Gould: A Novel in Two Novels

by Stephen Dixon

Draws a portrait of an American man through a collection of shorter stories documenting his romantic and sexual encounters over the course of forty years, showing the pain and wonder of love that are such a part of life in the modern world. 12,500 first printing.

Genres: Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1997

About the author

Stephen Dixon was a novelist and short story author who published hundreds of stories in an incredible list of literary journals. Dixon was nominated for the National Book Award twice--in 1991 for Frog and in 1995 for Interstate--and his writing also earned him a Guggenheim Fellowship, the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dixon explores the erotic lives of awful people in this squeamish comic novel-in-two-novels. His trademark neurotic tickertape runs at full steam across both novels, the opening ‘Abortions’ cataloguing the lovers Gould Bookbinder(!) has impregnated and the subsequent known and unknown terminations, while ‘Evangeline’ focuses on one recurring lover and her stream of phony and sincere endearments and rejections. As a comic novel exploring the cruelty, futility, and selfishness of modern relationships, where no one will commit until all specific character traits of the potential partner are met to exacting standards, Gould punches up there with Roth’s My Life as a Man for its exhausting candour.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A literary masterpiece too good for the general public.

[Rick Seery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Equally readable and aesthetic, Dixon presents his man, a sort of Dixonian everyman perhaps?, in two novels creating an emotional variance and tone in each part despite aesthetically both novellas being written in the same internalised, aesthetic , compulsive vein. In fact, across the three novels I've read by Dixon, the internal voice doesn't change - Dixon's perennial narrator seems to carry the same pretensions, frailties and insecurities across them all - his fictional internal life gaining bilious traction.

Dixon's voice is intoxicating and hilarious but the novel's endless block-like, paragraph-free structure (akin to Thomas Bernhard at least in terms of interiorization as well as how it physically looks on the page) belies (also akin to Bernhard) a talent for: foreshadowing; ongoing, interlinked ironizations; and narrative framing.

Dixon's protagonist Gould could be a scion of Larry David - a sex-mad George Costanza, as shallow, desperate, politically-incorrect, craftily heinous or fumblingly idiotic. The novel had me laughing out loud (like virtually all other Dixon stuff I've read).

The second novel is more poignant. Damn, it's possibly both parts of this diptych are equally poignant. Dark stuff which makes no concession to conventional literary depth, but invites the reader to piece his own out of Gould's life and time, both mental and environmental across a span of decades.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dixon writes in a distinctive way - long, winding sentences that do this neat trick where the language is straightforward and the punctuation is divine, with nary a paragraph break in sight. He’s pulling a trick on you, of course. Because you know all of the words, but you are soon ensnared in the consciousness of another.

This is a book so full of life that it enthralls and exhausts you. It’s funny and ugly and complicated; frank and compelling and fucked up - unflinching. It’s human.

[Franco Romero · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a novel in 2 novels. some of the paragraphs go on for like 30 pages. and some of the paragraphs will begin years later, after the last paragraph ended. dixon's voice is so addicting. i felt like i could have read hundreds more pages just describing gould and his life and his worries and his troubles.

[Pablo Concha · Rating 4 out of 5]

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