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Therapy Mammals
Tom Pistilini has just discovered he's an unwitting investor in a macabre tourism company bringing wealthy European sightseers obsessed with America's murder culture to explore mass shooting sites. It's a business that will make him wealthy, although he might just despise it enough to ruin his neighbors, and himself, financially. Told from the first-person perspective of unreliable narrator Tom "Pisser" Pistilini, the Patrick Bateman of the private school community, Therapy Mammals is the story of the lengths one father will go to protect his children, his marriage, and his worthiness. Pisser's life is a mess. He recently emerged from a pharmaceutical blackout to find himself strangling the captain of the high school lacrosse team against the bathroom wall of Gopa Academy, a premier Manhattan private school. His wife is having an affair with a motivational speaker. His job as Channel Fourteen's meteorologist is in jeopardy. His nanny died in a freak accident, of which he may have been involved. It is also possible he murdered the lacrosse coach with a four-iron. A group of millennial hackers has discovered the tourism business. He has a chipmunk infestation in his backyard. His wife's vertical pancake business, Standcake, is on the verge of ruin. His son is a cross-dressing geriatric. Controversial photographs of his daughter are circulating. Various factions of parents are aligned against him, but who can blame them: he stole a prosthetic leg and an equipment bus, causing the lacrosse team to forfeit an important game. He kidnapped a feral cat, hoping it would clear his yard of chipmunks while also behaving as his therapy pet. He named it Clint Eastwood. His cat is pregnant. Therapy Mammals is an intriguing romp through modern parenthood navigating class privilege, digital media, hacker culture and gun violence.
Book Details
- Publisher: Rare Bird Books, a Barnacle Book
- Publish Date: Jun 12nd, 2018
- Pages: 376
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.50in - 0.90in - 0.80lb
- EAN: 9781945572999
- Categories: • Absurdist• Literary
About the Author
Jon Methven is the author of three novels: Therapy Mammals, Strange Boat, and This Is Your Captain Speaking. His work has appeared in Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the New York Times, New York Magazine, Buzzfeed, The Atlantic, and The Awl. He lives in New York City.
Praise for this book
"What a miraculous sight: Jon Methven is a serious novelist with an irreverent, satirical sense of humor, which is the only sense of humor worth having. In Therapy Mammals, his comedic register asserts itself in tandem with a sly earnestness, a skewed sincerity that operates at the edge of irony. In these pages, as in life, the only people who have any idea what's going on are those who can identify and accept the absurd. Here is a novel that will force you to see our warped kind anew."
--William Giraldi, author of Hold the Dark and The Hero's Body "A very funny and extremely timely novel that navigates the complexities of moral living."
―Katherine Heiny, author of Standard Deviation "A wickedly smart and savage social satire about this current bananas moment in human evolution and American devolution. As funny as it is terrifying."
―Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life Praise for This is Your Captain Speaking "I'm not sure how it happened, but Thomas Pynchon and Donald Barthelme bumped into one another while toting their samples into a sperm bank. Jon Methven is the result. This Is Your Captain Speaking proves that Methven has his finger on the pulse of the absurd, the topical, the real. Here's a novel that soars and soars. And swaggers relentlessly."
--George Singleton, author of Stray Decorum "A playful and witty send-up of our media-mad culture. Methven is a comic writer to watch."
--Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here "The cheeky send-up is aggressively experimental, but Methven manages to tell an engaging story amid the antic high jinks. B+"
--Entertainment Weekly "Targeting celebrity-obsession, the always-on news cycle and corporate America, Methven raises both questions and laughs."
--New York Post "Relentlessly inventive. . . . Beneath the snappy dialogue and quirky plot twists, Methven is posing a profound question: What happens when a country can no longer live up to its own mythos? . . . Methven keeps the plot humming, all the way to the sticky end. He's an exciting new voice."
--Steve Almond, The Boston Globe "You know who really had a satire coming? Sully Sullenberger. The heroic pilot who avoided crashing a damaged US Airways passenger plane by belly-flopping it onto the Hudson River became the first celebrity airman since Capt. John Yossarian. . . . A similar 'Miracle on the Hudson' event kick-starts Methven's very funny, slightly batshit debut novel. . . . Methven's energy and clear enthusiasm for the ridiculousness of his book translates to the read."
--Time Out Chicago "Do we take this seriously? We think not. We are big fans, though, of such inspired silliness."
--Asbury Park Press (NJ) "Jon Methven's fiction debut is so inventive, assured and hilarious that it instantly establishes him as a major satirist for these times. . . . Entertaining subplots abound. Zinging up and down the ladder of comedy in pitch-perfect prose, This Is Your Captain Speaking is a shrewd response to an America besotted with image, celebrities and reality shows."
