Hume's Fork

BOOKLIST "This is a wacky novel, even for a satire . . . Author Ron Cooper, a philosophy professor who hails from South Carolina, manages to tell a funny, fast-paced, hugely entertaining story that balances intricate philosophical ideas (the title itself is a pun, though you may need a crash course in logical positivism to get the joke) with outright zaniness (philosophizing wrestlers). Comparisons to John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces are not without merit, though Michael Malone's Handling Sin is closer to the mark. Its similarity to these contemporary classics aside, Cooper's novel is not at all derivative." RON RASH, PEN/FAULKNER FINALIST FOR SERENA, WRITER OF ACCLAIMED NOVELS ONE FOOT IN EDEN and THE WORLD MADE STRAIGHT "Hume's Fork is not only a very impressive debut, but one of the funniest novels I've read in a long time. Like John Kennedy Toole and Kingsley Amis, author Ron Cooper displays a gifted attentiveness to the foibles of the academic world." LEE IRBY, AUTHOR OF 7,000 CLAMS AND THE UP AND UP "It doesn't seem possible for a first-time novelist to write a book that is tender, funny, intelligent, and satirical, but Ron Cooper has done exactly that. Hume's Fork is unlike any book I've ever read: satisfying as a philosophy text, compelling as a drama, and redemptive in its trashing of academic stuffed shirts. He writes about the South as a only a native son can, with the right combination of pathos and punch. This book heralds the arrival of a much-needed breath of fresh air in American letters." ENID SHOMER, AUTHOR, TOURIST SEASON (RANDOM HOUSE 2007) "Hume's Fork, a first-class farce with something for everyone, is about people just like you and me-rednecks with PhDs, wrestlers, rednecks without PhDs, a church with 'corn-fed members,' and one lapsed Hasid who accidentally solves philosophy's most profound riddle-the mind/body problem. May Hume's Fork find its many readers! It made me laugh out loud." REBECCA GOLDSTEIN, PHILOSOPHER, NOVELIST, AND MACARTHUR FELLOW "Only Ron Cooper could have written Hume's Fork. How can I make this claim with such consummate confidence? Because of the high improbability that anyone at all could have cooked up this mix of zaniness and erudition, satire and insight. Hume's Fork is as delicious as it is original."