Add free shipping to your order with these great books
Genoa - Paul Metcalf

Genoa

By: Paul Metcalf, Rick Moody (Introduction by)

Paperback | 14 July 2015

At a Glance

Paperback


RRP $29.99

$26.25

12%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $6.56 with

Aims to ship in 5 to 10 business days

"[Genoa] invites us to pass our minds down a new but ancient track, to become, ourselves, both fact and fiction, and to discover something true about the geography of time."—William Gass, The New York Times

"Genoa is a spectacular confrontation with Melville''s work, the journals of Columbus and molecular biology—all folded into a hallucinatory narrative about two brothers and their different paths through the American century."—Publishers Weekly

"Much like his great-grandfather, Herman Melville, Paul Metcalf brings an extraordinary diversity of materials into the complex patterns of analogy and metaphor, to affect a common term altogether brilliant in its imagination."—Robert Creeley

"A unique work of historical and literary imagination, eloquent and powerful. I know of nothing like it."—Howard Zinn

First published in 1965, Genoa is Paul Metcalf''s purging of the burden of his relationship to his great-grandfather Herman Melville. In his signature polyphonic style, a storm-tossed Indiana attic becomes the site of a reckoning with the life of Melville; with Columbus, and his myth; and between two brothers—one, an MD who refuses to practice; the other, an executed murderer. Genoa is a triumph, a novel without peer, that vibrates and sings a quintessentially American song.

Paul Metcalf (1917–99) was an American writer and the great-grandson of Herman Melville. His three volume Collected Works were published by Coffee House Press in 1996.

Industry Reviews
"Metcalf's masterpiece undermines the idea of authorship while showing a way forward for the novel."--Stephen Sparks, The Scofield "by cobbling together disparate extracts from a variety of sources, Metcalf has recreated that uniquely readerly revelation of finding in unrelated literature of all kinds resonances and echoes that inform one's lived experience."-- Full Stop "Metcalf's investigation of the darkness lying at the heart of human existence is bold, unsentimental and unsparing. One of his quotes from Melville tells it all: "Bail out your individual boat, if you can, but the sea abides."--Lively Arts "Any great book--and yes, Genoa is emphatically great--transcends the tricks in how it was made. It's hard to explain the unique power of what Metcalf has written; better, perhaps, to simply acknowledge that something powerful is happening. Case in point: I seem to have settled on writing whoa in the margins of many pages."-- Electric Literature "There isn't much that one can compare [Genoa] to: in both its form and its incorporation of other works, Anne Carson comes to mind, but in broader strokes rather than more specific ones... Genoa is a slippery book, a literary collage that nonetheless advances with a startling momentum."-- LitHub "A singular novel, blending history and fiction, Metcalf's book follows two brothers, one of whom narrates, as passages from the journals of Melville and Christopher Columbus are woven into the story. It works! And is best pondered seaside."-- Vanity Fair "Fascinating and engaging."--Vol. 1 Brooklyn

More in Modern & Contemporary Fiction

The Wolf Tree - Laura McCluskey

SIGNED COPY

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$20.95

40%
OFF
Dream Count - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$24.50

30%
OFF
One Hundred Years of Betty - Debra Oswald

RRP $34.99

$22.75

35%
OFF
We Do Not Part - Han Kang

RRP $35.00

$26.75

24%
OFF
Funny Story - Emily Henry

Paperback

RRP $22.99

$14.95

35%
OFF
The Dark Mirror : The instant SUNDAY TIMES bestselling fantasy - Samantha Shannon
Haunting Adeline : Cat and Mouse Duet - H. D. Carlton

RRP $34.99

$29.80

15%
OFF
Twist : The instant Irish Times top 5 bestseller - Colum McCann

RRP $32.99

$22.75

31%
OFF
Show Don't Tell - Curtis Sittenfeld

RRP $34.99

$26.95

23%
OFF
Three Days in June - Anne Tyler

RRP $32.99

$25.50

23%
OFF
Where the Birds Call Her Name - Claire van Ryn

RRP $34.99

$19.95

43%
OFF
Wild Dark Shore - Charlotte McConaghy

SIGNED COPY

RRP $34.99

$19.95

43%
OFF
A Lesson in Dying : An Inspector Ramsay Novel 1 - Ann Cleeves
Famous Last Words - Gillian McAllister

RRP $34.99

$28.50

19%
OFF
Signs of Damage - Diana Reid

SIGNED COPY

RRP $34.99

$18.00

49%
OFF
My Favourite Mistake - Marian Keyes

RRP $22.99

$14.95

35%
OFF
Better Days - Claire Zorn

Paperback

RRP $34.99

$31.25

11%
OFF
Like Water For Chocolate : No.1 international bestseller - Laura Esquivel
The Lamplighter's Bookshop - Sophie Austin

RRP $29.99

$19.95

33%
OFF
The Deadly Dispute : A Tea Ladies Mystery - Amanda Hampson

RRP $34.99

$19.95

43%
OFF