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American Purgatorio: A Novel, by John Haskell
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A mesmerizing first novel about a man, a woman, and a disappearance.
"I'm from Chicago originally. I went to New York, married a girl named Anne, and was in the middle of living happily ever after when something happened."
So begins John Haskell's mesmerizing first novel, American Purgatorio, the story of a happily married man who discovers, as he walks out of a convenience store, that his life has suddenly vanished. In cool, precise prose, written as both a detective story and a meditation on the seven deadly sins, Haskell tells a story that is by turns tragic and comic, compassionate and gripping. From the brownstones of New York City to the sandy beaches of Southern California, American Purgatorio follows the journey of a man whose object of desire is both heartbreaking and ephemeral. It confirms John Haskell's reputation as one of our most intriguing new writers, "one of those rare authors who makes language seem limitless in its possibilities" (Susan Reynolds, Los Angeles Times).
John Haskell is the author of a short-story collection, I Am Not Jackson Pollack. His work has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review, Conjunctions, The Believer, and Ploughshares. He is a contributor to the radio show The Next Best Thing. He lives in Brooklyn.
"I'm from Chicago originally. I went to New York, married a girl named Anne, and was in the middle of living happily ever after when something happened."
So begins John Haskell's mesmerizing first novel, American Purgatorio, the story of a man who discovers, as he walks out of a convenience store, that his life has suddenly vanished. In cool, precise prose, Haskell tells a tale—at once a detective story and a mediation on the seven deadly sins—that is by turns tragic and comic, compassionate and gripping. From the brownstones of New York City to the sandy beaches of Southern California, American Purgatorio follows the journey of a man whose object of desire is both heartbreaking and ephemeral. It confirms John Haskell's reputation as one of our most intriguing new writers, "one of those rare authors who makes language seem limitless in its possibilities (Susan Salter Reynold, Los Angeles Times).
"American Purgatorio, John Haskell's gutsy, weirdly engrossing first novel, is a domestic interpretation of Dante. It's a road story divided into seven sections, each named for a deadly sin, with a hero, Jack, who pursues his lost love from Brooklyn to San Diego . . . Haskell, the author of a quirky collection of stories, I Am Not Jackson Pollack, can offer startling visual detail . . . Turn the last page, and you'll realize that this strange, moving book has done just what a first novel should: it has left an impression."—Taylor Antrim, The New York Times Book Review "If it's not for his poignant and unmatched blend of pop culture and literary intelligence, then the reason Haskell is the United States' most significant new voice is because of sentences like this one: 'As I watched her walk I told myself, This is what I have to do, meaning, This is what I feel, meaning, This is who I think I have to be.'"—Lee Henderson, The Globe and Mail (Toronto) "Haskell, whose short story collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock promised the raw wit of thirtysomething passive-aggressive lit, now proves that he can keep it going for the novel, adding mystery and kindness to his palette."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
"Haunting . . . It would have been easy for John Haskell to turn this novel into a mere literary trick, drawing in the reader with technical virtuosity. But the grace of it all is that he infuses this strange world with the sense of consequence, that as the novel progresses, we become more invested in the narrator's life, more weighted with the sense of his loss. Haskell puts his finger on the anxiety of the present moment, the struggle to remain there, holding onto those little glimpses of wisdom that seems to vanish as quickly as they arrive."—Susan Larson, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
"This first novel by the author of the story collection I Am Not Jackson Pollock has a riveting beginning: the narrator walks out of a service center on a New Jersey parkway to discover that his wife, Anne, has disappeared in their car. Unable to wait for an explanation, he purchases a used car from a neighbor and begins a journey from New York to San Diego that is dictated by coincidence and his determined belief that Anne is still alive. Each chapter is loosely based on one of the seven deadly sins and levels from Dante's Purgatorio and is populated by various characters, especially women who have some mystical relationship to Anne that the narrator tries to interpret. The tone becomes foreboding as he struggles to define reality and what inhabits only his imagination. 'Like sunscreen,' he reasons, 'you have to put up a shield or membrane that keeps that side or that thought or that vision from disrupting what's on this side.' Characters like the homeless beggar Polino and the complex and sometimes comical plot keep the reader glued to every page until the astonishing ending. Highly recommended."—Library Journal
