Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A brilliant and utterly original new novel from Mark Leyner about a father and his intense and devout relationship with his daughter and with alcohol.
An anthropologist and his daughter travel to Kermunkachunk, the capitol of Chalazia, to conduct research for an ethnography on the Chalazian Mafia Faction (a splinter group of the Chalazian Children's Theater).
The book takes place over the course of a night at the Bar Pulpo, Kermunkachunk's #1 spoken-word karaoke bar, where conversations are actually being read from multiple karaoke screens arrayed around the barroom. Moreover, it's Thursday, "Father/Daughter Nite," when the bar is frequented by actual fathers and daughters as well as couples cosplaying fathers and daughters.
Last Orgy of the Divine Hermit is a book about the deep pleasures of reading and drinking, the tumultuous reign of a cabal of mystic mobsters, and, of course, the transcendent love of a father for his daughter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Leyner's exhilarating and grotesque fever dream (after Gone with the Mind), an anthropologist's account of a night spent in the field with his filmmaker daughter is read by an optometrist's patient on an eye exam chart while a series of lenses are tested. The text, an ethnography written by an anthropologist about the country of Chalazia (where the anthropologist traveled with his filmmaker daughter, Gaby), is framed by a lecherous academic's introduction, in which the anthropologist is labeled a "vile human being" and Gaby "fantastic" and "super-hot." Gaby and her father spend a night at the Bar Pulpo in the "insanely violent" capital city, where a murderous band of loan-sharking mystics called the Chalazian Mafia Faction patrol the streets. Inside, patrons perform spoken-word karaoke based on the nation's "ur-folktale" of a drunken father who hints to his daughter that he is dying by telling her a story of a dying father talking to his daughter; the tale concludes with the father performing a danse macabre and perishing. Gaby and her father zealously act out a version of this absurdist tale, and the pathos and joy of their bond resonate despite an onslaught of zany metafictional lewdnesss. Leyner's ludic, distorted vision will reward readers intrepid enough to gaze into the optometrist's refractor.
