Madly transfixing details-- noodles, toilet paper, toothpaste, a first subway ride, a sock full of dollars-- become milestones in a discovery of America. These details, combined with Federman's feel for the desperation of his characters, create a book that is simultaneously hilarious and frightening. The concrete play of its language, its use of found materials, give the viewer/reader a sense of constant and strange discovery. To turn these pages is to turn the corners of a world of words as full as any novel or literary discourse ever presented. "Double or Nothing" challenges the way we read fiction and the way we see words, and in the process, gives us back more of our own world and our real dilemmas than we are used to getting.
"Invention of this quality ranks the book among the fictional masterpieces of our age..." --Richard Kostelanetz, author of "The End of Intelligent Writing" and "The Old Fictions & the New"
"Federman takes the novel to the point of obsessive, ultimate reflexiveness-- and a
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
"Federman takes the novel to the point of obsessive, ultimate reflexiveness and against all the odds of logic in fiction, "Double or Nothing" works like a charm...Somehow, in this furious and comic scheme, every distraction is an enrichment, and the processes of choice played with infinite fancifulness upon the page are the lovely geometry of personal assertion. Typography becomes typology; our hero becomes a citizen."
Marcus Klein, author of After Alienation and Foreigners"
"Federman takes the novel to the point of obsessive, ultimate reflexiveness and against all the odds of logic in fiction, Double or Nothing works like a charm...Somehow, in this furious and comic scheme, every distraction is an enrichment, and the processes of choice played with infinite fancifulness upon the page are the lovely geometry of personal assertion. Typography becomes typology; our hero becomes a citizen."
Marcus Klein, author of After Alienation and Foreigners
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Book Description First edition and first printing. Hardcover. 202 pages. An experimental novel from this French born American author. A tight near fine copy in cloth boards with a small former owner signature to the front free endpaper and in a very good dust jacket with a triangular chip to the bottom right corner, some edge tears and some other light wear. Uncommon in any condition. Seller Inventory # 193655
Book Description hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. A nice copy. Clean text, solid binding. First printing. Brown cloth with black lettering. Light rubbing to boards. No dust jacket. Seller Inventory # mon0000185502
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First Edition. Bright, clean & tight copy, unread, in FINE condition. "DOUBLE OR NOTHING is a concrete novel--concrete, as in concrete poetry: the words are used as physical materials on the page. Federman gives each of these pages a shape or structure. Most often these are arranged for visual effect, presenting a diagram or picture. Sometimes the structure is grammatical; other pages adopt the appearance of ledgers or charts. The words move, cluster, jostle, and collide in a tour de force full of puns, parodies, and imitations. [] Within these startling and playful structures Federman develops two characters and two narratives. The first deals with the narrator and his effort to make the book itself; the second, the story the narrator intends to tell, presents a young man's arrival in America. [] All this carries into the book an enormous range of detail, a discovery of America by way of its madly transfixing particulars--noodles, toilet paper, toothpaste, a first subway ride, a sock full of dollars, the shrapnel of the supermarket's explosion of language into shelf-collages of product names, advertisements, and lists of ingredients. These details, combined with Federman's feel for the desperation of his characters, create a book that is simultaneously hilarious and frightening. The concrete play of the language, its use of found materials, give the viewer/reader a sense of constant and strange discovery. [] DOUBLE OR NOTHING challenges the way we are used to reading fiction and the way we are used to seeing words, and, in the process, gives us back more of our own world and our real dilemmas than we are used to getting." [jacket copy] "A most rare accomplishment: a true experimental novel. As a casual conundrum of intellectual delight or as a serious statement about the nature and implications of fiction, Federman's book is a signal achievement."--Earl Rovit, Contemporary Literature. Winner of the Frances Steloff Fiction Prize and the Panache Experimental Fiction Prize. Old yet pristine hardcover w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding, w/no age-toning on creamy-clean pages, wrapped in a NF jacket w/original slight shelfwear, nice edges, price triangle clipped, covered in archival mylar. Quite presentable. Seller Inventory # RUB2136
Book Description hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Very Good. book. Seller Inventory # D8S0-3-M-0804005435-4