The Book of Frank
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:25th May '23
Should be back in stock very soon
A visceral, surrealist tale of becoming, from the shamanic cult hero of contemporary queer poetry
Beguiling, outrageous, playfully morbid and frequently stunning in its surreal flights of imagination, The Book of Frank follows the eponymous figure as he grows from his troubled childhood into an adult travesty of the ostensibly straight family man in a male-dominated world. Along the way, he navigates a series of darkly comic situations, commits acts of grotesque violence, loses his soul in the post and debates boundary lines with a pig. Frank is one of the great literary creations: a man who can declare that 'however we seek another's weakness is our tyranny', as often touchingly innocent as he is monstrously cruel.
Called 'a contemporary masterpiece' by Thurston Moore, a 'desert island book' by Anne Boyer and 'this generation's Dream Songs' by Maggie Nelson, The Book of Frank is one of the crucial poetic works of this century so far. Now, on the 30th anniversary of the first Frank poems' appearance, it is published in the UK for the first time.
I've heard it said that TheBook of Frank is this generation's Dream Songs, but I think The Book of Franksurges ahead in experiment and lasting power -- Maggie Nelson, author of THE ARGONAUTS
This is not merely a desert island book, but a book for a desert world. The Book of Franklilts through the strangeness, brutality, and beauty of our often terrible age. These are unsparing poems, and it has been a gift to be sweetly wrecked by them again and again, never quite knowing whether to meet the mythic Frank with laughter or with tears -- Anne Boyer, author of THE UNDYING
CAConrad's The Book of Frankenters like a Dixie tornado of nightmare surreality, the trash of USA demon seed consciousness assaulting the senses. CA's magic is his poetics, the transference of rotten hearts into crystal intellect, angel dreams, rhythms seeking love, and locating it in the essence of ritual and language. The Book of Frank is a contemporary masterpiece of radical prose in which the writer's soul sings across the page, rising above the indignities of Earthbound chaos, where humor and horror dance to the beat of the living dead -- Thurston Moore
I can never have enough CAConrad, like paprika or wisdom in disguise. Is he the Frank of the book? -- Bernadette Mayer, author of MEMORY
ISBN: 9781802062304
Dimensions: 197mm x 128mm x 15mm
Weight: 158g
176 pages