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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
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http://www.richardkalich.com

CENTRAL PARK WEST TRILOGY

Richard Kalich

“Central Park West Trilogy” includes three novels, The Nihilesthete, Penthouse F and Charlie P., originally published separately and collected for the first time in a single volume.
Post-modern fables, dark, shocking, perversely funny, wickedly astute, and compulsively readable, they share Kalich's ferocious energy and unique vision. Together, they break down standard notions of plot, character and form a body of work that is distinctive and brilliant.
Central Park West Trilogy includes three novels, The Nihil-esthete, Penthouse F and Charlie P, originally published separately and collected for the first time in a single volume. Post-modern fables, dark, shocking, perversely funny, wickedly astute, and compulsively readable, they share Kalich's ferocious energy and unique vision. Together, they break down standard notions of plot, character and form a body of work that is distinctive and brilliant.

The Nihilesthete (first published in 1987 and nominated for a Pen/Faulkner Award, The Hemingway Award, a National Book Award, and Pulitzer Prize) introduces us to Kalich's dark world, where a spiritually desolate caseworker plays increasingly sadistic games with a limbless, speechless idiot with a painter's eye.

Penthouse F (first published 2010) is a cautionary tale that takes the form of an inquiry into the suicide—or murder?—of a young boy and girl in the Manhattan penthouse of a writer named Richard Kalich. Blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, kindness and cruelty, love and obsession, guilt and responsibility, writer and character, Penthouse F is a critical examination of our increasingly voyeuristic society.

Charlie P (first published 2005) dispenses with a conventional narrative altogether, as we follow the comic misadventures of a singularly unique, comic and outlandish Everyman. At age three, when his father dies, he decides to overcome mortality by becoming immortal: by not living his life, he will live forever. Akin to other great American icons such as Sinclair Lewis's Babbit and Forrest Gump, Charlie P, while asocial and alienated, is, at the same time, at the heart of the American dream.

Central Park West Trilogy encapsulates Kalich's uncompromising examination of the state of modern life, as well as his experimentations with form and language.
Available products
Book

Published 2014-08-01 by Betimes Books

Comments

"One of the most powerfully written books of the decade."

“Penthouse F is akin to the best work of Paul Auster in terms of its readability without sacrificing its intelligence of experiment. [ ] Kalich delivers afresh, relevant, and enticingly readable work of metafiction.”

“A brilliant, hammer-hitting, lights-out novel.” (on The Nihilestete)

"I would rather that the familiar be embraced and the novel resonate beyond itself and intone the spheres of Plato and Beckett. Charlie P resonates."

“With his continuous comic exaggeration, Kalich is able to describe, highly uniquely, the overwhelming, vertiginous, risky sensation of being alive.” (on Charlie P)