Haywire
Thaddeus Rutkowski
Release Date: December 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0984213313
Author Website
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Price: $18.00
DESCRIPTION
Composed of 49 flash stories narrated by the son of a Polish-American artist father and a Chinese mother, Thaddeus Rutkowski's deadpan, darkly funny third novel spirals out from the insular life of a biracial teenager into a surrealistic, giddy page-turner via the narrator's obsessive fetishism, and the reader is pulled along by the nose ring through a heady combination of literary and voyeuristic appeal. Our narrator eventually learns to get along with, even love, the people around him, but the feeling doesn't come easily. John Barth has called Rutkowski's work "tough and funny and touching and harrowing," and Alison Lurie has said, "Once you've read his low-key, continually surprising fiction, the world will look different to you—maybe just for an hour, maybe forever."
ADVANCE PRAISE
"Heir of Denis Johnson and Richard Brautigan — Rutkowski infuses music, light and wonder in Haywire. This is a cool and inspired story of Americans we know too little about. There is humor, curiosity and sadness in every scene. Rutkowski is brilliant." —Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires
"Rutkowski's newest work, Haywire, leverages the maximal amount of pleasure from a compressed and muscular prose. With the precision of a dungeon master, he is able to winch the wheel, line by line, in order to extract so many of life's honest, erotic and wickedly amusing moments." —Arthur Nersesian, author of Mesopotamia
"Thad Rutkowski's elegantly paced novel of an eccentric childhood and adolescence carefully skirts the edge of psychological revelation, the hints of bondage and discipline coursing below the surface like a pike in a goldfish pond. Nothing fazes the narrator as his tale unfolds, vaguely familiar but totally unique, shaped by random forces and the follies of well meaning but dysfunctional parents. A slyly comic and deeply honest account of the pleasures and discomforts of family life in suburban America." —Max Blagg, author of Pink Instrument
"Haywire aims high and succeeds brilliantly. Fractured, witty, vibrant—Rutkowski gives us his whole life, from stabbing butterflies to sitting through group therapy, but doles it out in bite-sized chunks that never seem forced. Fine writing and hilarity were to be expected—what surprises is the underlying message of hope in an unforgiving world. You will cheer his victories." —Ned Vizzini, author of Be More Chill and It's Kind of a Funny Story
"Thaddeus Rutkowski is the original language gangster. He tips over words and lets them fall on top of you. Take a trip through the funny funnel of Rutkowski's crazed and crazy world and you'll feel the heartbeat of a national crisis almost too far gone to save." —Ed Lin, author of Snakes Can't Run
REVIEWS
"[Rutkowski's] works build their effects cumulatively, through an accretion of discreet moments, ... so reading them is like eating a bag of potato chips, with each non-sequitur scene its own salty, satisfying morsel ('Bet you can't eat just one.')" —Peter Selgin, American Book Review
"Being old school, when reading an American realist novel, I look for robust characters, an engaging plot, and a measure of ambition in truthfully depicting a side of our national life. According to these criteria, Rutkowski proved eminently satisfactory." —Jim Feast, The Brooklyn Rail
"An exceptional craftsman, Rutkowski constructs his novel with great deliberation and austerity. Each chapter is titled and composed of separate scenes that follow one another intuitively if not always chronologically. His sentences, which most usually offer precise unemotional observation, flow effortlessly from one to the next, creating a collage-like effect. His imperceptible plotting is compelling, his prose is unerring. Reading his novel, I did not skip or stumble over a sentence even once... Rutkowski is that clean, that spare." —Susan Scutti, A Gathering of the Tribes
"Rutkowski’s writing evokes a sense of longing and dry wistfulness that draws me to his writing over and over again. Haywire... presents a fictionalized biracial teenager who navigates a complicated family and social terrain. Using lean deadpan prose, Rutkowski briskly moves the reader along in tightly constructed vignettes that surprise, entertain and disturb." —Rita Stein
"Haywire is written in three main parts, each consisting of short, titled chapters, some of which might stand alone as independent fragments. The prose is spare and functional, well suited to the dream-like accounts of memory and exposition... What Rutkowski has attemped here is worth the risks he took. May this lead to more, and still more accomplished work in the future." —Jacob Russell
"I can’t seem to pinpoint exactly what made this book work for me other than my overwhelming connection with the narrator from the get-go. Rutkowski has taken a simple story and layered it with evocative emotions, strange characters and quirky fetishes, and baked it to just the right temperature to create something truly unique in the literary world today: a highly original work that isn’t original simply for originality’s sake." —Mad Hatter's Review
"The sentences themselves are stunning. It’s their rhythm that really guides us through [the main character's] experiences. Each painful situation is balanced with humor, and [the narrator] and the reader learn to laugh along with each other." —Olena Jennings, KGB Bar Lit Magazine
"I can relate to the plight of the narrator of... Haywire. Back then, to be different—shorter, smarter, reads books, makes art, and doesn't play sports—was a good reason to be beaten up or have your head split with a rock. Rutkowski's hero has all of the above, plus he is biracial." —Sidney Grayling, Onager Editions
"The Polish artist father with his Socialist sympathies is a howler of a character and, between drunken jaunts down the road to the local or hunting trips or nut-picking excursions, carries nearly all of the tension of the book." —Lisa Simmons, The Nervous Breakdown
"Haywire is a fine example of (the autobiographical fiction) genre: subtle, strikingly detailed, emotional, and strangely affecting in the way that only a true story can be." —JoSelle Vanderhooft, The Pedestal Magazine
"Part 3 does have its funny and even 'racy' moments. Clearly, Rutkowski has a knack for writing tongue-in-cheek. But he can also be poignant without being too sentimental... Did I enjoy Haywire? Yes." —Michelle Tandoc-Pichereau, The Short Review