Absolute Away
Published on 30. May 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
212 pages
978-1-950539-95-6 (ISBN)
Description
With Lance Olsen's signature flair, Absolute Away is an innovative narrative triptych, a story of one life reimagined.
The first movement tells the story of Edie Metzger, a little Jewish girl who bit Hermann Goering's lip so hard it bled at a Nazi book-burning rally in 1933. In the second, in 1956, grown Edie is the passenger clinging to the backseat of the Oldsmobile 88 convertible driven by Jackson Pollock, moments before it plunges off the road. In the third, the narrative embarks into an ever-unspooling universe of Edies that might have lived-Edie's gender, past, and consciousness flying forever farther apart.
Absolute Away is a novel about travel in its largest sense-about the self, the past, the future, aging, ideas, relationships, our own mortal being(s) as transitive verbs, and how what and who we are connects to everything else.
The first movement tells the story of Edie Metzger, a little Jewish girl who bit Hermann Goering's lip so hard it bled at a Nazi book-burning rally in 1933. In the second, in 1956, grown Edie is the passenger clinging to the backseat of the Oldsmobile 88 convertible driven by Jackson Pollock, moments before it plunges off the road. In the third, the narrative embarks into an ever-unspooling universe of Edies that might have lived-Edie's gender, past, and consciousness flying forever farther apart.
Absolute Away is a novel about travel in its largest sense-about the self, the past, the future, aging, ideas, relationships, our own mortal being(s) as transitive verbs, and how what and who we are connects to everything else.
Reviews / Votes
"A surreal story bridgeshistorical trauma with existential nightmares. ... Olsen depicts the horrors of
history and more speculative anxieties with equal power. Impossible to
classify, this novel raises big questions about memory and identity." -Kirkus
Reviews
"Through the roiling thunderstorm and utter marvelousness of his exuberant imagination, Lance Olsen rescues Edith Metzger from the oblivion of her violent death to reinvent her with the crackling skinfizz and full-body thrill of a Jackson Pollock painting. This jazz improvisation of a novel will open and wreck you as you enter the miraculously weird shimmerings of the infinite and absolute away where identity shreds into a proliferation of possibilities-where anyone might have been, might still become, wildly, spectacularly other."
~ Melanie Rae Thon, composer of As If Fire Could Hide Us
"I can't decide if Lance Olsen is a magician or a wizard or
an open channel to some electric ether where pitch-perfect sentences and
formally daring narratives tumble through to save us from the soul-annihilating
mundanity of most American fiction. This novel of recounting and re-imagining
the life and lives of Edie Metzger will haunt you in all the best ways. Absolute
Away dazzles."
-Robert Lopez, author of A Better Class of People
"What makes Absolute Away so impressive is
Olsen's ability to dive into two historical moments in a way that renders them
palpable and real, and then, having established the possibilities of the mirror
of realism, to tap that mirror sharply in a way that spreads cracks throughout
its surface, multiplying and complicating the real. A novel of possible and
impossible worlds that is above all a compelling, provocative read."
-Brian Evenson, The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Westland
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 137 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
272 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-950539-95-6 (9781950539956)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
LANCE OLSEN is author of more than 25 books of and about innovative writing, including, most recently, the novels My Red Heaven (Dzanc, 2020) and Dreamlives of Debris (Dzanc, 2017). His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, such as Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, Fiction International, Village Voice, BOMB, McSweeney's, and Best American Non-Required Reading.
A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency,
two-time N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a
Fulbright Scholar, he taught experimental narrative theory and practice
at the University of Utah.
A Guggenheim, Berlin Prize, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency,
two-time N.E.A. Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize recipient, as well as a
Fulbright Scholar, he taught experimental narrative theory and practice
at the University of Utah.