Albert Goldbarth

Pieces Of Payne Albert Goldbarth First edition

Albert Goldbarth is ?a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart? (Joyce Carol Oates)

How is Eliza?s divorce connected to the rise of twentieth-century quantum physics? Why does the steamy promise of ?a key unlocking a door at a cheap motel along I-35? lead us to a consideration of Moby-Dick? What does one physician?s fake appointment book have to do with Columbus, werewolves, and Fanny Burney?s famously excruciating nineteenth-century mastectomy? Albert Goldbarth sets his story of love?s daily pleasures and griefs upon a foundation of ever-branching footnotes?from the strange worlds of supermarket tabloids and the Legion of Super-Heroes to more contemplative forays into gender politics, Dickens scholarship, and medical anomalies. By taking us on this mind-bending journey, he shows us how our lives are both confused and empowered by the multilayered universe around us.

Pieces of Payne is the first novel by Goldbarth, a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.