You & Me - Hardcover

Powell, Padgett

3.39

512 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006212613X ISBN 13: 9780062126139

Publisher: Ecco Pr, 2012

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Padgett Powell, author of the acclaimed The Interrogative Mood and "one of the few truly important American writers of our time" (Sam Lipsyte), returns with a hilarious Southern send-up of Samuel Beckett's classic Waiting for Godot.

Truly a master of envelope-pushing, post-postmodern American fiction, in a class with Nicholas Baker and Lydia Davis, Powell brilliantly blends the sublime, the trivial, and the oddball in You & Me, as two loquacious gents on a porch discuss all manner of subjects, from the mundane to the spiritual to the downright ridiculous.

At once outrageously funny and profound, You & Me is yet another brilliant, boundary-bursting masterwork, proving once again that, "there are few writers who understand both the beauty and the absurdity of language as well as Padgett Powell" (Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang) and that, "Padgett Powell is one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too" (Ian Frazier).

You & Me: A Novel won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction.

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Review:

"Padgett Powell's "You & Me, " mixed with 750 ml of fine bourbon, is the most fun you can have in many states without getting arrested. Braver, tougher, smarter than most of the fiction supposedly pushing the envelope. Why? Because it actually means something."--Gary Shteyngart, bestselling author of "Super Sad True Love Story"

"This is the hilarious work of a master in a late-career renaissance."--Creative Loafing

"Wonderful. . . . "You & Me" is by turns hilarious, depressing, gnomic, smutty, and just a far better Saturday night than anything to be had in Jacksonville and Baskersfield combined."--BookForum

"[Written] with typical swaggering genius and ribald wit."--Vanity Fair

"The book promises to be a Southern-fried, whiskey-soaked version of "Waiting for Godot, " and could put Powell in the running for the major literary prizes he's long deserved."--NPR

"Extremely funny . . . reflective and poetic."--Village Voice

"Great fun. . . . Irreverent. . . . Witty. . . . Compelling."--Kirkus Reviews

"Sit back and enjoy the ride. . . . The payoffs are marvelous. . . . Powell gets deeper and funnier every time out."--Shelf Awareness

"There's a wild, improvisational spirit to Powell's literary jazz. . . . You're urged on by hilarious . . . digressions, the musical lilt of the vernacular. . . . Good fun."--GQ.com

"[Powell's] characters might be all talk and no walk, but what wonderful talk it is. . . . Powell, in his recent work, has set his mind ablaze. And nothing but exquisite and deeply strange language is left to emerge from the ashes."--NPR

From the Back Cover:

The cult hit The Interrogative Mood--a Best Book of the Year selection by Amazon.com, GQ, The Believer, Time OutNew York, and elsewhere--reminded readers that Padgett Powell is one of the enduring stars of American fiction, an electric novelist with a pitch-perfect ear for the way Americans talk and the strange things we say and believe. Now he returns with a hilarious Southern send-up of Samuel Beckett's classic Waiting for Godot, and we enter the world of the sublime and trivial as only Powell can envision it.

Two loquacious men sit talking on a porch. Funny and profound, daft and cogent, they argue about love and sex, how best to live and die, the merits of Miles Davis and Cadillacs and Hollywood starlets of yore, underused cliches, false truisms, and the meaning of nihilism. Together, they shoot the shit--and then they go on shooting it long after it's dead.

Ribald and roaring, You & Me is an exuberant and very funny novel from a master of American fiction at the top of his game.

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