Triumph of the Spider Monkey
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
New York Times–bestselling author
Unavailable for 40 years, this seminal crime novel of madness and murder is a powerful trip into the mind of a maniac—and features a never-before-seen companion novella.
“Oates’ tale of criminal psychosis draws on the druggy decadence, greed, sexism, and violence of Hollywood in the Charles Manson-Roman Polanski era.” —Booklist
Abandoned as a baby in a bus station locker—shuttled from one abusive foster home and detention center to another—Bobbie Gotteson grew up angry, hurting, damaged. His hunger to succeed as a musician brought him across the country to Hollywood, but along with it came his seething rage, his paranoid delusions, and his capacity for acts of shocking violence.
Unavailable for 40 years, The Triumph of the Spider Monkey is an eloquent, terrifying, heartbreaking exploration of madness by one of the most acclaimed authors of the past century. This definitive edition for the first time pairs the original novel with a never-before-collected companion novella by Joyce Carol Oates—unseen since its sole publication in a literary journal nearly half a century ago—which examines the impact of Gotteson’s killing spree on a woman who survived it, as seen through the eyes of the troubled young man hired by a private detective to surveil her...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Originally published in 1976 and long out of print, this novella by Oates (Hazards of Time Travel) is a dark, disturbing trek through the mind of a psychotic killer. Bobbie Gotteson was found as an infant inside a New York City bus terminal footlocker. From that strange beginning, Gotteson's life, as disjointedly relayed by him, is marked by one institution after another, including prison, while in between he fruitlessly scrambles as a struggling songwriting musician, actor, and gigolo but he finds fame through murder, specifically with the hacking to death of nine stewardesses. One can never be sure of what is truth and what is delusion, leaving the reader lost within a story with nothing of substance to hold onto. This may have been Oates's intention, but it makes for an unsatisfying and often distasteful experience. More coherent, but not much more satisfying, is the companion novella that tells of a survivor of Gotteson's and the obsession of a young man hired to watch her. This one's strictly for Oates fans.
