The Assisted Living Facility Library
by Richard Kalich
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Pub Date Nov 12 2019 | Archive Date Jun 01 2020
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Description
Combining fiction and autobiography, the aging writer Richard Kalich describes an unexpected dilemma: he will only be allowed to bring 100 favorite books of the 10,000 or more that crowd his New York City apartment when he moves into an Assisted Living Facility.
Kalich starts to pare down his books with an obsessive urgency that becomes a reexamination of the writing life. And, after taking into his apartment a catatonic homeless woman and her young son in order to write his novel Mother Love, he realizes how wrong he has been. Art is one thing, life is another, and he has only lived "half-a-life." Calling forth his archetypal villain Haberman from an earlier novel, The Nihilesthete, the Author teams up with his Character to explore Kalich's lifelong inner conflict and the possibility of changing his nature, of transcending the Mind/Body Split.
Richard Kalich is an internationally acclaimed novelist whose other books include The Zoo, Charlie P, and Penthouse F. He has been a Finalist for the National Book Award and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His works have been translated into 14 languages.
Advance Praise
"This is experimental fiction at its best and most human. With the control of the great postmodernists, Kalich reveals how books form a life, and how, as a life comes to its end, both the books and the life itself become whittled down to what is glowingly essential."― Brian Evenson, Novelist and Critic
"A major American writer." ― Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Kalich might have written the last postmodern novel; or maybe the last novel: period." ― Brian McHale, Literary Theorist
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9780993433191 |
| PRICE | $4.99 (USD) |
Featured Reviews
A_Place_In_The O, Media/Journalist
What a glorious book this... a glorious, messed up, muddled and mysterious book. The opening premise... 100 books... is itself sufficient to get any constant reader thinking, and watching somebody else go through that torment is itself a disturbing vision. That the book then piles further disturbances onto it seems almost cruel at times - to the reader and to Richard Kalich. But there's also a beauty to the way he moves through them, and the end result is one of those books that... well, it may not make your 100, but it should certainly be on the shortlist.
G H, Reviewer
Autofiction, experimental fiction and postmodernist fiction are just some of the descriptions that rather inadequatly attempt to place Richard Kalich's latest work into some kind of designated category.
It is in reality all of these things and more.
One thing for certain, is that his writing is certainly different.
Now in his advance years, Kalich must choose 100 of his favourite books from a collection of 10.000 to accompany him to his new life at the Assisted Living Facility.
A book about books, fiction merging with fact, a story within a story, the author teaming up with his characters, these can all be found here.
This is above all an examination and reflection of his past and the relationship between books and the part they have played in his life.
A challenging but nevertheless a worthwhile read.
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