PRAISE FOR JONATHAN BAUMBACH
“[Baumbach’s] style lends itself well to settings of paranoid American noir, a miasma of sunglasses, pistols, and deadpan. For readers who enjoy that ilk, Baumbach delivers a nice, dark magic show.”
“Jonathan Baumbach has been a hero of mine since I started writing. I was then, and remain today, avid for novelists who push the limits of the novel’s form without sacrificing its traditional human juices. Baumbach is just such a writer.”
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MAJOR FICTION
“Jonathan Baumbach’s retrospective collection showcases more than thirty years of work from an underappreciated writer. Baumbach employs a masterfully dispassionate, fiercely intelligent narrative voice whose seeming objectivity is always a faltering front for secret passion and despair…. In his recent stories, Baumbach relies less on the surreal effects he favored in the past, but he remains staunchly independent from the literary mainstream.”
“All fourteen stories in this collection are very good, and several are perfect gems. Baumbach, author of eight previous works of fiction, writes about ordinary people living essentially normal lives, but does so with such inventiveness and humor that their stories are transformed into something extraordinary. His characters bring fresh perspectives to bear on the world. They retell tales, veering from the truth, resculpting it to fit their mood or their audience.... Baumbach is not afraid to take risks with his fiction, and in this collection they pay off handsomely.”
“Jonathan Baumbach is far more than the witty biographer of Major Fiction. The fact is, major fiction would be of lesser rank without him.”
“This wonderful book of stories, if only because of its title, invites comparison and then stands the test: this is major fiction. Which is not to say that the book is not hilarious—it is, and in a major way. Many of us who love contemporary fiction know that Jonathan Baumbach has been doing work of the first order for years; The Life and Times of Major Fiction, if there’s any justice in the literary world, should bring him the wider recognition he deserves.”
“ The Life and Times of Major Fiction is a dazzling sampler of pleasures. Jonathan Baumbach writes gorgeous prose and he has a rare comic/tragic vision, especially of love.”
“This new collection of Baumbach’s stories is fresh and startling, as ever. In The Life and Times of Major Fiction, he seems to reach new heights while cutting deep into the sense of loss that is both public and private. His engagement of the reader is so direct and so masterful that in response we cannot separate our hearts from our heads—and that is the enchantment of good fiction.”
BABBLE
“Baumbach has a real gift for alchemizing fictional ‘autobiography’ into the pure gold of comic terror.”
“Humane, imaginative deftly composed…”
“Touching and wildly funny. Should be read by everyone.”
“A brilliant conceit, endlessly inventive, a book of immense tenderness.”
CHEZ CHARLOTTE AND EMILY
“A wonderful balance of ease and authority, subtlety and surprise, wisdom and playfulness…the balance is almost magical.”
“A brilliant novel…it is playful and unpredictable, a delightful instructive piece of reel life.”
DREAMS OF MOLLY
“It’s comic, almost zany in tone, with a plot that is suspenseful even as it resists interpretation; reading it feels a bit like watching a David Lynch film.”
“A knock at the door of memory, and everything answers, all the more we didn’t know we really did want to know. A beautiful book.”