American Spirit: A Novel

By Dan Kennedy

While Matthew, a forty-something media government, unearths his task, well-being, and marriage crumbling, he is going local: Lives in his automobile. Dips his toe in drug-running. Contemplates music lyrics. Takes a very sturdy pottery category. ahead of lengthy he’s on a stumbling, agonizingly humorous imaginative and prescient quest that takes him from a strip-mall parking zone to Yellowstone nationwide Park to a Bali clinical health center, from an not going romance with a Hollywood agent focusing on scorching younger vampire roles to severe RVing with a disgraced Wall road dealer.

In this heroic and hilarious debut novel, Dan Kennedy supplies us an everyman who takes us to the neon-lit edges of up to date American existence.

Show description

Quick preview of American Spirit: A Novel PDF

Best Humor books

More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea

Tom Reynolds is an ambulance employee. On any given day he may be attacked via strangers, sworn at by means of motorists, puked on, coated in blood, and different even more disagreeable components. He might support to bring a child within the morning and witness the final moments of a demise guy within the afternoon. He offers with highway injuries, knife assaults, family violence, drug overdoses, forget, and affliction.

Breakfast on Pluto: A Novel

Breakfast on Pluto, Patrick McCabe's lyrical and haunting new novel, grew to become a no 1 bestseller in eire, stayed at the bestseller record for months, and was once nominated for the Booker Prize, one of many world's so much prestigious literary awards. With terrific delicacy and sophisticated perception and intimation, McCabe creates Mr.

Nectar: A Novel of Temptation

Ramona Drottoveo, an albino, is a chambermaid at a lush Italian property. uncommon by means of the intoxicating smell she exudes, Ramona is despised by way of all ladies and cherished by means of all males, whose inexhaustible lust she eagerly satisfies. lifestyles alterations whilst her husband dies after getting to know his bride with one other guy on their marriage ceremony evening.

The Serpent of Venice: A Novel

Manhattan instances bestselling writer Christopher Moore channels William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe within the Serpent of Venice, a satiric Venetian gothic that brings again the Pocket of puppy Snogging, the eponymous hero of idiot, together with his sidekick, Drool, and puppy monkey, Jeff. Venice, decades in the past.

Extra resources for American Spirit: A Novel

Show sample text content

I suppose. ” “I’ll inform him you're keen on all of his paintings. ” yet suicide is messy, finally. And unhappy in that it’s so opposed and vicious to the physique, that's a pleasant physique and had not anything to do with this morning going like this. “Fair adequate. although I haven’t visible it all. I’ve obvious those, the miniature, what are those, you will name them jugs, might be? ” “You’ve visible every thing he’s created. go searching… the sky, the bushes, the grass, every person you’ve met, you your self, even me, even my paintings that you’re appreciating. do you need to inform him your self? ” If now not suicide, then perhaps compulsive trip. simply fucking going locations, just like the girl who wrote the booklet approximately consuming and slumbering and praying, might be. yet it’s time to answer, time to speak back, each one lip so leaden now, and quite a bit paintings to make greater than a slit with. And what do you assert to this, since you can’t holiday people’s spirit. American spirit is these types of humans have, and also you can’t roll it up and beat them with it, although abuse is arguably exactly the factor that might cause them to attention-grabbing ultimately. There needs to be a manner out of this. Matthew says the single factor left in him for this. And with that, walks away with a tepid wave goodbye, considering: that's quickly turning into my favourite prayer. “Oh… fuck, I don’t comprehend, ya understand? ” So what? So what to all of this; so what that Matthew is a guy who orders his mugs premade in bins of a dozen; the place is the crime in that? the place, thinks Matthew, is the crime in now not desirous to take a seat within the mountains of Upstate manhattan staying up all evening to stoke a wooden fireplace within the slightly maternal stomach of a kiln whereas hearing a previously fecund and virile folks singer coo approximately serenity via a bit set of transportable audio system? Matthew attempted to join the pottery reasonable, however the pottery reasonable is a mongrel complain bent on degenerate starvation and nourished through fistfuls of a bloody mulch of purism and exclusion. good, the pottery reasonable is ready to be tamed. And one other factor, it’s now not misplaced on Matthew that now not one in all his classmates from the neighborhood middle craft classification has staked declare the following. go searching and never one Jan, Ruthie, Suzanne, Lori, or Lynn. There’s the single ethical and social compass one desire stick to in navigating this pottery reasonable; the genuine offers at the scene aren’t even exhibiting up right here. the object is fueled, in its place, via a coed knot of Nathans, Melissas, Skylers, and Rebeccas. for each ten resigned grey ponytails, there’s one fuckable, loveable factor simply slightly having talked herself into spending her nights with ovens and glaze-clogged sinks to save lots of her middle from one other dead-end guy doing the type of math that tells his middle to run if potential young children will be ten while she’s passing 40 quick. Matthew attempts with a number of them, yet no stare provides chase. Matthew, chipped and cracked items to them, really—long legs, eyes at half-mast, skinny and too hungry for whatever, hair impending longish, matted, a fast annoying jaw on a protracted face braced with the cologne of failure and optimism—just one other mouth and moan, bold and on my own.

Download PDF sample

Rated 4.91 of 5 – based on 16 votes