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Product Details
Scribner, March 2009
Hardcover, 272 pages
ISBN-10: 1416587020
ISBN-13: 9781416587026
Description
Jeffrey Rotter’s "brilliantly comic" debut novel has "earned him every kind of comparison—Kaufmanesque, Vonnegutesque, Pynchonesque" (New Statesman, U.K.).
Jim Rath’s wife has grown tired of his hobbies: his immaculately maintained comics collection, his creepy underwater experiments, and his dreams of building a museum based on the Aquatic Ape Theory of Human Evolution. On the night that she leaves him, Jim thinks he has spotted an emissary from a lost aquatic race called the Nautikons. In truth, the man is a low-level government inspector—a man harboring his own strange fantasies. What follows is a riveting story of two delusional and quixotic men who stalk each other toward a bloody showdown—a spectacularly moronic act at an aging water park. In The Unknown Knowns, Jeffrey Rotter takes everyday domestic fixations and turns them into a stunning portrayal of the human condition.
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How did you come to write this book?
I wanted to pit a delusion against a widely accepted truth and see which one survived under scrutiny. The belief in an ancient undersea civilization, the policies of Donald Rumsfeld: which one is fantasy, and which is more dangerous? Plus, I wish I had man-gills.
"A wonderful book -- smart, tight, and funny -- A Confederacy of Dunces meets Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin. I loved it."
-- Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X and The Gum Thief
"Jeffrey Rotter's first novel inhabits -- and illuminates -- an eerie landscape where romantic fantasy, paranoid delusion, and homeland security thrillingly intersect: in other words, twenty-first-century America."
-- Jennifer Egan, author of Look at Me and The Keep
"Vonnegutesque...A hyperintelligent, surrealistic tale with a wackiness factor worthy of Kilgore Trout."
-- Booklist (starred review)
"An offbeat and Pynchonesque debut...genuinely funny."
-- Kirkus Reviews
"Perceptive and humorous.... Rotter's imagination is formidable and fresh."
-- Joseph Salvatore, New York Times Book Review
"Absurdly hilarious in a Charlie Kaufmanesque kind of way...Smart about paranoia...Freshly observed."
-- Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan and The Russian Debutante's Handbook
Columbia Free-Times, December 23, 2009
...s also worth remembering that novels and short stories are very different beasts. Local and Regional Appeal The Unknown Knowns by Jeffrey Rotter. Scribner, 272 pages, $25. Rotter hasn’t really lived in Columbia since he graduated from USC ...
The List, May 8, 2009
...a graduate of New York?s Hunter College takes its title from Donald Rumsfeld?s famously bamboozling quote. Jeffrey Rotter may have given himself a high watermark of unintentional satire to live up to, but he fortunately produces a killer of ...
Newsday, April 16, 2009
...THE UNKNOWN KNOWNS by Jeffrey Rotter. Scribner, 272 pp., $25. At 38, Jim Rath has his best years behind him - and they weren't that great. Short and balding, the former ...
U-Wire.com, March 26, 2009
...late-night comedians have been making these jokes for years, but now a more literary voice joins in?Brooklyn author Jeffrey Rotter. His debut novel, 'The Unknown Knowns,' is a wonderfully crafted satire of American paranoia in the wake of ...
Elle, February 6, 2009
...the social service system until they bold again for the freedom, and the danger, of the wild. The Unknown Knowns (Scribner), Jeffrey Rotter's debut novel, pokes serious fun at the paranoia that has stalked America since 9/11 with a story ...
