Us!: Songs and Stories - Tapa blanda

'U.S.! is a mad contraption of a novel, an encyclopedia of all our rich American armamentarium of bullshit, cant, ad copy and hyperbole. But this one carries secret reserves of heartbreak and ruefulness that propel it farther and deeper into the reader's imagination. We need novelists like Chris Bachelder who can, with a microfine sense of humor and a tragic sense of history, almost make it all make sense. We're lucky to have him.' Michael Chabon 'Edgy, funny and politically deft, U.S.! is also strangely moving in its implicit faith that politics, thought and action matter. Bachelder is a witty, compassionate troublemaker, and we need more like him.' George Saunders 'Chris Bachelder is a pyrotechnic comic genius who calls to mind William Gaddis and Samuel Beckett but who is ultimately just himself - a humbly hilarious and large-hearted human with a crazy, fiery brain.' Heidi Julavits, author of The Effect of Living Backwards Praise for BEAR V. SHARK: 'Like Don DeLillo on acid [a] brilliant, bizarre debut a wildly entertaining cultural roller-coaster ride,' Publishers Weekly

US! is a playful, darkly comic novel that imagines the serial resurrection and assassination of tireless muckraker and writer Upton Sinclair. In Chris Bachelder's wonderful world, Sinclair is repeatedly brought back to life by beleaguered but optimistic leftists (whose refrain is 'Hope and Shovels Forever'), and then gunned down (and once harpooned) by those seeking fame, fortune and American business as usual. As he grows more and more politically and culturally insignificant, Sinclair keeps writing his embarrassingly bad muckraking novels and continues risking his life for the Socialist revolution, which is perpetually just around the corner. Through stories, songs, letters, journal entries, book reviews, memos, a syllabus, newspaper and magazine articles, Internet auctions, transcripts of talk shows, interviews and toll-free hotlines, Bachelder documents the demise (but dogged faith) of the American Left, as well as the violence and hysteria of the Right. U.S.! is not only a satire of American politics and culture, but an exploration of the possibilities and problems of political art.