Barthelme, Flannery O'Connor, Paul Beatty, George Saunders, John Cheever, and Colson Whitehead. Of particular interest to Clarke is the contentious divide between fiction and memoir, which he investigates using recent and relevant critical arguments, also tackling ancillary forms such as "fictional memoir" and the autobiographical novel. Anecdotal and unabashed, rigorous and piercingly perceptive--not to mention flat-out funny--I, Grape; or The Case for Fiction is a love letter to and a passionate defense of the discipline to which its author has devoted his life and mind. It is also an attempt to eff the ineffable: "That is one of the basic tenets of this book: when we write fiction, surprising things sometimes happen, especially when fiction writers take advantage of their chosen form's contrarian ability to surprise."

Brock Clarke

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