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THE OLIVER ARTS AND OPEN PRESS
AND FROM THE
PROGRESSIVE PRESS
COMES
THE END OF THE 19TH CENTURY
A Novel by Eric Larsen
2)......ABOUT THE BOOK:
FROM
THE PROGRESSIVE PRESS
P.O. Box 126, Joshua Tree, Calif. 92252
Tel. 760-366-3695. Fax 760-366-2937
Email: mail@progpress.com
Online: ProgressivePress.com
AND
THE OLIVER ARTS AND OPEN PRESS
2578 Broadway (Suite #102)
New York, NY 10025
Tel. 212-866-7425
Email: Oliver Arts and Open Press
Eric Larsen's long-awaited third novel, The End of the 19th Century, has been published under the imprint of Progressive Press. This major book is part three of a tetralogy entitled An American Memory. The novel will be available through all Ingram distribution outlets.
Larsen radically stretches conventional fiction's reach with this story of a character whose childhood and coming-of-age are understandable only if the reader perceives that the young man's growth consists of his gradual internalizing of history—as he puts it, his coming to understand "the mysteries of space and time." At first, he sees only glimpses of life—through the briefly-opened "windows" of eyesight in early childhood. Later on, everything begins serving as windows into the past—objects, locations, landscapes, the town he's born in, the people in it—even his aging great-aunts Marie and Lutie, whose origins are well back in the 19th century.
Through small things like a visit from his great-aunts one afternoon in 1944 (when he's four years old), a blimp cruising overhead in 1946, goldfish hovering beneath the surface of a pond, the sound of a train whistle in the night, Malcolm Reiner comes to understand first that things can be related "horizontally," then also "vertically"—relationships that, when combined with the element of time itself, reveal history—definable as life, followed by the absence of life—to be a web of such intricate complexity that it can't conceivably ever be understood.
And yet Reiner dedicates his life to the "study of the mysteries of space and time." Through his childhood and adolescent "studies" he finds—and shows in splendid color to the reader—a sweep of time, atmosphere, and place from 1857 through 2010 that includes the history of his family; of West Tree, Minnesota ("West Tree reached its most perfect historical period sometime after the close of 1915 but before the beginning of 1923"); of the "Epoch of Walking," a period that both expressed and helped make possible the most supremely successful years of the town and region; and of Malcolm's own "years of perfect seeing," the period when, living on a farm outside West Tree, he's able, profoundly and poetically and with a vividness rare in fiction, actually to sense and see what America once was.
But an end will come. Malcolm's extremely troubled father tries desperately—so Malcolm believes—to keep the Epoch of Walking from ending. But nothing can forestall its fate, and in or near 1950 the Epoch (as does Malcolm's time "of perfect seeing") begins dwindling away. The farm begins to go with it, and, eventually, also West Tree itself, but not before Reiner's sexual coming of age allows him a final cosmic—and uniquely comic—means of his own to hold space, time, and place together in a last attempt to prevent the end of everything.
Reviewers at various publishing houses have called The End of the 19th Century "a profound act of memory, [an] American Proust," and have said it "is important, its writer gifted with genius," and that Larsen "is a brilliant writer."
Larsen's first novel, also entitled An American Memory, appeared in 1988 and was said to "[take] the novel as close to poetry as it can go" while it "[captured] the land's pulsating rhythms" in what the New York Times called "language as sparse and wind-riven as the Midwest of [Larsen's] imagination." It won the Chicago Tribune's first Heartland Prize as that year's best novel from or about the Midwest, receiving an award of $5,000. In 1992 I Am Zoë Handke came out, again from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. Author Ruth Moose wrote that it was "Marvelous, marvelous work" and said to readers that "If you love literature, writing so wonderful it makes you catch your breath, read Zoë Handke."
Larsen is also the author of A Nation Gone Blind: America in an Age of Simplification and Deceit (2006), said by Publisher's Weekly to be "a rare intellectual page-turner. . . [that] deserves to be read by anyone who thinks—or thinks they think—for a living." The Mobile Press-Register added that "America's intellectual class cannot afford not to read this book."
Larsen's fiction, essays, and articles have appeared in a range of publications from The South Dakota Review through The New Republic and Harper's. He lives in New York City.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, OR TO REQUEST REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT:
....................The Oliver Arts and Open Press
....................at 212-866-7425
....................or by email at Oliver Arts and Open Press
....................or by mail at
........................................The Oliver Arts and Open Press
........................................2578 Broadway
........................................New York, New York 10025
3)......SOME HISTORY OF THE BOOK'S PUBLISHING LIFE:
Larsen completed the novel in 1997, and the next decade saw its repeated rejection by publishers and editors who nevertheless showered it with high praise. From the start, most publishers saw the book as too difficult—or "unfamiliar"—for the American reading public. Readers, they feared, wouldn't know what to make of it or know "how" to read it, and so there seemed not the remotest chance of its publication reaching the break-even point, let alone being profitable. At the same time, these readers, editors, and publishers remained intensely sympathetic to the book and its aims. Here, for example, is its first rejection, by a publisher who says, among other things, that it is a book "comparable with poetry." Another reader spoke so highly of the novel as to say that "This book is important, its writer gifted with genius" and to beg of its prospective publisher, "Please, don't let it go." Even so strong an appeal as that, however, couldn't be honored, as readers can see here.
Larsen himself once wrote on the subject of reading, distinguishing between "active" or "conscious" reading on the one hand and the "passive" sort on the other. He went so far as to argue that "what's really happening. . . is that this [second kind of 'reader'], falling away into passivity, is in fact no longer reading the book but is being read by the book."
Those who rejected The End of the 19th Century were the first kind—the "real" kind—of readers, but they remained convinced that there simply weren't enough of that "real" kind left among the American reading public to allow a "real" book to make a profit or for that matter break even. One publisher, who found himself "mesmerized in reading" the book, actually feelt culpable for rejecting it, saying "[I'm] deeply disappointed in myself." At another point, Larsen wrote a publisher in order to give him a bit of guidance in how to read the novel. For others who liked but rejected the book, there was no such need, as readers can see here, or again here.
Now, however, Progressive Press has at last made it possible for the book to find publication and be made available to readers. It can be gotten through any bookstore or online book source. It is available through all Ingram distribution outlets.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, OR TO REQUEST REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT:
....................The Oliver Arts and Open Press
....................at 212-866-7425
....................or by email at Oliver Arts and Open Press
....................or by mail at
........................................The Oliver Arts and Open Press
........................................2578 Broadway
........................................New York, New York 10025
........................