"A man scrutinizes what it means to live and love during a cross-country search for his missing wife in a prickly, penetrating novel by the author of I Am Not Jackson Pollock. After stopping for gas on his way to his mother-in-law's house, the narrator, Jack, emerges from a convenience store to find that his car and his wife, Anne, are nowhere to be found. After making his way back home, Jack discovers a U.S. map marked with an apparent route; imagining that this will lead him to his wife, he buys another car and sets off. Haskell twists the essential mystery—what happened to Anne?—into a meticulous, probing investigation of one man's desires, fears and coping mechanisms, a tactic that somewhat slows the narrative but results in existential chewiness. As Jack makes his way to Kentucky, Colorado, California, he encounters odd but sympathetic strangers, many of whom are likewise journeying, most of whom aid him and some of whom seem like reflections of himself. The cool, intentionally deadened prose can make for difficult reading; that Haskell turns the notion of the unreliable narrator on its head not once but twice will redeem everything for some readers and make others feel tricked. Chapters named for the seven deadly sins (in Latin) signal Jack's path through pride and sloth, through a world that feels both banally familiar and utterly alien—an American purgatory—in this strange and compelling novel."—Publishers Weekly
- Sales Rank: #2038060 in Books
- Published on: 2005-01-04
- Released on: 2004-12-22
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: .90" h x 5.88" w x 8.32" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 248 pages
From Publishers Weekly
A man scrutinizes what it means to live and love during a cross-country search for his missing wife in a prickly, penetrating novel by the author of I Am Not Jackson Pollock. After stopping for gas on his way to his mother-in-law's house, the narrator, Jack, emerges from a convenience store to find that his car and his wife, Anne, are nowhere to be found. After making his way back home, Jack discovers a U.S. map marked with an apparent route; imagining that this will lead him to his wife, he buys another car and sets off. Haskell twists the essential mystery—what happened to Anne?—into a meticulous, probing investigation of one man's desires, fears and coping mechanisms, a tactic that somewhat slows the narrative but results in existential chewiness. As Jack makes his way to Kentucky, Colorado, California, he encounters odd but sympathetic strangers, many of whom are likewise journeying, most of whom aid him and some of whom seem like reflections of himself. The cool, intentionally deadened prose can make for difficult reading; that Haskell turns the notion of the unreliable narrator on its head not once but twice will redeem everything for some readers and make others feel tricked. Chapters named for the seven deadly sins (in Latin) signal Jack's path through pride and sloth, through a world that feels both banally familiar and utterly alien—an American purgatory—in this strange and compelling novel.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
A man's life changes forever when he walks out of a gas station and into a convenience store. His waiting wife has vanished, and the narrator's life takes on a new quest--to find her.^B So begins Haskell's first novel, and the nameless narrator begins a winding journey in search of his lost wife and for his former life. From a leafy block in Brooklyn to the beaches of Southern California, he searches desperately, and his journey is both heroic and heartbreaking. His peregrinations are linked to the seven deadly sins, and he encounters a strange cast of characters until he arrives, brokenhearted and broke, on the beaches of San Diego. What he discovers along the way is that memory is often selective and revelatory, that strangers are not always kind (but they often are), and that life-changing experiences (good and bad) can be just around the corner. Haskell's short story collection I Am Not Jackson Pollack (2003)^B received praise, and his first novel is equally laudable. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"I liked John Haskell’s American Purgatorio--that is to say, I liked its tone--from the first page; by page twenty I was completely in love with it and shortly after that I began to think that it might turn out to be a great book. At the same time, since it was so weird, such a high-wire act, I worried, briefly, that Haskell might blow it in some way. Such worries proved short-lived: American Purgatorio gets better and better. It is wildly original, wonderful, amazing, tender, heart-breaking. It’s also--and this is remarkable in a book that is so funny--extremely wise. I was going to say your life will be improved by reading it but I think that gets things the wrong way round; your life will be impoverished if you don’t." --Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage
Praise for I Am Not Jackson Pollock:
"In these wholly unique meditations on what it is to be human...Haskell makes the familiar his own--playing with language and history, turning time inside out, he delivers our culture back to us--made entirely new." --A.M. Holmes
"John Haskell's I am Not Jackson Pollock is a wonderfully intelligent, audacious and perverse collection of . . . what exactly? Fiction? Gossip? Film studies? Iconograph? Liberty taking? Here's a book that defies the usual categories -- but one thing's for sure, I savored every mythic, mesmerizing word of it." --Jim Crace
"Stunningly sophisticated stories in which everything is new." --Susan Reynolds, Los Angeles Times
"Dazzlingly inventive." --Elle
"The highly original, Hemingway-esque prose is just as colorful and provocative as Pollock's paintings." --Karyn L. Barr, Entertainment Weekly
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
(3.5) "As long as I had my need I was able to move forward."
