After the Workshop
A Novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Life is hard for a literary wunderkind after a decade of writer’s block in this “ribald deconstruction . . . of an industry in love with its own absurdities” (Kirkus Reviews).
You graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with a short story published in The New Yorker and subsequently Best American Short Stories. You stay in town and work on your novel. And work on your novel. Until, finally, twelve years have passed . . . and you are working as a media escort for author tours and your unfinished novel sits in a box under your bed. Now your girlfriend has left you. Your car is missing a muffler. Your neighbor is walking around naked because his hands are bandaged and he can’t unzip his pants. You are at the whims of a slew of increasingly unhinged writers, and when one of them disappears, an insane New York publicist begins stalking you.
This is the life of Jack Hercules Sheahan, a character well understood by author John McNally. McNally is also a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as well as a former media escort, and these misadventures are brought to life by his very own.
Recalling the wry humor of novels by Nick Hornby and Michael Chabon, After the Workshop tells the satirical story of a writer who confronts the demons from his past while escorting those of his present.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twelve years after graduating from the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop, Jack Sheahan, the protagonist of McNally's witty third novel, suffers from chronic self-doubt and a decade-long case of writer's block. He keeps an unfinished novel in a box under his telephone books and earns his living as a media escort for literati invited to read in Iowa City, greeting authors at the airport, chauffeuring them around town, and occasionally running their errands all the while seething with envy. With two clients in town at the same time one a new mother with possible postpartum psychosis who disappears with her baby, the other an arrogant New Yorker of Jack's age who has garnered the awards Jack once dreamed of winning plus a snowstorm, a former fianc e, and a mysterious visit by a famous writer who'd disappeared from public view years earlier, the action spirals into frenzy. McNally (Ghosts of Chicago), an Iowa graduate and former media escort, clearly knows the world he admires yet takes down. His wacky literary archetypes, naked humor and sharp observations offer up an entertaining look at the writing life and the people who prop it up.