--Bucknell Magazine "A Pynchonesque, offbeat parody of American media coverage and celebrity. . . . a smart, fast-paced farce in which Methven ably satirizes America's signature take on reality and culture of greed."
--Booklist "What if the 'Miracle on the Hudson' were completely faked by an unscrupulous airline company in order to boost prices? And what if we got a guy to write the whole thing up just like Carl Hiaasen? . . . Don't miss Methven's psychotic, if interactive, reading group guide at the end."
--Kirkus Reviews "[A] buoyant debut . . . Fans of McSweeney's Internet Tendency will relish this frequent contributor's snappy farce about publicity, celebrity culture, and a ne'er-do-well's attempt to save some crippled orphans by way of one Beatle's frozen swimmers."
--Publishers Weekly "Every so often a first novel comes along that blows your hair back with its ingenuity, that jumpstarts your faith in imaginative literature, and Jon Methven has written one of those novels. This Is Your Captain Speaking is an astonishing debut, a comedic masterwork worthy of the great Joe Orton and Stanley Elkin. Outrageous and gorgeously absurd, it shows us, with fearless accuracy, what a twisted tribe we have become."
--William Giraldi, author of Busy Monsters
--William Giraldi, author of Hold the Dark and The Hero's Body "A very funny and extremely timely novel that navigates the complexities of moral living."
―Katherine Heiny, author of Standard Deviation "A wickedly smart and savage social satire about this current bananas moment in human evolution and American devolution. As funny as it is terrifying."
―Stephen McCauley, author of My Ex-Life Praise for This is Your Captain Speaking "I'm not sure how it happened, but Thomas Pynchon and Donald Barthelme bumped into one another while toting their samples into a sperm bank. Jon Methven is the result. This Is Your Captain Speaking proves that Methven has his finger on the pulse of the absurd, the topical, the real. Here's a novel that soars and soars. And swaggers relentlessly."
--George Singleton, author of Stray Decorum "A playful and witty send-up of our media-mad culture. Methven is a comic writer to watch."
--Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here "The cheeky send-up is aggressively experimental, but Methven manages to tell an engaging story amid the antic high jinks. B+"
--Entertainment Weekly "Targeting celebrity-obsession, the always-on news cycle and corporate America, Methven raises both questions and laughs."
--New York Post "Relentlessly inventive. . . . Beneath the snappy dialogue and quirky plot twists, Methven is posing a profound question: What happens when a country can no longer live up to its own mythos? . . . Methven keeps the plot humming, all the way to the sticky end. He's an exciting new voice."
--Steve Almond, The Boston Globe "You know who really had a satire coming? Sully Sullenberger. The heroic pilot who avoided crashing a damaged US Airways passenger plane by belly-flopping it onto the Hudson River became the first celebrity airman since Capt. John Yossarian. . . . A similar 'Miracle on the Hudson' event kick-starts Methven's very funny, slightly batshit debut novel. . . . Methven's energy and clear enthusiasm for the ridiculousness of his book translates to the read."
--Time Out Chicago "Do we take this seriously? We think not. We are big fans, though, of such inspired silliness."
--Asbury Park Press (NJ) "Jon Methven's fiction debut is so inventive, assured and hilarious that it instantly establishes him as a major satirist for these times. . . . Entertaining subplots abound. Zinging up and down the ladder of comedy in pitch-perfect prose, This Is Your Captain Speaking is a shrewd response to an America besotted with image, celebrities and reality shows."
--Bucknell Magazine "A Pynchonesque, offbeat parody of American media coverage and celebrity. . . . a smart, fast-paced farce in which Methven ably satirizes America's signature take on reality and culture of greed."
--Booklist "What if the 'Miracle on the Hudson' were completely faked by an unscrupulous airline company in order to boost prices? And what if we got a guy to write the whole thing up just like Carl Hiaasen? . . . Don't miss Methven's psychotic, if interactive, reading group guide at the end."
--Kirkus Reviews "[A] buoyant debut . . . Fans of McSweeney's Internet Tendency will relish this frequent contributor's snappy farce about publicity, celebrity culture, and a ne'er-do-well's attempt to save some crippled orphans by way of one Beatle's frozen swimmers."
--Publishers Weekly "Every so often a first novel comes along that blows your hair back with its ingenuity, that jumpstarts your faith in imaginative literature, and Jon Methven has written one of those novels. This Is Your Captain Speaking is an astonishing debut, a comedic masterwork worthy of the great Joe Orton and Stanley Elkin. Outrageous and gorgeously absurd, it shows us, with fearless accuracy, what a twisted tribe we have become."
--William Giraldi, author of Busy Monsters