Pieces Of Payne First edition

Albert Goldbarth is ?a dazzling virtuoso who can break your heart? (Joyce Carol Oates)

How is Eliza?s divorce connected to the rise of twentieth-century quantum physics? Why does the steamy promise of ?a key unlocking a door at a cheap motel along I-35? lead us to a consideration of Moby-Dick? What does one physician?s fake appointment book have to do with Columbus, werewolves, and Fanny Burney?s famously excruciating nineteenth-century mastectomy? Albert Goldbarth sets his story of love?s daily pleasures and griefs upon a foundation of ever-branching footnotes?from the strange worlds of supermarket tabloids and the Legion of Super-Heroes to more contemplative forays into gender politics, Dickens scholarship, and medical anomalies. By taking us on this mind-bending journey, he shows us how our lives are both confused and empowered by the multilayered universe around us.

Pieces of Payne is the first novel by Goldbarth, a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.