Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A novel - Softcover
In his first novel, Elect Mr. Robinson For a Better World, Donald Antrim demonstrates all of the skill that critics have hailed in his subsequent work: the pitch-perfect ear, the cunning imagination, and the uncanny control of a narrative at once familiar and incandescently strange.
In Pete Robinson’s seaside suburban town, things have, well, fallen into disrepair. The voters have de-funded schools, the mayor has been drawn and quartered by an angry mob of townsmen, and Turtle Pond Park is stocked with claymore mines. Pete Robinson, third grade teacher with a 1:32 scale model of an Inquisition dungeon in his basement, wants to open a new school, and in his effort to do so he stumbles upon another idea: he needs to run for mayor. Uniquely hilarious, this novel is a horrifyingly insightful tale of a world not so very different from the one in which we live.
In Pete Robinson’s seaside suburban town, things have, well, fallen into disrepair. The voters have de-funded schools, the mayor has been drawn and quartered by an angry mob of townsmen, and Turtle Pond Park is stocked with claymore mines. Pete Robinson, third grade teacher with a 1:32 scale model of an Inquisition dungeon in his basement, wants to open a new school, and in his effort to do so he stumbles upon another idea: he needs to run for mayor. Uniquely hilarious, this novel is a horrifyingly insightful tale of a world not so very different from the one in which we live.
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From the Back Cover:
?The author?s surreal vision is both imaginative and wholly his own?. A striking literary discovery.??Boston Globe
About the Author:
Donald Antrim is the author of three novels, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World, The Hundred Brothers and The Verificationist. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVintage
- Publication date2001
- ISBN 10 0375725032
- ISBN 13 9780375725036
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages192
- Rating
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Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World : A Novel
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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
(2001)
ISBN 10: 0375725032
ISBN 13: 9780375725036
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Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A novel
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!. Seller Inventory # S_383608095
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.55. Seller Inventory # G0375725032I4N00
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. No Jacket. Pages can have notes/highlighting. Spine may show signs of wear. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.55. Seller Inventory # G0375725032I3N00
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: As New. No Jacket. Pages are clean and are not marred by notes or folds of any kind. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less 0.55. Seller Inventory # G0375725032I2N00
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Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World + The Emerald Light in the Air: Stories [ARC]
Published by
Vintage Contemporaries + Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(2001)
ISBN 10: 0375725032
ISBN 13: 9780375725036
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Book Description Soft cover. Condition: As New. 1st Edition. First Vintage Contemporaries Edition, March 2001, 1st printing. Sold along with the advance reader's paperback of Antrim's story collection from 2014. Bright, clean & tight copies, unread, in AS NEW condition. "Pete Robinson never meant to suggest the drawing-and-quartering of Mayor Kunkel, although he did mention that Toyotas and Subarus might make excellent substitutes for horses. But, after all, the fact that Mayor Jim Kunkel had first fired Stinger missiles into the Botanical Garden reflecting pool, massacring innocent picnickers, did require some kind of response. In this lovely seaside community, Turtle Pond Park is stocked with claymore mines and most houses are fronted by moats swimming with water moccasins or pits filled with wooden spikes. Amid all this bedlam, Pete Robinson, former third-grade teacher and amateur medievalist with a 1:32 scale model Inquisition-era interrogation chamber in his basement, has an epiphany: he should run for mayor. Here, in Donald Antrim's first novel, are the elements that have made him one of the most critically acclaimed writers of our day: the unerringly astute and skewed observations, the precise and brilliant language, and the uncanny ability to create wildly funny narrative out of the margins of our culture." [publisher copy] "A dark, suburban fantasy, richly funny, even whimsical, and bizarrely familiar."--The New Yorker. + THE EMERALD LIGHT IN THE AIR: Stories from 2014. "Nothing is simple for the men and women in Donald Antrim's stories. As they do the things we all do--bum a cigarette at a party, stroll with a girlfriend down Madison Avenue, take a kid to the zoo--they're confronted with their own uncooperative selves. These artists, writers, lawyers, teachers, and actors make fools of themselves, spiral out of control, have delusions of grandeur, despair, and find it hard to imagine a future. They talk, they listen, they hope, they dream. They look for communion in a city, both beautiful and menacing, which can promise so much and yield so little. But they are hungry for life. They want to love and be loved. These stories, all published in The New Yorker over the last fifteen years, make it clear that Antrim is one of America's most important writers. His work has been praised by his significant contemporaries, including Jonathan Franzen, Thomas Pynchon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and George Saunders, who described The Verificationist as 'one of the most pleasure-giving, funny, perverse, complicated, addictive novels of the last twenty years.' And here is Antrim's best book yet: the story collection that reveals him as a master of the form." [publisher copy] "The seven gripping stories in Antrim's long-awaited debut collection showcase the author's ability to employ surreal and traditional modes to describe the emotional demons plaguing his characters. Antrim is well attuned to the idiosyncrasies that define the rhythm of a relationship, and is particularly adept at giving shape to the complications that inevitably arise between lovers. A collection of great depth to be read, reread, and above all, relished."--Publishers Weekly. "These Antrim stories--brilliant, antic, emotional--are tremendously funny and moving. I read them with that dreadful exhilaration that only the best writers can elicit."--Joseph O'Neill, Publishers Weekly. Pristine paperbacks w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, square & tight bindings. These first & latest Antrim fictions are remarkable & quite presentable as a set. [See my listing RUB2477 for his 2nd novel in paperback; RUB1589 for his 3rd novel in a First Edition; RUB1590 for his first memoir.]. Seller Inventory # RUB2476
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