| Author: | Matthew McIntosh | ISBN: | 9780802189172 |
| Publisher: | Grove Atlantic | Publication: | October 3, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Grove Press | Language: | English |
| Author: | Matthew McIntosh |
| ISBN: | 9780802189172 |
| Publisher: | Grove Atlantic |
| Publication: | October 3, 2017 |
| Imprint: | Grove Press |
| Language: | English |
Thirteen years in the making, theMystery.doc is a masterful work from a brilliant young writer exploring love, family, death, technology, and the American Dream. Brilliant in its innovative structure, the book is nonetheless profoundly emotional—many early readers have remarked that they cried and laughed while reading. This is experimental fiction, but deeply accessible and with a huge heart.
theMystery.doc tests the boundaries of the novel’s form. Internet searches, online helpdesk conversations and lines of code mix with references to canonical works of literature, alchemical manuscripts, stills from Golden Age Hollywood, and memoiristic transcripts of Matt’s own conversations with family and friends to tell the story of a man with amnesia who discovers a blank document called themystery.doc on his computer.
Although the book is 1,700 pages in length, it takes the same time to read as a normal novel, it is only around 140,000 words in length. The innovative layout of text, plus the use of images and textual art make this book an extremely quick read on a page-by-page basis.
The book will be a beautiful object, printed on lightweight paper, with custom endpapers, a ribbon, and images printed in four colors where appropriate. We expect major review attention and hope for a profile around the publishing of this astonishing book that is over a decade in the making and once ran to 20,000 pages.
Grove will give away a free ebook with each print hardcover purchase, administered through the website themysterybook.com. This is one of the first times this kind of bundling has been tried in a big way in recent years, and we think it will help draw attention to the book, which is read fantastically in both forms, e-book and print.
The early response to the book has been fantastic. Alan Moore compared the book to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and said that it “stakes out its territory in the unbroken ground of a new and unsettling American century.” Rachel Kushner described the book as “ambitious in the good sense,” claiming that McIntosh “attempts something new, with new vitality, and at that, absolutely succeeds.” Great indie booksellers including Rick Simonson, Robert Sindelar, Mark LaFramboise, and Keaton Patterson are early fans and have called the book: “smile-inducing and compulsive” and “deeply affecting and moving.”
Mathew McIntosh’s widely acclaimed debut, Well, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and praised by writers such as Donald Revell, David Shields, Hubert Selby Jr., and Chris Offutt, who called McIntosh “the new outlaw of American literature, the top writer of his generation.”
theMystery.doc is particularly resonant in our current political climate, exploring themes of political upheaval, terrorism, digital media, and the alienation that the information age brings.
For readers of Mark Danielewski, Thomas Pynchon, Will Self, David Foster Wallace.
Thirteen years in the making, theMystery.doc is a masterful work from a brilliant young writer exploring love, family, death, technology, and the American Dream. Brilliant in its innovative structure, the book is nonetheless profoundly emotional—many early readers have remarked that they cried and laughed while reading. This is experimental fiction, but deeply accessible and with a huge heart.
theMystery.doc tests the boundaries of the novel’s form. Internet searches, online helpdesk conversations and lines of code mix with references to canonical works of literature, alchemical manuscripts, stills from Golden Age Hollywood, and memoiristic transcripts of Matt’s own conversations with family and friends to tell the story of a man with amnesia who discovers a blank document called themystery.doc on his computer.
Although the book is 1,700 pages in length, it takes the same time to read as a normal novel, it is only around 140,000 words in length. The innovative layout of text, plus the use of images and textual art make this book an extremely quick read on a page-by-page basis.
The book will be a beautiful object, printed on lightweight paper, with custom endpapers, a ribbon, and images printed in four colors where appropriate. We expect major review attention and hope for a profile around the publishing of this astonishing book that is over a decade in the making and once ran to 20,000 pages.
Grove will give away a free ebook with each print hardcover purchase, administered through the website themysterybook.com. This is one of the first times this kind of bundling has been tried in a big way in recent years, and we think it will help draw attention to the book, which is read fantastically in both forms, e-book and print.
The early response to the book has been fantastic. Alan Moore compared the book to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and said that it “stakes out its territory in the unbroken ground of a new and unsettling American century.” Rachel Kushner described the book as “ambitious in the good sense,” claiming that McIntosh “attempts something new, with new vitality, and at that, absolutely succeeds.” Great indie booksellers including Rick Simonson, Robert Sindelar, Mark LaFramboise, and Keaton Patterson are early fans and have called the book: “smile-inducing and compulsive” and “deeply affecting and moving.”
Mathew McIntosh’s widely acclaimed debut, Well, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller and praised by writers such as Donald Revell, David Shields, Hubert Selby Jr., and Chris Offutt, who called McIntosh “the new outlaw of American literature, the top writer of his generation.”
theMystery.doc is particularly resonant in our current political climate, exploring themes of political upheaval, terrorism, digital media, and the alienation that the information age brings.
For readers of Mark Danielewski, Thomas Pynchon, Will Self, David Foster Wallace.