By Luan Gaines
This strange novel requires a certain mindset, a willingness to follow the protagonist through a series of actions that make no sense in an ordinary context. But that is the point. This man is engaged in an effort to control his environment and limit his reactions to the world around him. When he walks outside after buying snacks in a gas station-convenience store, his wife, Anne, is missing, along with their car. His reaction to this event is to wait at the gas station for her to return. When she doesn't, he walks from New Jersey back to Brooklyn, abandoning their trip to Anne's mother in Nyack, New York without even calling his mother-in-law to tell her what has happened. He doesn't call the police or act as if anything is amiss, simply returns home and goes to bed. He continues in this disjointed manner with occasional fits of rage, generally carefully monitoring himself. Within a couple of days, he buys a used car and begins a journey to recover his lost wife, using a map she has circled in strategic places. Although he has difficulty connecting to those around him, he travels across the country, the author beautifully describing people and places with a sense of immediacy and a fine talent for detail.
The narrative abstract becomes meditation in American Purgatorio, and an exploration of the seven deadly sins, difficult territory to traverse, requiring the reader to trust where the writer is taking him. Fantasy must be tempered with fact, enough to pin the character to earth while his mind drifts elsewhere in pursuit of a loved one. Clinging to the details of each place he inhabits, the protagonist is barely anchored, yet he manages to tap into reality often enough to maintain a sense of direction, his goal inexorably closer with each place he visits. Not quite a mystery in this mystery, the novel is as well a remarkable travelogue of terrain and the human spirit, wherein one man's deception is another man's heart break, a memorable journey toward self-realization and the nature of the world as we perceive it. Luan Gaines/ 2006.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
I enjoyed this book, but its not for everyone....
By MLRapp
From page one I was hooked on this fast-paced, interesting debut novel about a happliy married man who goes into a gas station to get a snack and comes out to find his wife and car missing. The book is written in rather simple prose, which makes for an extremely fast read, however, there is a lot of depth and meaning underlying the simplicity of the words and sentences. So despite reading quickly, you're left pondering how John Haskell was able to so precisely capture raw human emotion, while using such deadpan prose. He has a unique writing style, but one which is extremely admirable, as he so wonderfully taps into how the protagnoist must have felt at each stage of his "search" for his wife, while experiencing each of the seven deadly sins (named in Latin for each part of the book).
I really enjoyed this novel, but don't think its for everyone, so I have a hard time recommending so highly in this review. If you're looking for something different, very well-written, and which captures the complexity of human emotion during a difficult time, this book will likely interest you. If you're on-the-fence, I recommend reading the first chapter before purchasing it, to get an idea about the style in which it is written.
I would likely read another novel by this author, as I believe he is very gifted, and provides interesting insight into the human condition.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Read it again
By Cricket
This book is astonishing: a beautiful, lyrical, philosophical work that needs to be read with care and due attention, (and not as if it were merely the latest offering from some TV book club). This is the real thing; it doesn't go out to win you over, it works on its own terms, and asks you to come along with it on an amazing journey - a journey which is more than worthwhile.
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